I write a blog that focuses on public information, public health, and policy: https://pimento-mori.ghost.io/

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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: June 24th, 2025

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  • Had a c-section on a Thursday afternoon. For some reason, late Friday afternoon my doctor said I had to confirm if I wanted her to order any pain medication because no doctor would be on the floor overnight.

    Still don’t understand why I had to confirm ordering the meds, instead of her just leaving an order in case it was needed. Anyway, I asked if the epidural had fully worn off and if I was already in as much pain as I would be in. She said “yeah pretty much,” so I declined. Turns out that wasn’t true.

    A few hours later, a nurse came in to my room to check on why I was just letting my newborn keep screaming. She found me squirming around like a turtle on its back and sobbing while my husband was snoring and sleeping through all of it.

    I remember telling her I could feel my stitches tearing every time I tried to move (they weren’t, it just felt like it). I was begging for anything to help with the pain, but since the doctor left without putting in an order for any medication, she couldn’t even give me Tylenol.

    So far in my life, that has definitely been my most physically painful experience.


  • Holy fuck. It can simulate large samplings or it can just hallucinate some nonsensical BS that completely misinterprets the data it gathers in order to agree with the phrasing of the person who created the prompt.

    Do the majority of people trust their doctors and nurses? Maybe. Or, maybe it depends on the context of the question.

    Do I trust my doctors and nurses are a better source of information than random internet advice and AI generated slop? I would hope so.

    Do I trust that the American healthcare system is set up to prioritize the health and well-being of the patient over maximizing profits and forcing healthcare workers to adhere to standardized time allotments of 10 to 15 minutes for every patient interaction regardless of the individual case? Absolutely not.


  • This should have been such a straightforward case too.

    Mr. Hylton’s condition deteriorated in the ICU, and despite orders, there are no CIWA assessments, no intake/output monitoring, and no MD assessments for pain and/or change in mental status despite the RN’s non-contemporaneous note indicating mental status change in a patient diagnosed with alcohol withdrawal and a history of alcohol withdrawal seizures for which he had “previously been given Keppra.”

    Hylton, who was admitted around 11 a.m., became unresponsive early the next morning around 4:30 a.m., the complaint says.

    “Mr. Hylton slid down in bed, his eyes rolled back and he … exhibited seizure-like activity, vomited, became bradycardic and code was called,” the complaint alleges. “He was intubated, but he could not be resuscitated, and he was pronounced dead.”

    What the fuck were they even trying to do? Some kind of tough love/cold turkey approach? Honestly wouldn’t be surprised bc I’ve heard a lot of ignorant pieces of shit suggest that should be standard protocol for opiate withdrawal.

    Aside from that being intentionally and unnecessarily cruel, there’s this tricky thing about alcohol withdrawal vs withdrawal from other “more serious” substances, where you can literally fucking die. That’s exactly what happened.


  • Willingness to be the parent you needed growing up, but also be able to really reflect on the job you’re doing, and make sure you’re not somehow projecting your own bullshit on to your relationship with your child.

    Willingness to give yourself some grace when you can’t always be the parent you wish you could be, but along with accepting that you’re only human, accepting accountability and acknowledging when things go wrong.

    Be willing to apologize to your child/acknowledge when you mess up, and remember that they learn how to resolves conflict and handle the mistakes they make by watching how you handle yours. If you were in the wrong, don’t just convince yourself that you get a pass for being human/being the “adult” in charge. Talk to your child about what happened.

    I also feel like it’s very important in general not to try to hide reality from kids. You have to have the difficult conversations, and not just the birds and the bees. (That’s actually the easier side of the “difficult to talk about” spectrum).

    You need to talk to your kids when people they love get sick, when people lose their jobs and are under stress, when money is tight. There are certainly different ways you have to handle explaining situations to a kid vs an adult, but it’s such a terrible idea to just plaster on a smile, sweep things under a rug to buy yourself time, and pretend everything is ok when your kid can clearly tell something is wrong.

    When you refuse to communicate anything about what’s really going on, you leave people (both adults and kids) with no choice but to come up with their own explanations. Often kids just default to blaming themselves, and your attempt to protect/shield them from reality only ends up doing more harm.






  • He demands to know how she could possibly justify such an obscene display: “I would like to hear how you would explain to my children what you’re supposed to be.”

    I would like to hear how you would explain to your children if they ever cross paths with the man this grandmother was protesting, they should probably run as far away as possible. You know, because he’s a fucking pedophile.

    Talking to a colleague over his two-way radio after the encounter, Babb described what happened. Gamble was dressed “like a freakin’ weiner,”

    Babb asks where the zipper is and, as he peels off the penis suit, asks Gamble for her name.

    She replies, “Aunt Tifa.




  • It’s a tricky balance. You have to learn to let yourself trust and rely on others, but also understand it’s a gamble.

    Be ready for the possibility that you may end up having to pick yourself up if they let you fall. It’s not necessarily because people don’t want to do the right thing. They’re only human.

    You’ve almost certainly let somebody down at some point. As long as you didn’t set out with the intention of hurting the other person, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. That’s just life.

    You have to learn to give yourself and others grace when it’s deserved, and accept that sometimes it’s not deserved. You have to learn to be vulnerable, but also learn to be resilient. Refusing to take the risk just because you’re afraid of being let down or letting others down, is a guaranteed way to be lonely.




  • An AI chatbot can also be trained to pull users back from delusion. Alexander, 39, a resident of an assisted-living scheme for people with autism, did this after what he believes was an episode of AI psychosis a few months ago. “I experienced a mental breakdown at 22. I had panic attacks and severe social anxiety and, last year, I was prescribed medication that changed my world, got me functioning again. And I got my confidence back,” he says.

    “I still use AI, but very carefully,” he says. “I’ve written in some core rules that cannot be overwritten. It now monitors drift and pays attention to overexcitement. There are no more philosophical discussions. It’s just: ‘I want to make a lasagne, give me a recipe.’ The AI has actually stopped me several times from spiralling. It will say: ‘This has activated my core rule set and this conversation must stop.’

    Fuck mandatory regulations like this are so badly needed for AI. Far more so than this age verification bullshit being shoved down our throats, but the people who own and control these fucking AI bots are also the people who:

    A. Lost their minds to sycophantic echo chambers long ago by buying social media networks in the name of “freeze peach” and banning any dissenting opinions.

    B. Know that their entire business model depends on the sycophantic echo chamber keeping users engaged and spiraling into delusions that make them push away all human contact

    C. Oppose any and all regulations for AI, but insist on legalizing invasion of privacy in order to micromanage and control the lives of individual citizens.

    People need to be able to hear pushback. Not every conversation or experience should be a sycophantic mirror stroking your ego and ramping up your delusions.

    One of my closest friends started using AI a few years ago for work related things, and now is completely dependent on it. He used to be one of the most caring and considerate people I’ve ever known. Not to mention one of the most intelligent.

    He’s started to slip from reality a few times and then come back. As of now he seems to be in a complete spiral and oblivious to the reality of what he’s doing by isolating himself, and cutting everyone who cares about him from his life. To me the path he’s on clearly ends with him waking up to reality one day and wondering how TF he got there.

    He’s convinced everyone else is the problem and seems to always spin his recollection of events to paint others as the villain. To say it’s heartbreaking feels like the most ridiculous understatement. It’s like watching a slow moving train wreck and being unable to actually stop it from happening.




  • I worked at a TCBY right after I graduated from h.s. I insisted on wearing checkered vans even though they had no support and no traction. People tried to warn me not to but I didn’t listen. One night I was working by myself and the store got absolutely slammed after a football game ended.

    I was running all over the place and at one point had to refill one of the yogurt machines. Before it freezes it’s just a really thick liquid, and as I was speed walking back to the front clutching a giant bag of liquid yogurt in my arms, my vans slipped. I squeezed the yogurt bag in a hug as I went down, and a sea of yogurt spread out across the floor like an oil leak. Then I ended up slipping in the yogurt, screaming in surprise, twisting my knee and finally landing on my ass.

    I started crying mainly bc my knee hurt so bad, but also because it was embarrassing as fuck. I slowly got up and limped to the back to get a mop covered in goo, and when I came back out everybody started clapping for me. Not even in a mean sarcastic way, just bc they felt bad for me. It was so sad and pathetic lol. I did get a lot more tips than usual though.

    Similar incident ~10 years later. I was working in a lab and somebody asked me to refill this giant 20 gallon carboy full of 95% ethanol. I should have asked for help to move it off of the cart it was on, but it was the last thing I needed to do for the day and I was in a rush to leave.

    I started to lift it, but of course I dropped it and the spigot broke off. The ethanol started pouring out and flooding the room while I struggled unsuccessfully to plug the hole. I ended up soaked, and the mess was so bad it flooded the floor, went under the door, and formed a giant puddle of ethanol in the hallway outside.

    I could hear people outside the door saying things like “Oh my God, what happened?!” I was trying to clean up the mess inside the room and hoping they would just go away so I could eventually clean up the hall. Instead they just started alerting more people to come and see the mess.

    The door was locked, but eventually somebody got one of the custodians to come unlock it. When it opened I was just standing there, soaked in ethanol in the flooded room and surrounded by stacks and stacks of completely saturated paper towels that I had thrown all over the floor, but weren’t nearly enough.