I worship the lovely soup.

Agreed, although there are other costs associated with pregnancy than healthcare such as extra food and supplies.

I don’t know if you mean this ironically but parents of a miscarried fetus really should get bereavement leave. It’s extremely traumatic and would take time to recover from.

Medicaid has different income limits for different states. For a family of 3 in Michigan it’s about 2755 per month. If you make less (per household) you qualify for Medicaid. Search “Medicaid Requirements” plus your state. Everything is covered. The 2400ish we bring home a month barely covers our bills, but it’s worth it for Medicaid if you have a chronic health condition (or on our case my spouse, our child, and myself all have serious health conditions). My medication for my pituitary deficiency would cost me thousands a month. My spouse and child have a genetic vascular condition and they need scans every year to make sure they’re not about to die.

Another thing you can do is a Medicaid spend down. I’m not sure how it is for every other state. But let’s say your limit is 3000 for your family but your income is 4000 and your medical bills are 2000 a month. You pay the difference between your income and the limit (1000), and Medicaid covers the rest. I believe you have to have a serious health issue to qualify for a Medicaid spend down.

If you are low enough income to qualify for SSI, Medicaid is given automatically (I think in every state).

In our state of Michigan you apply for Medicaid at DHHS. They have a very easy to use website for a few years now (it was a big hassle before that). Let me know if you have more questions about this.

You sound like an attentive cat carer. Cat was lucky to have you. The point of all this is different for everyone, but cats are a big part of the point for me. Maybe for you, you can give more cats a good life as well. When you’re ready of course, you may need time to grieve.

I was playing with some kids I was babysitting in McDonald’s play tubes when I was 18. I bent my ankle weird. I’m turning 30 in a couple months and there’s literally not a single day without ankle pain. Sometimes it’s disabling. Several times they haven’t actually found anything wrong with it but last time they said it had something (can’t remember) and it made a lot of bad clicking sounds when the podiatrist handled it. I’ve tried lots of things to help.

Oh yeah, I forgot it even had ads because we have a pi hole.

I use the free version and it’s fine and free?

I used to think “good” kids had “good” parents and vice versa but I learned this isn’t always the case. I should have realized, I was only such a “good” (quiet) kid because my parents scared me. I didn’t feel safe. But some good parents raise genuinely respectful yet also self-respecting kids.

What are some fun or useful things you print? I see a lot of prints online that are toys or action figures, and that’s pretty neat but I usually am not impressed with the quality.

Which is why I think emojis are fine. I just think traditional writing does not qualify as a poor medium.

I have nothing against moderate emoji use that accompanies coherent text, but I disagree that texting is a poor medium for communication. We’ve been effectively writing for thousands of years. It’s a skill that can be difficult for some people, and can take practice to become good at, but that doesn’t make it a bad medium.

I asked my child, an expert in this field, and he gives it a one trillion out of ten.

I’ve rarely seen this. I have seen some inconsiderate things like people thinking they could bring their “purse dogs” in Dollar Tree? But I’ve never been to anyone’s house where the dog is just allowed to steal food, or jump on people, etc. Other than a few well-behaved service dogs in my lifetime, I’ve never seen a dog in a restaurant. That’s not legal. I’ve heard of people acting like ESAs have public access, but I’ve never actually seen it.

It’s good to keep in mind, but I mean do you sit there through 1-3 minute ads not skipping forward? I don’t watch much television, I mostly watch YouTube. So I watch a lot of it. What good is watching an ad going to do if I’m never going to buy anything from them? Once or twice, I’ve needed or wanted a product or service I thought might be promoted on YouTube, I went and looked for a creator to get a link/code from. But I think I did that two times in the past 9 years of being an avid YouTube watcher, and those times I was not buying the product due to ads, just thought I’d support a creator since I was going to make a purchase. I don’t have sponsor block (I use NewPipe and I don’t feel like learning a new app), but I just skip all the ads by tapping the skip button a bunch. They’re often 2 full minutes.

I homeschool my kid (properly) for medical reasons, and I did not realize until I tried going to homeschool events how messed up the culture is. I’m in a purple state. It’s so hard to find anyone who homeschools who isn’t bigoted. There are a few, and I’m trying to cultivate relationships with them, but it’s difficult when they’re so few and far between. My county is liberal, but the city in the next county over would be a better fit if we could move or regularly travel an hour away. I don’t want my kid around these bigoted parents. He has good friends who are in public school, but my kid is too young to go to school with his multiple medical conditions (especially considering I’ve personally seen these schools neglect medically fragile kids), so he mostly only gets to see his friends on the weekends.

If someone stumbles across something like this and is influenced by it, I think odds are extremely great that they were already of a similar mindset. If it preached violence or bigotry or anytime I’d see more of an issue.

I’m 265 and 5’9", and I spent my whole life feeling like this was my fault. I’ve changed my diet, I’ve tried exercising, but I was always met with extreme difficulty. I thought exercise was supposed to be difficult and I was just a big baby. People would say, you just have to build up stamina. It gets easier. But it never did. It would get to the point where I’d be crying and pushing myself and still not accomplishing as much exercise as even an average unfit person could. I’d walk a few miles every day and never build stamina, never feel better, never lose weight.

I just found out I have an issue with my pituitary gland, likely a tumor (going for a scan). I just had the tests to confirm the issue is in my pituitary (the tests were miserable). I’m actually not producing certain hormones, so it turns out I’m incapable of building muscle. That’s why I can’t build stamina or convert my fat into muscle. I’ve been told this was “almost certainly” my issue for 2 months, (after my mom, aunts, and cousins were all diagnosed; we likely share a genetic defect causing pituitary tumors) and I’ve had the confirmed test results for over 2 weeks. It’s really hard to shift my perspective away from “this is my fault, I just need to try harder.” I expect to battle with health insurance a couple weeks to months before getting my hormone replacement. My mom only took 2 weeks (averages 2 months), so fingers crossed.

I’ve always thought more people were overweight for medical reasons than assumed by the general population, I just didn’t think I was one of them. I see a lot of moms like me hustling after their toddlers, eating well, trying their best, and still being overweight. I wonder if it has something to do with all the “endocrine disruptors” I’m always hearing about. I definitely think some people are overweight “by choice” (or by a mental disorder rather than a physical one), and I have major problems with “fat positivity” (I believe in body neutrality), but I think it’s more people having a medical problem than you’d expect. Same with my wife and child who both eat like horses but have BMIs of 13. It’s not like they’re not trying to gain weight.

I read things like this (or try to) and I think, just let him be. The most powerful thing that can help someone is what they think works for them. There’s no need to tear it down if it’s not harmful to others.

I can see the obvious problems with a repost bot reposting things without contemplation but one thing I would like to point out is that the comments in the AITA threads are often not likely to reach OP anyway. They get into the thousands and OP doesn’t read all of them, of course. I think they act more as a hypothetical discussion amongst the commenters, primarily. Which I think is really interesting on its own. I think discussing even hypothetically who would be at fault in such a scenario (especially considering many of these stories are obviously fake to begin with) has become the main point in the main attraction of the subreddit.

That said, I don’t think we need bots. Not for that kind of thing. I feel like anyone can post hypothetical scenarios in many communities, and we’d get good discussions and insights.