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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: December 19th, 2023

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  • It’s not rude at all!

    It’s best if you stack similar plates together and put the silverware on top or leave it separately. Its also hekpful to have any leftover food on the top plate rather than smushed in the middle. If all the dishes are different shapes, biggest on the bottom like a pyramid.

    At the restaurant I worked, we had a bun for compost, trash, and recycle. So it could be helpful to keep trash out of the food scraps still on the plates. Please don’t leave trash in the cups, because we have to fish it out. Water is heavy and we can’t just throw out all the ice with the straw wrappers and the wrappers can’t go down the sink.


  • Your state likely has a web page designated for election results, so you could get information straight from the source for everything you voted for in your state and see which way your state goes for the presidential election. Your county website may also have a page to show whether any propositions were accepted or rejected.

    I’m not sure about a better source to see where all 50 states’ results are reported. Maybe Balllotpedia has something that updates. I’m not sure the federal government would have something because the official results won’t happen until January 6 when a joint session of Congress reads and counts the votes from the Electoral College (who doesn’t vote until December 17).


  • That’s not true in TX cities. I’ve lived in DFW, Houston metroplex, and Austin and have never had less than 15 polling places. They might not be next door to your work, but they are within a few monute drive.

    TX was also the first state to allow early voting and mandates that polls are open at least 9 hours the first week and at least 12 hours the second week and final day of voting. That’s the minimum, not maximum. There were also polling places open on the weekends.

    That said, I have heard (although haven’t researched it) that some very rural areas are more difficult to vote in with only a couple polling places in the county. So that could be the case if you live in the middle of nowhere, but you’ll pass polling places on your way to/from work. Just think of it like you would a doctor appointment and put it on your schedule.

    TX is pretty purple and is turning more blue each cycle.

    2004: Kerry lost by ~1.9 million votes 2008: Obama lost by ~990,000 votes 2012: Obama lost by ~1.2 million votes 2016: Clinton lost by ~800,000 votes 2020: Biden lost by ~640,000 votes

    In 2020, had just 3.5% more of the registered voters cast a ballot for Biden, he would have won. That’s about how many people voted each day of early voting in this election.



  • No caffeine after 2

    Take magnesium glycinate and threonate and hour or so before bed (threonate helps me sleep but it can cause vivid dreams)

    Make sure you’re comfortable in the bed both in terms of bed firmness/softness and temperature

    Use a fan to regulate temperature and create white noise

    Create a regular bedtime ritual (brush, floss, skincare, etc) and stick to it

    Chamomile tea can help relax

    I’ve also found drinking some cool/cold water right before attempting to sleep can help, because your body temperature drops as you go to sleep. I’m also a hot sleeper, so that also helps to cool down my core.

    Make a regular sleep schedule and stick to it as much as possible

    Write down any persistent thoughts, journal emotions, or create a to-do list from whatever might be running through your mind. Getting that out of my head and onto paper helps to alleviate any anxiety and can help stop my brain from planning and running amok while I’m lying there.

    I turn off all the lights and only use some color-changing LED lights an hour or so before bed. White lights are too bright and can keep me from sleeping. Red is darker, yet still bright enough to see where I’m walking. Red lights are also best for night vision, if you go stargazing, make sure you have red flashlights, because white light will destroy your night vision for 20 minutes or so.

    I also use a screen dimming app on my phone to bring the brightness down lower than the brightness setting will allow. On Apple devices, this is a regular setting in accessibility called “Reduce White Point”. Android still hasn’t figured out how to mimic that well and the best app I’ve found is Screen Dimmer Plus. It basically puts a Grey layer over whatever images show up on your phone and will mess with screenshots taken and it doesn’t change anything with the top 1/4" of the screen. The Reduce White Point setting on ios doesn’t mess with screenshots and changes the brightness for the whole screen. It’s one of the big disappointments I’ve had with android.

    Get Blackout curtains to block light from the windows

    Don’t exercise too close to bed. I also can’t take showers or baths too close to bed because they will disrupt my sleep.

    Slow breathing and closing your eyes will lying in bed can help if you’re restless. I’ve also found that if I’m having a particularly hard time falling asleep that getting out of bed and reading a book or fiction story before returning to bed can help.

    Choose something light and calming to watch as the last thing before you turn off your TV. Nature documentaries like Planet Earth or a light comedy can help you unwind and be a little more calm than watching an action, horror, or drama movie/TV show.

    Another thing I’ve read about if you’re restless is to work your way uo your body squeezing your muscles for a few seconds. So start with your feet and flex them a couple times for a couple seconds, then go uo to your calves, all the way up to your eyes. The flex and release is supposed to help release any muscles that are still clenching from the day.

    Spending time in nature during the day is supposed to help calm the mind and body, so finding 20-30 minutes to walk around a park could be helpful.

    Don’t stress out about not falling asleep. Lying there with your eyes closed with relaxing breaths is supposed to be restful for the body

    Potassium might help you relax and I think it’s also supposed to help with blood pressure if you’ve been consuming too much sodium. Not 100% sure on that, but I figure getting blood pressure under control can help you get better quality sleep.


  • I’ve heard there are people that do something similar to get on those reality shows about fat people’s lives or the weight loss competitions. I guess some think it’s easier to gain 100 more pounds and then get on the TV show to lose 400 pounds than it is just to lose 300 pounds themselves.








  • It’s definitely been getting worse. The written directions aren’t always accurate. Exits sometimes have the wrong label. Lanes are missing on the highways when they merge and separate.

    I’ve also seen a similar thing with routes not always showing up or giving bad directions. It attempted to take me through a school bus barn and even through someone’s yard once.





  • The US isn’t any more concerned about sexual orientation now than any point in the past. Back in colonial times, it wouldn’t have been safe to be anything other than straight with all the hyper religious colonists. They were even forcing their gender conformity and the straight sexual orientation on the Native Americans. Baron Friedrich von Steuben got a pass for being gay, probably because he was the one in charge of training the troops for Washington. 100 years ago, you could be killed on the street for being anything other than straight or denied jobs. The Lavender scare of the mid century brought this more to light. The AIDS crisis that started in the 80s and bled through into the 90s and 2000s as new medicines were being invented, further brought negative light to sexual orientations outside of straight. The cause of all of this attention to sexual orientation has been the religions brought over by colonists.

    In recent years, sexual orientations outside of straight are finally being seen in a positive light with Lawrence v TX (2003) legalizing same-sex relationships and Hodges v Obergefell (2015) legalizing same-sex marriages. In Bostock v Clayton County (2020) legal protections against job discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity were finally put into place over 70 years after the start of the Lavender Scare.

    The attention to sexual orientation has always been part of North American history. It has just changed from acceptance with the Native American peoples to hate, death, and intolerance under the colonists, to a more accepting present day. With some of the positive news in recent years, it can be easy to forget (if you’re surrounded by progressives in a blue state) that the hate of sexuality injected into North America in the 15th Century still has hold over large portions of the population today.



  • Don’t forget, insurance covers 50% before the deductible is met, not after. When a policy has that verbiage, usually there’s a footnote that states how those claims are handled in the future. From what I’ve seen, that could mean that insurance will cover 100% of said procedure after the deductible is met or it could mean a co-insurance of 30%.

    After the deductible is met, OP won’t necessarily pay 50%. The percentage of the bill that OP and/or insurance will pay will be on a footnote at the bottom of the blue plan overview page (at least it’s blue when looking at plans from the ACA marketplace).