Don’t count on people who never breathe through their nose to look deeper than what some personality on YouTube said. They don’t care about definitions, they just hear words and repeat them without looking any further. Like happy little dumb parrots. Some jackass said, “we ain’t no democracy, wurr a cawn-stuh-toosh-uhnool republic!” and they said, “huht huht! That’s right!” without bothering to learn what a constitutional republic is.
But nuthin hayuh-pinned! It wuz aint teefuh! Reeuhnt freeee…
In my town at least, we’ve got it right, that is if we could get more funding and help everyone.
The system that I went through has tiers, and it’s mostly drug addicts, but man I’ve seen it turn people around completely.
If a person ends up arrested because they’re tweaking, paperwork is immediately filed to get them into a specialized local hospital. It’s very small, but the people involved really do work hard to get things moving.
Once the person is in the hospital, they keep them until withdrawal ends or psychosis subsides. Then they enroll them in a very strenuous program that pretty much takes up their entire life for a bit. They try to get the person on Medicaid, but if they don’t qualify the hospital actually has a fund to pay for their treatment. They are provided with a ride to drug classes and group therapy multiple times a week and drug tested daily. If they fail a drug test they take them back to the hospital, unless they’ve been charged criminally, then it’s back to jail first, but ultimately they’ll end up back in the hospital.
Assigned case managers will visit them at their home at random daily. If the person doesn’t have a home, we have several “sobriety houses” in the area where folks are sent until they can get on their own feet.
Their case worker files applications for low income apartments and other programs like HUD. The person will ultimately end up in a home if they work the program.
In my time with the program I seen way more success than failure. The only failures I seen were those people who just made criminality their entire life. I’m talking drug dealing, robbing, constantly fighting. There are some people you just can’t help. I might be wrong there, but I seen a personality type that didn’t seem like it could be helped anyway. It was those folks who found their source of pride in a criminal lifestyle.
I probably do have some bias on the success of the program because they stick you with people who have progress similar to yours. If you’re a success in the program, you’re generally going to have appointments scheduled alongside people who are doing at least roughly as good as you are.
When I left the main program in 2020, I always had my appointments with the same people. We were the “no failed drug tests in years” group. Several of those people were homeless but they aren’t now.
A very good friend of mine had one of these when I was a kid. We called it laserdisc. I couldn’t tell you how that started.
So, when I got to high school and they were using actual laserdiscs I said, “Where’s the cool outer shell? Is this just like, a school laserdisc setup?” Some kids argued with me that I didn’t know what I was talking about.
I clearly remembered watching Star Wars on them and being mesmerized by that case.
Years later I got to thinking about it and googled “laserdisc with hard casing, mechanism removes disc when played”. Nothing. I chalked it up to it being some kind of false memory. Maybe I was just remembering the sleeve and my buddy was putting the movies in the player in a way that made me think it worked like that.
It wasn’t until years later that I seen a techmoan video in my feed and I was like, “THAT!! That’s what I’ve been talking about all these years!! It’s fucking vinyl! NO WAY!”
I was always tech obsessed so it nearly drove me crazy anytime I thought about it. He’d been dead for years so I couldn’t ask him. His dad and sister had no idea what I was talking about. “He traded a lot stuff around so there’s no telling what he had. There was mismatched technology all over this place.”
My uncle can navigate windows xp with his eyes closed. It took me years to get him there. He was fine with vista and 7. When 8 hit, it was over and it has been since.
This is a religious man who I’ve only ever heard cuss twice in his life before, and they were the milder words. “What the fuck is copy as a path? I’m just trying to copy and paste a file to my Zip drive! I can’t find computer, I can’t find my computer. I can’t find copy and paste! I’m gonna throw this thing across the room! Seriously, show more options? Why not leave the options I’ve had since 1996 where they were? Do people just not copy and paste any more?”
I have given up and I just remote connect and do it for him. He tried for a few years with the “slow down and let me learn” thing but he’s almost 70 and he’s given up.
He calls his usb drives “zip drives”. He was the only person I knew who had an actual Zip drive when I was a kid and I loved it.
I had to do this today on my wife’s laptop. The settings menu just wouldn’t do it. It just sat there for a thousand years.
Did I ever tell you about nuclear?
If I could get back all the years of my life spent walking boomers through tech problems for free…
Hey, I got thanked and told I was worth a million bucks to the boss one time though. If I had a tail I might have wagged it. :/
And I had a dude down the road always ready with a card to slap in my box so I could watch every channel for free.
I watched Bigger, Longer, and Uncut first, then Cruel Intentions. I don’t remember the movie, but I was way into the actresses. Good god Sarah Michelle Gellar and Reese Witherspoon really made my 14 year old brain short out bad. I can’t remember a single thing, seriously, but I watched it like 30 times.
Mine was a cam recording of Scary Movie 2. Horrible, horrible, horrible. Not the fault of the codec. I avoided cams after that and waited for the screeners.
But oh boy did I love my divx South Park episodes.
I probably haven’t watched a movie in 5 years.
Ex X executive is fun to say out loud.
Oh, well that I don’t know. That’s fun.
Chromium got opera bruh…I’m sorry.
I mean, this is what I’d do.
I try hard to hold onto my moral compass and practice what I preach, but when it comes to my kids I probably could go hard. Especially if they were facing a future in a cage. If I had the power I just wouldn’t let it happen.
And they’re all going to be mad about it and make your misery even greater! Yaaaaay
It’s gotta be temporary. It’s intel.
Oh no I don’t play games with money I don’t have. I’m ok losing what I already have though. Beats a lottery ticket.
I do not. I could probably qualify though.
When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose bud. That’s where I’m at in this moment. If I lose every penny I have I’m still poor. If I don’t, maybe I can get a start on a damn house or something.
The whole “small town on the edge of dying” bit. Holy shit have I experienced that firsthand.
See, what happened with a lot of these towns is that their industry became a part of their pride and culture. Where I’m from it’s coal. Trucks everywhere have a decal of a coal miner with one of two phrases. “Coal keeps the lights on.” and “6 inches from hell.”
My grandfather was a coal miner, so was his father, and his father, on both sides of my family. My father realized that the industry was dying so he left (and left us here haha). My brother did it for awhile but left it behind because of the drug problems in the mines. There was a whole underground urine market that kept things moving.
Even the poor fools who never worked in the mines go on and on about coal like it’s some kind of idol.
I would imagine the same thing happens in other places. The people fear big changes until their fear backs them into irrelevance. I’m getting older, so I can relate to that, only I vote for my kids, not to make me feel less afraid. Whatever world they grow up in won’t be one that I’d be perfectly comfortable in. It has always been that way as far back as we have been recording history. No sense in fighting where the world is going just because I don’t understand it or relate to it.