Random Rants Q': I protest against subtitles

[Samson]

Skim milk?

It used to be that you could by full fat milk, and if you wanted the cream in it you could shake it. If you wanted skimmed milk you could decant off the cream and use it separately. Now they homogenise the full fat milk, so you have to buy the skimmed milk and cream separately and each cost more than them mixed together. </rant>

 

[Farm Boy]

Lol, yes, that sounds right.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Skim milk?

That dates from before food companies realized they could charge extra for taking things out of food. So it's grandfathered in against my maxim.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

This morning while I was getting dressed to take my father to his CT scan to check on how his Chronic Lymphatic Leukemia / Small Lymphatic Lymphoma is doing, my sister and her husband stopped by unannounced.

He left before I was dressed enough to leave my room, but I overheard him say that my sister is not feeling well and needs to stay with us for a few days to catch up on sleep.

When I came down my mother told me that he was about to fly back to Michigan to leave the kids with his mother again as he can't take care of them on his own while working. (He is a charter school Latin teacher who could work from home all the time but has generally opted to go in to an empty classroom to teach kids who are at home.)


I spoke to my sister only briefly and from the other side of the room. She sounded exhausted and just wanted to sleep rather than explain . She said that he had a bad sore throat and cannot rule out it being Covid-19, although she thinks it has more to do with a mix of allergies and yelling too much. I am guessing that she and her husband had another big fight.

When I got home from dad's CT scan, mom told me that my sister started feeling worse after we left and that she was just taken away in an ambulance.

She also said that my sister thinks she is pregnant again. She said she seemed excited about it as her husband wants to have a lot more kids.

It seems to me that it is way too soon to have another baby, as my nephew was only born November 14, 2020. I wonder if him pressuring her to stop breastfeeding had to do with him wanting her fertile again to keep popping out more and more kids. This seems like a very bad idea.

As I've mentioned before, my bother-in-law seems to me to be emotionally abusive to a degree that would be hard to handle even for someone without my sister's history of OCD and Bipolar.

edit: The hospital mom thought they took her to has no record of her there. Neither does the first of the hospitals they said to check.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Family drama can suck @MagisterCultuum .

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I called 4 different hospitals trying to check on my sister, and thought I was checking a 5th but its number just routed be back to the first one. I tried them again and to ask if they knew how to contact the ambulance company to ask them where to take her. They suggested calling the political police precinct to ask them for the ambulance number.

While on hold waiting for an operator at the police precinct, I got a call from a doctor in the ER of the first hospital I checked. He said that my sister tried checking in under her maiden name rather than her current legal name, but that the nurse at check in saw enough signs of domestic abuse (no physical injuries, but classic signs of the trauma of emotional abuse) that she chose to sign her in under a completely different pseudonym, following a policy intended to protect patient from abusive partners seeking them out.

They are still waiting for results of blood tests and will call with an update later.

I filled the doctor in on her medical history and the history of issues with her husband, which he said was very helpful and seems to fit with what they suspected.

The last couple hospital calls, the police precinct call, and the talk with her doctor all happened during a zoom meeting for Habitat construction committee. I muted my microphone for most of the meeting but was trying to listen in to both the phone and computer at the same time.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I hope your sister is OK

 

[GinandTonic]

I started to run a bath. The water was hot. I started to get into the bath the water was cold. About as disappointing as coitus interruptus. Who messed with the bloody heating!

 

[Farm Boy]

Well, nuts, I'm stumped. Wasn't really sure if I was going to complain, but why not? Thought the Dr. Seuss stuff was going to be a good conversation to have with the kid about being sensitive and 6 books I'd never heard of. Apparently, they caught his favorite one. The Mulberry Street whatever. I still haven't ever read it, but now we have an uphill slog. His first association with this is negative and he doesn't truly understand why it's mean. It's a crappy enough year I don't think he's going to roll with me on it. Start talking about colors and all the people in the books are "yellow" or furry, or whatever. Don't have a copy of any of the gone ones to check myself. Boy howdy is adult stupidity hard to tease out when somebody hasn't been trained to think yet with hate as a primary input. Kind of wish I just hadn't told him and let him forget about the books with time.

 

[Gori the Grey]

You've Got to Be Carefully Taught

 

[Farm Boy]

Sure. Adults are ******* morons. That's what's being taught on several levels.

I don't really want to get into it, but if I come back with "some people have hard lives" he's really not going to be as sympathetic as most, particularly as he ages.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I don't know any of the Dr. Seuss books that are being retired. I don't know and I don't care. The whole thing about the books seems like a tempest in a teapot.

I'm not telling my kids anything about it.

 

[Farm Boy]

Yeah. I have regrets. But they say to teach early. WTH. That was DAF.

 

[Birdjaguar]

The best way to teach racial equality is to have friends of different races and ethnicities.

 

[Sommerswerd]

The best way to teach racial equality is to have friends of different races and ethnicities.

Without wasting time splitting hairs on the particular words you used, I will say that in terms of the very sound general concept, ie moving towards greater harmony within humanity, I'd say that people having relatives and spouses of different races, ethnicities, etc., is probably more effective than "friends".

 

[Farm Boy]

Reducing differences. I guess that's one way to remove problems with differences. Not exactly relevant, but sure.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Without wasting time splitting hairs on the particular words you used, I will say that in terms of the very sound general concept, ie moving towards greater harmony within humanity, I'd say that people having relatives and spouses of different races, ethnicities, etc., is probably more effective than "friends".

For younger folks today that is probably true. That was much less possible in the 50s and 60s. One black kid in my HS, no non white people among my parents friends. Our kids grew up within a more racially diverse world and school. They had non white, non straight friends in HS and in college. I think it is mostly about exposure on a one to one level that breaks down barriers of all sorts. Folks having relatives and spouses of varied backgrounds is a sign that progress is being made.

 

[Farm Boy]

They move around a lot more than they used, sure. That has some good parts to it amongst others.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I think its probably going to take a space alien invasion to unite humanity, but there's always hope.

 

[EgonSpengler]

The best way to teach racial equality is to have friends of different races and ethnicities.

Without wasting time splitting hairs on the particular words you used, I will say that in terms of the very sound general concept, ie moving towards greater harmony within humanity, I'd say that people having relatives and spouses of different races, ethnicities, etc., is probably more effective than "friends".

I agree that personal experience can be very effective at ameliorating people's anxieties about other people. A few years ago, someone was able to conduct a study by way of a fortunate coincidence. I can't remember the details now, but there was a White community that had a sudden influx of Latinos, I think somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, and the people who did the study were able to conduct surveys of the White residents' attitudes towards Latinos before and after the two groups getting to know each other, and the results were notable, if not dramatic. But clearly, it's impractical to expect people to get to know a "representative sample" of every other subgroup of humanity. We need to be able to not lose our minds when dealing with people we don't already know and understand. I worry that if getting to know other people is our only way to combat fear, intolerance, and hysteria, then it will never end - it'll just change shape, like the monster in The Thing. A century ago, it was Italians and Catholics; today it's transgendered people and Latino immigrants; and apparently people are attacking Asian-Americans again..? I mean, WTH... So there will be another group of people tomorrow who seem too different or too threatening, for no real reason. I don't know who they'll be, but bank on it. Maybe, as with Asians, we'll go back to demonizing and attacking some of the people we thought had assimilated, like Catholics and Eastern Europeans. 'Round and 'round we go. If we don't get better at this, it'll just keep happening.