Im Really Enjoying The Olympics This Year, There Is Some Quality Nonsense Going On

i’m really enjoying the olympics this year, there is some quality nonsense going on

for the first time in the modern olympics (possibly ever?) there’s an equal number of women competing to men, and included in that group we have icons like simone biles, kim yeji, imane khelif

and then over with the dudes we’ve got yusuf dikec who took up shooting after he got divorced, turns up in a t-shirt with no ear protection only to shoot near perfect rounds. we’ve got henrik christiansen who is taking tiktok by storm not for his swimming prowess but the fact he is obsessed with the olympic village chocolate muffins. we’ve got stephen nedoroscik, who is trained literally only in pommel horse so he kinda just sits around doing rubik’s cubes while everyone else does their thing (pommel goes last) and then they activate him like a fucking sleeper agent to crush the pommel routine, secure the usa a medal, and also he cannot fucking see the entire time bc he needs glasses

quality, quality nonsense

EDIT: okay so apparently the smoking thing wasn’t true, my bad guys! dikec has been competing in the olympics since 2008 and is ex-military (but his showing up in a t-shirt without any visual aids is still iconic!!)

There was a TikTok of an (American) woman who was documenting her husband’s ICU room and expressing displeasure with the state it was in, it was generally unclean with broken equipment, rust stains, clipped flooring, things that can make a medical environment unsafe. I opened the comments expecting people to be like “Wow, that’s scary. And a huge infection risk. ICU stays often cost patients upwards of $100k and not enough of that money is going to maintenance and cleaning.” But instead it was nurses being utterly vile to this woman. Not saying “You’re right, it’s terrible that we’re forced to do our jobs in unsafe, unclean and outdated environments.” they were telling her she was a prime example of why patients’ families were the worst part of their job.

The hospital that charged my insurance $87k for a single endoscopy & colonoscopy performed on me was recently fined for having dirty equipment. If not on sanitation, if not on giving nurses and providers better wages, if not on updating the facility, where the hell did that money go? If nurses could band together to attack and criticize hospital administration and the American medical system in the way they band together to attack and criticize patients and advocates online, all of our lives could improve.

But of course it is easier to raise the sword against the vulnerable person dependent on your care, on the people often experiencing the worst day of their life when they are too frightened and in pain to treat you with courtesy. It’s easier to lash out at the patient inquiring about their medication after waiting two hours than to lash out at the people responsible for making you responsible for 30 patients at once.

I don’t think anyone blames nurses for hospital rooms being nasty. It’s not their job. It’s the job of custodial staff and maintenance. It’s the job of administration to fund those departments. It’s a problem at the top. If we could all look upwards instead of down when it comes to who we criticize and blame, we could make progress.

I watch a ton of great youtube videos about halting and reversing desertification but now youtube recommends me a ton of videos of people using those techniques to turn desert ecosystems into farmland. If you see these too, please downvote them. Going to desert ecosystems and planting food forests is not a trend we should be starting. Many plants and animals are endemic to those areas and those ecosystems are worth protecting. Deserts are not wastelands. These videos mislead people into thinking that this is a good thing for the environment just because there is more green. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are so many actual forest ecosystems that need to be restored, we should not be wasting energy foresting deserts that have been deserts for millennia.

Imagine being buried alive and then seeing this little guy with a backpack suddenly arrive

I’m a strong proponent of lying to get the help you need. I always try the truthful route first but if that gets me nowhere? Lying it is.

I think it’s important to respect other people’s time, wellbeing and money so I don’t do it in situations where I know I’m in the wrong, like if I want to get into a place just for fun and someone could get in trouble for letting me in wrongfully I’d rather not.

But sometimes people just don’t understand why something is important in your situation so you have to turn it into something they understand. When I lived in England I constantly lied about being pregnant so gas station employees would let me use their bathroom because for some reason they didn’t have public bathrooms.

Or when my doctor’s secretary couldn’t get it into her head that my stomach pains were very serious and concerning and insisted I couldn’t get an appointment this month so that evening I “found” a lump that I was pretty sure was nothing but it meant I had a reason to call her the next day and get a new appointment immediately and when the doctor told me the lump was harmless I could tell her what my real problem was and she immediately scheduled ALL the tests and examinations because she understood how concerning it was. I just had to get past the fucking secretary with a lie.

Fuck I even support that elderly man who lied about having four children who were stuck in a house during a flood but when the rescue team got there in a dinghy they realized it was four dogs. The guy knew he had to lie because he was too sick to help them himself (able bodied people in the area were able to save their own pets) and they wouldn’t have helped him if they knew it was “just dogs”. In the video the rescue team can be seen choking up and padding him on the back while he cries with his scared dogs in his arms. The team is clearly not mad because they can see how important the dogs are to him but I have no doubt he was right in thinking they wouldn’t have helped if he had told them the truth.

So do what ya gotta do and lie lie lie.