• 3 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 6th, 2023

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  • I also suffer from insomnia - I regularly get 3 hours of sleep per night, and rarely get more than 6 (rarely as in 1-2 times per month). For a week and a half or so, though, after a death in the family, I was getting between 0 and a half hour per night, with obviously no deep sleep.

    I developed severe ataxia (I couldn’t walk without a cane), I lost the ability to speak coherently and it would take me minutes to form a sentence. I couldn’t follow conversations, and my appetite decreased to the point where I was down to about 50-100 calories per day (eg, I could sometimes manage a can of coke).

    When your brain starts to shut down, things really go south pretty fast. I managed to kickstart things using those meal substitute drinks (which I’d consume by chugging it in one go), and eventually my eating and normal 3-6 hour sleep pattern came back, but I was probably about 24-48 hours away from needing an ambulance.

    Luckily I live with my partner and although I put them into a panic, I didn’t have to manage the house/pets and just took sick leave from work. Even after going back, it took some time to return to my normal level of working. At the peak, I would have been absolutely incapable of operating if I lived alone.









  • Completely agreed, and none of this is directed at you. I’m responding to more of the overall sentiment in this post.

    Jewelry and designer fashion is expensive very much on purpose. Yes, there’s an obvious quality element. That doesn’t mean that a Christian Siriano gown is going to last like a Carhartt jacket or that those Louboutin boots will outlast a pair of red wings. It’s wearable art, and it also makes a social statement.

    We’re not even talking that level, though. The average cost for an American wedding is about $30k, so $35k all inclusive is absolutely in the ballpark. You can obviously get married for far less, but this article is talking about the reality of the “American dream” - which is really just a middle class lifestyle - versus various average expenses. The point isn’t that you can’t get married at the courthouse for $50, or even that you shouldn’t. The point is that people who subscribe to the concept of the American dream expect to be able to live an average lifestyle. Modest house. College for the kids. A “proper” wedding. Retirement. Leaving something behind. Those are increasingly moving out of reach.

    You could hop over to Tiffany right now and find a nice necklace for $10k that would make a lovely Christmas present. That’s not what this article is talking about. It’s going beyond the basic “basket of goods” economists use to look at things like inflation and cost of living to include expenses that the average middle class family has traditionally expected. That’s exactly the approach many of us wish more people would take.




  • United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolution 377 A, the “Uniting for Peace” resolution, states that in any cases where the Security Council, because of a lack of unanimity among its five permanent members (P5), fails to act as required to maintain international security and peace, the General Assembly shall consider the matter immediately and may issue appropriate recommendations to UN members for collective measures, including the use of armed force when necessary, in order to maintain or restore international security and peace. It was adopted 3 November 1950, after fourteen days of Assembly discussions, by a vote of 52 to 5, with 2 abstentions. The resolution was designed to provide the UN with an alternative avenue for action when at least one P5 member uses its veto to obstruct the Security Council from carrying out its functions mandated by the UN Charter.

    Emphasis added. I read the definition in the article but I didn’t see it didn’t specify the powers that gives the GA.