Arcanepotato

The military and the police are made up of people (including people in red hats with guns).

It is disorienting and dangerous for the weights to move in an unexpected manner during a competition lift. Kill might be but if a stretch but there is a high risk she injures herself and others.

Powerlifting infodump lol:

You don't get to that level without failing (and bailing) on lifts and you learn what different failure modes feel like and how to respond.

I'm not a good power lifter but based on my experience in competitions this might have felt like the load wasn't balanced which could be: bad positioning of the athlete under the bar, improper loading (collar not tight against the weights) or your supporting muscles are fatigued/your foot position is off meaning the upwards motion is going to be harder than you think.

You assess your position and the balance at the top of the lift before you start the downward motion. It's not super common, but people abandon lifts here (safely). Choosing your attempts is a whole discipline of its own lol and sometimes we get ambitious.

This is speculation of course (I didn't read any interviews, I hope someone can correct me if she did describe it) but I imagine she's doing the downward motion, feels a wobble, either reflexively starts the upward motion or makes the decision to not go as deep and hope the lift is good.

It's not possible to know what would happen if she kept going as normal. Maybe it would have been fine. Maybe she would have unconsciously compensated for what felt like an unbalanced load , leading to disaster. Or maybe she would have been shaken, got stuck "in the hole" and had to bail, which is also risky to herself and others.

You didn't mention if you do competitive powerlifting yourself. I think we're all used to seeing elite level athletes push themselves super hard and assume it's a choice they make. I think with competition style power lifting events most - if not all - people will hit that intense focus, doing everything by reflex, can't hear, can't see, can only lift moment. That's why there is a rule where you are allowed to ask them to clean the platform before your turn 🫣 My point here is that it's a lot less conscious than people might think it is, making this kind of thing even more dangerous than one might assume.

Technically it is permitted, but practically it is not done especially if you are traveling. This was an IPF and their rules state that the Technical Committee and the local organizer are responsible for appointing spotters.

I've never participated in a championship but all IPF and other federation meets I've attended or participated in were mostly local volunteers because it's easier to count on them to show up, and they know each other so it's easier for them to work together (maybe more important for loaders?).

Hosting a meet is a lot of work, so your club pays it forward by hosting meets of their own giving people more opportunities to compete.

I wish people talked about sex more. Not with me lol, but with each other. And that more cishet couples knew more about different types of sexual activities beyond PiV (porn style oral doesn't count unless you like it I guess?)

While of course it's okay to not want to have sex, wonder how much the sex being awful has to do with it. Or the thought that sex means your partner is doing stuff to you.

I hope for better for the future 💕

This is so infuriating. The sport depends on volunteers to act as spotters and it's a position of great trust. He knows admitting to this is terroristic and will impact lifters confidence performing lifts going forward.

Congrats! I love harvesting potatoes it's such a fun treasure hunt.

Wonderful photos! I have come to better appreciate robins recently. We have a "teenage" robin (I don't know the correct term) that spends time in our yard with their parents. It's been wonderful to watch them interact.

This is the young one waiting for his parents in the shade on my deck. They are also the most enthusiastic user of the bird bath.

I always laugh when they pop up on Merlin. Turdus is their genus and "those turds!" Is what I think when they wake me at 4:30 if we keep the windows open overnight lol.

Mine are from Lush but I've seen others at Sephora. They also carry perfume in oil carriers.

I guess this is something that is very regional but the use of perfumes is not really considered acceptable in most public settings where I live. Most workplaces are scent free, for example.

Not that I don't enjoy scented products that don't linger! I tend to ecylypus, citrus or lavender for body soap. Patchouli or eucalyptus for deodorant, but I can basically only smell it when I apply it. It's still nice lol.

Anything aerosolized or carried in alcohols gives me migraines (and nausea). Even my spouse's beard products will make me feel sick so he's got to look at the ingredients before buying.

If I want to wear a scent at home to feel nice or whatever it will be something solid. I love jasmine and sandlewood. I have a few solid perfumes with the following profiles:

patchouli/pepper/vanilla
jasmine/vanilla/rose
mint/neroli/sandlewood/

I don't agree with your take on sick leave. But there is nothing to discuss.

None of this has anything to do with my opinion that framing sick leave as luxurious is harmful. Weird that you think being in a coma means you shouldn't get sick leave tho

I'm not sure what the implication of this comment is but I'd be really confused if it is meant as snark as this entire comment is about how there are no sides in what I am saying.

I don't think something being illegal would stop the government. I don't think something being legal makes it ethical. The Governor and the Senator are both imperialist ghouls I'm not concerned with if what they do is legal or not.

You said he didn't supply medical information to his employer but the article says that the Office of the Attending Physician issued a statement. You replied to my comment with what I feel is an incorrect statement, of course I'm going to reply. Maybe you missed the line in the article and it would be helpful to know this?

I looked up the statement from the Physician and it does specify:

OAP physicians visit with the Senator every day, discussing all aspects of his rehabilitation care.

I don't know how to interpret that in any way but the doctor who is supplied by his employer has met with him.

anyways, what are you trying to get out of the conversation at this point? I really dont care about mcconnell or his well being/job status beyond the democratic reps being spineless per usual

I said this in the comment I deleted I feel like I have to say it: good thing my initial comment has nothing to do with McConnell!

Wow! Do you do any maintenance on your pump? When we bought our house (our first with a well) the guy I had come take a look at everything looked at me like I had two heads when I asked.

Did you have to reprime the pump? For some reason this terrifies me to have to do.

Perhaps you have information I don't? The article in the post says:

In an accompanying statement, the Office of the Attending Physician noted that doctors were meeting with McConnell every day.

I read that as his workplaces doctor is providing care.

Thanks for the heads up about the typos, I have corrected them.

Why are chemistry teachers so based?

(sorry to anyone one who had chemistry teachers that were not helpful)

Solitarily with the I-couldn't-afford-grad-school lol. I knew I could not afford to go to grad school full time but I didn't realize part time enrolment meant I had to pay back my undergrad loans and I couldn't pay my loans with work that was flexible enough to let me attend class. Womp womp.

I get the feeling my light hearted tone came across as mocking or snarky so please accept my apology if that is the case.

One of the pitfalls (again, by design!) is that complex things are not served by imprecise labels. We are discouraged from understanding each other and instead sorted into teams. The world is framed as a series of debates that can be won. There is no winning an argument about how to care for each other!

This is a problem we need to work on together. I am not saying this to suggest I have some wisdom others don't. I am likely failing at upholding this value without knowing it because of the complexity and diversity of how individuals experience the world and how they express these experiences. I depend on my comrades to call me out when I fail. It's a lot to ask someone to tell you when you fuck up but I feel like autistic people might be in the unique position to understand the value. It takes trust and care to make a space this can happen and to not make it a disproportionate burden to the marginalized.

I feel like I need to add a clarification: understanding each other means receiving the information a person is trying to share with you as they intend for it to be received instead of framing it according to ones own world view and interpretation. When I say that we need to understand each other instead of focusing on dogma people respond with concepts like the Paradox of Tolerance but I think the disconnect is the different meanings of the word understanding and they are stretching what I am saying into something it's not.

I will explain with an cheeky example because I am so bored about talking about fascists: Lets say someone introduces themselves as a Marxist. An unhelpful gut reaction I have is that they buy in to the idea of the lumpenproletariat in a specific, narrow way that I find harmful. Instead of being like "they must be ableist, I will ignore them", I will try to get to know them and understand them in the context of the bounds of our relationship. I'm not going to interrogate them on the subject. I don't see a way that can be done that isn't an attempt to shame them or placing myself above them. They gave me a simplified description of their philosophy, they didn't say they take the writings of a wealthy dead white guy from almost 200 years ago and apply it as a literal road map to how the current world should be approached.

If what we are collaborating on includes the potential to do harm to others because they think the lumpen are worthless and a danger then yeah, we need to talk about it and clarify goals. If the example is Food not Bombs maybe collectively we agree this person isn't the right person to be distributing the food to people as they come up because of the risk of making someone feel unwelcome. But it doesn't mean they can't be involved so long as we have the common goal of freely distributing vegan food. This discussion about roles and goals isn't public and isn't thrust upon unwilling people who will feel unsafe hearing it. I'm not "tolerating" the expression of ideas that harm others, I'm ensuring I understand if this person has ideas (biases?) that can harm others instead of assuming it from incomplete information. I don't think it's possible to be an anarchist without applying abolitionist principles to your daily life because the focus has to be on how we can care for each other versus who is "bad".

Wow that was a lot of preface to reply to your questions 😅

Yes, I’ll admit I don’t really understand what anarchism is. I’m embarrassed by it not because of Mohawks, but because if its incarnation in me as more radical libertarianism. I did do my due diligence–I read V for Vendetta cover to cover several times, and all I’ll learned is that even V didn’t know what the hell was or how to make it happen. “This isn’t anarchy, Evey, it’s chaos.”

The way I phrased it was sloppy. I just meant to say that society praises some forms of ignoring hierarchy (i.e. sharing) versus others (hair cuts people don't like).

I struggle with the label of libertarianism. Depending on who you are talking to they might use that word instead of anarchy and have the same world view as I do, or they could mean that they get sad when capitalists are asked to fund social programs.

I find your anecdote very charming and illustrative! I would not have thought of that book as being a representation of anarchist thought. I will admit I only saw the movie and didn't read the book because I had a visceral reaction to the whole "I tortured you to free your mind" thing. It is paternalistic and coercive and I don't see it defendable as an anarchist action. Maybe I missed the authors point and it's not intended to be seen as a good thing.

If I was going to recommend a book to people it would be The Conquest of Bread. More wealthy dead white guys from the 1800s lol! The utility of a book by someone like that is that it is a bit easier for privileged white people to make the connections because it is directly addressing a lot of the concepts that are used to defend individualistic capitalism. It's not a manual, it's an exploration of ideas at a time of great social change. It reflects one persons views in the context of the world as they experience it.

So it’s just people working together absent coercion?

Maybe we can take a step back from that? Let's say anarchy is the rejection of arbitrary and harmful hierarchy. I know I brought up coercive control but I think that is limiting to focus on. How people perceive hierarchy and how they apply the rejection of it to any number of situations is highly variable. Some concrete examples: think speciesism is an arbitrary and harmful hierarchy because it is used to permit and justify treating animals as commodities but the Hierarchy of Controls , while totally arbitrary is more of an agreed upon way of prioritizing approaches to safety. People can agree to use the hierarchy of controls but animals cannot agree to being commodified, if that makes sense?

I really love my job at fast food. Everybody’s on a team working together to reach a goal and that’s a lot of fun–I think you may have replied to that topic. I might do it for free if I didn’t need to work for money. Ironically, the only thing that makes me not willing to do it for free is the MANAGER, who is just awful. Or maybe not ironically. Maybe management is there to make sure they are extracting every last bit of profit from you, so it makes perfect sense she’s the only reason I wouldn’t like my job.

I agree with your analysis. The problem is the threat that we must do what serves capital or we will be without our material needs. It's hard to talk about this with people who are so worn down that they really do need a year or two of zero expectations and demands on them before they can start to think about what they enjoy doing. If you add on the way certain work is considered so worthless it is not compensated (like childcare, household management) it's easy to understand why people see it as impossible. Engaging with anarchy needs room for creativity digging into concepts and words that have different meaning for different people.

No, you took it exactly as literally as I intended it. I keep looking for “mutual aid”, but all I’ve found are big agencies who’ve co-opted the phrase. Part of the issue with society now is everything needs a website and an SEO to be found, and then it’ll be found first by scammers…

I'm not sure if this is asking me to explain the concept so I am going to err on the side of doing it. Kropotkin presents mutual aid as the opposite to the idea of "survival of the fittest". Charity and philanthropy is not mutual aid.

But the question about homeless people is sort of a where-the-rubber-meets-the-road situation of organization. The problem, of course, is that homeless groups are not recognized and their ecampments are raised and tents maliciosly slashed and property maliciously seized. There ARE formal acknowledgments of sovereignty in some rare instances.

Okay, I think I understand. I have heard the term "informal economy" used to describe ways people who are excluded from participating in the dominant society address their needs. I don't like the term but I use it to answer your question with yes 😊 While I never lived in an encampment my personal experiences with surviving in the margins and comradeship with others who have had similar challenges have given me first and second hand experience with the topic. I continue to work towards finding "informal" solutions to reduce barriers.

I haven’t been truly poor yet, my parents have always been there to bail me out, but I don’t hold a lot of hope for my future. I’m thinking my next vehicle is going to be a hybrid mini-van I can live out of if need be, but I don’t know how I’m going to afford one.

I am sorry to hear about your worries and hope for a happy future for you.