I served during a war, but I’m not a combat veteran.

I think putting the focus on being a combat veteran to “earn” disability benefits is unfortunate, because there are things that can disable you even if you aren’t at war. I know a lot of people who have broken their backs during routine maintenance, some who lost hearing to insufficient hearing protection on a flight line, a few who lost limbs to snapping arresting wires, some who have had debilitating reproductive cancer at very young ages because of the chemicals we were exposed to.

But I know far more veterans who are like me and weren’t kept safe from their fellow soldiers/airmen/shipmates. I don’t know if it’s different now, but it was really common to just admin separate people who suffered what I did and not provide medical care. My command went so far as to tell me I was not a veteran and not to seek medical care or benefits when they gave me my discharge paperwork. They said that with straight faces, looking at me with my broken face and skull, bruised and sliced body, and barely able to stay awake because my brain was damaged.

Over 10% of female veterans have experienced what I did, 40% have experienced harassment, and about 5% of men also have the same kind of PTSD that comes from sexual trauma. Regardless of combat deployment status. That really points to an institutional problem with the military. So please, point at the commands when you want to take money away, instead of the people who are using the socialized Healthcare we signed contracts for in event of disability during service

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invisible_War

Americans for spending so much on wars and veteran benefits that are abused at historic levels as social media taught people how to get to or near 100% disability ratings and lawyers specialized in getting high disability ratings for their clients

This is the first I’m hearing of that. Though I admit I don’t use sm. I was given 100% for PTSD after going through an extremely stressful evaluation where the examiner deliberately triggered me several times. I say deliberate, but it was very subtle, if someone was faking it they wouldn’t have noticed or even reacted.

On the flip side, I have a friend who is missing 10% of his brain to an IED, can’t hear for shit, and can’t walk very far because the part of his brain that is missing controls autonomous breathing - he has to think about it or he doesn’t breathe. He was only given 30% and he honestly doesn’t have the resources or mental fortitude to keep trying to get the VA to take care of him.

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My conspiracy theory is that they’ve fired all the people who monitored and screened communication/social media and replaced them with AI. The problem is violent threats and comments are so common in what it was trained on that the AI doesn’t know when there’s a problem

They do not contradict each other. I’m certain there will be more stops as the city grows, because they keep improving it. I used to live in a city, in another state, with one of the best public transportation systems in the country, and they also kept improving that system to include the surrounding cities in other counties. Just because something isn’t perfect already does not mean we can’t take it seriously and strive for perfection

It’s a mile, and across an interstate exit, to my nearest bus stop. And I live in the only city in the enormous state that takes public transportation seriously.

I think I feel bad when I read articles like the ones you posted, before this I’d cross the distances and not think much of it because my last two cities didn’t have public transportation. Now I can’t cross fast enough to beat the crossing light, and it’s so incredibly unsafe if I fall. I feel like the problem, I guess

Man, I never used fast food, or drive throughs as much as I have since I developed a mobility disorder. Last week I put a pickup order in at my local coffee shop out of habit, and couldn’t carry both my coffee and the breakfast sandwich to my car at the same time. Which sounds so stupid, but it took so much extra energy for both trips into the store that I was ready to go home and call it a day after that lol

I know the answer is “don’t get fast food and just eat at home”, but I’ve also been so tired after work/school that I’m not eating, and I dunno what the answer to that is either. My state isn’t a place where people think about how to care for their communities, and most of it has hours of highway between “cities”

That’s such a low price for silence

I have no idea if he used protective gear when applying it, which certainly could have increased his exposure. I would love to blame Monsanto, but most of the family carry the risk genes for this cancer too, and as yet his children are cancer free. Their babies though, not so much

Wyoming is next to a couple other states with significant Native American populations. The thing about vaccines is there’s a lot of resistance in those populations, especially if it’s white people administering them. Some of that crowd immunity we expect to have really needs to protect them too, and without it, they will be devastated by white people’s policies again.

That’s a very simplified statement without much cultural context, but I think it’s so painful to blame the ~500k people in one large, mostly rural, largely uneducated state for this when much denser voting populations did too

In the 00s my uncle was in a position where Monsanto was suing him for not holding up his end of the contract, because he had a bad crop year. Anyway, my grandparents bailed him out by financing a lawyer who settled for him, and it really didn’t fix the problem at all. He still lost his farm, my grandparents were no longer wealthy because they kept trying to help him, and the uncle died a couple years later to cancer (probably driven by stress). They bailed him out because they were afraid he’d kill himself over the farm, and it took him out anyway

They are a lynx species but they don’t have the stereotypical long tufts on their ears like most people think of. They are relatively common to see even in suburban areas in Fl

Oh. I forgot how confusing the name is lol. When I read jaguar I think “spotted cat”, Florida panthers are Puma not Panthera.

For what it’s worth, I have seen a melanistic jaguar in Florida at a wildlife refuge

But the elderly people already lose so many toy dogs to alligators, how can they be expected to deal with big cats?? /j

We still had Florida panthers when I was a kid, but there were a lot of people killing them for trophies. Damn, wiki says there’s only ~200 left :(

Thank you for being more eloquent with your reply than I was able to be. That purity test comment made me see red. Where else are disenfranchised groups to go, but to the left? How can we be represented if the only place we can turn refuses to represent us?

To be fair, most Americans don’t pay any attention to Canadian politics (or any other country tbh). So Doug’s jacked up policies go in one ear and out the other because they very broadly don’t affect Americans.

I was speaking with an older lady about who could be as energizing for the left as Bernie for the next election, I said AOC and maybe Jasmine Crockett on the same ticket. (which is a pipe dream, I’m sure)

Anyway, she said Gavin Newsom, and didn’t believe me when I said he’s a centrist. And I couldn’t understand why she even felt he’s a leftist. He must have some good pr somewhere that I’m not looking lol

Yeah, we went from the first flight to people on the moon in only 66 years. So there’s no real reason to cut into record profits now, they’ll have reversing it figured out by the time the collapse happens!

/s

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