Wonder if they’ll go light on him given how many medals he just won in the Paris Olympics for team USA.

For me it’s a little less haphazard, but I’m guessing this person has lived something of a life of privilege and is probably significantly younger than myself.

I had an ex who was arrested because a gas station employee accused him of not paying for gas after he declined the receipt. Grocery stores and department stores, I want a receipt because there’s too much bullshittery and asshattery going on at those types of places for me to go without. I want to see when Walmart charges me $5.99 instead of $3.00 like it said on the shelf and I want the money back on my card when I inevitably have to do a return. Restaurants, I want my receipt because unfortunately some of the folks who run the card will “accidentally” miskey the tip amount, and strangely it’s always in their favor.

I distinctly remember my last time in a Circuit City. I don’t recall the date, but I’m going to say it was circa 2006. I had purchased a Nintendo Wii at one of CC’s competitors but the competitor did not have any suitable Game Cube controllers. So I went over to Circuit City to see what they had since they were essentially in the same shopping complex. In a surprising turn of events, they actually did have Game Cube controllers in stock, they had the style/brand I was hoping for, and the price was actually reasonable.

They had dozens of employees out in the various sections of the store, at least one per department. There were a plethora of customers. However, they had literally 1 cash register open. The line was backed up into the aisles. I am pretty sure I waited 45 minutes just to check out with this one single item, and that’s only because the customer service manager came over after about 40 minutes and offered to check out anybody with only 1 or 2 items.

Might be a complete surprise to the former corporate overlords, but for some odd reason I decided never to go back after that.

And then Einstein clapped the Baby Jesus’s ass and all the harpies cried at the wave after wave of baby bald eagles flying over. Amen.

Why is this making me hungry all of a sudden?

Make your own beanee weenie at home with better quality ingredients (like top shelf hotdogs and home cooked beans) because it tastes a lot better, costs less, and you have slightly better control over the amount of sodium and sugar going into it.

He’s a bitch. He’s a lover. He’s a child. He’s a zombie. He’s a sinner. He’s a saint.

Personally I’m a big fan of S.L.E.E.P. Sleeping Lots Each & Every Evening, Peacefully. Bit of a tangent I know.

I have never seen a man with this hairy of a torso / chest who also had smoothie upper arms like that. Quite the combination.

How self-centered of you to assume that only psychos could relax there.

Yep, lots of bees and wasps do this because they don’t actually want to sting defensively if it can be avoided, so they are merely trying to intimidate a potential threat. Unfortunately, it’s very common for people to panic and behave erratically in response, and that tends to make the critters feel like they are in danger, so they do end up stinging. It basically becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.

As far as I’m aware, it’s the females that dig the holes in wood as a nesting chamber, not the males. So I don’t think the males are even a thread to a wood framed house.

For me it was the original Resident Evil on the Playstation.

It was the first time I saw live-action digitized full-motion video on a gaming system. I know there were a lot of FMV (Full Motion Video) games in that era on other systems, but I didn’t own those other systems and I didn’t know anybody who did. So, it was all new to me once I played a Playstation.

Resident Evil was also the first time a video game had ever given me a jump scare. Early in the game a zombie doberman bursts through a window unexpectedly and I was hooked! I loved introducing my friends to the game, specifically so I could see their reaction when the dog shows up. So much fun.

Honestly seeing and hearing Super Mario World on the Super Nintendo was kind of wow, too. The graphics boost compared to the 8-bit systems I was used to was incredible. And the sound quality compared to the other 16-bit systems I’d played (Genesis and TG-16) was a leap above. The experience probably pales in comparison to modern games, but back then there was wow factor to it.

To young me, Street Fighter 2 Turbo was pretty wow as well. It was “literally” the same as the arcade version to child me. I could not believe the home version was so close to the real thing, because prior generations of game systems like the NES couldn’t come close to that level of performance.

Shitty wasps like Yellow Jackets give almost all the other wasps a bad reputation. Yellow Jackets are mean and spiteful, even when they aren’t protecting their nest.

Most other eusocial wasps are pretty docile, unless you mess with their nest or really go out of your way to harass them.

In many parts of the world, like my own, there are far more species of solitary wasps than eusocial wasps. Solitary wasps are nearly all non-aggressive, they don’t have communal nests to defend, and they basically don’t have time to fuck around with stinging shit because they are too busy building a chamber for their eggs, collecting food for their upcoming progeny, and trying to stay fed and hydrated while doing it.

So what I’m getting at is that most wasps I encounter on a regular basis are pretty chill. Really, this goes for bees as well. Most of the ones I see on a regular basis are solitary types and non-aggressive. The most aggressive bees I tend to encounter are male carpenter bees. They are highly territorial and they’ll even buzz a human to scare them off. However, there’s no threat. Male bees and wasps cannot sting, they do not even have stingers.

The answer is “it depends”. There are so many hoops and loopholes and gotchas built into the system that 2 identical people with the exact same background and ailment(s) could go see the exact same medical staff and yet still end up having to pay 2 completely different amounts for their care. But it’s more complicated than that, because there are a myriad factors that come into play (insurance versus none, location/state of residence, etc) so there’s no one concise and accurate answer to these types of questions.

Most non-wealthy people who don’t have insurance, but who don’t qualify for government/public medical care, simply go without care. Or they use the emergency room loophole to get some kind of treatment. The loophole, with lots of nuance and caveats, is that the emergency room has to at least give you enough treatment to temporarily stabilize your condition, regardless of your ability to pay.

For check-ups and counseling - In a lot of places that sort of stuff requires you to pay up front. You can sometimes haggle or work out a payment plan. If you’re poor enough to qualify for government aid, it may be free. Otherwise, you’re expected to have insurance and pay the co-pay. If that doesn’t apply, these places usually have a “cash” price that’s slightly more affordable, but still usually require payment ahead of time.

For meds, you basically always pay up front. There’s really no concept of pharmacies providing medications in a manner where you can pay later. No money means no meds. It’s also ridiculous to even ask how much a person would expect to pay for meds, it could be as little as a few USD to thousands, really depends on the meds, quantity needed, location, etc.

Xrays - This is where debt might actually come into play. You usually pay for these after the fact. If you go to the doctor, you might have to pay the standard fee (or copay) up front, but all the other services/tests/etc are charged after the fact. So you’ll end up getting a bill after you’ve gotten the xray and consultation. To be honest, I don’t know the average out of pocket cost for an x-ray if you don’t have insurance, but it would differ from location to location and region to region. If you don’t pay that bill, you’ll get harassed and most likely you’ll have to change doctors because the office you owe money to won’t see you again until your debt is paid or you’ve worked out a payment plan.

For people with insurance, there’s pretty much always a maximum yearly out of pocket amount, after which things are basically all paid for by insurance. Again there are nuances and caveats. And the maximum out of pocket varies by insurance policy, number of people insured, etc, but $8,000 - $20,000 are not uncommon amounts. To be honest, I don’t even know what mine is, I’ve never actually reached it. Not everything is covered by the maximum out of pocket, though.

$27,000 medical debt could possibly be from someone who was uninsured or it may be several years of medical debt.

To give you an idea of how crazy the system is: I had a hairline fracture several years ago and what was deemed as “good” insurance. By the time everything was done, it ended up costing me around $3,000 out of pocket. That’s for co-pays, x-rays, medication, etc over the course of months.

On the other hand: A family member of mine had a heart attack, required emergency surgery, had no insurance, and had no money to pay for anything. In the end cost them less than a few hundred USD out of pocket. Hospital wiped the debt clean. Government programs and drug company programs paid for meds. Eventually disability stuff kicked in and took care of everything else.

Yeah, the world changes. Old stagnant ideas that don’t keep up tend to mostly die out. It’s not a particularly shocking conclusion to arrive at.

I dry them in a food dehydrator or in the oven. There’s no way I could leave them out, exposed like this in my part of the world.

My first thought as well: Those would be covered in flies, ants, and/or other bugs if I tried it around here (which is not Mexico). It makes me wonder if this photo is taken some place that doesn’t really have much in the way of bugs, as hard as that is to imagine, or if they go to great lengths to kill all the pests in the area to prevent them from taking over the tomato yield.

Same for the fish, the cycads, and the ferns. But not the unicorns.

Your sodium, cholesterol, and blood sugar levels will earn gold, silver, and bronze medals for their Olympic-grade high jumps. And that’s how you know it’s healthy.