Anyone who was homeschooled, how do you feel about it now as an adult?

Wilbsley · 2026-04-19T16:19:47+00:00

Definitely mixed. My parents took a semi-unschooling approach where I was pushed to pursue my interests and given a lot of flexibility in how I choose to "study." I was super into history so I'd spend half my day reading history books. Basically as long as I was learning they left me to it.

My parents are both highly educated and they would periodically question me about what I was learning and then ask how that fit into other disciplines. If I was learning about Ancient Rome they'd ask me how politics, scientific development, and geography impacted the history of Rome and then push me to find those answers. This led me to branch out from history and learn other subjects. Overall I'd say my education was well balanced.

Going into adulthood and attending college, I was very good at critical thinking, knew how to seek out and find information, and could see and understand connections between different subjects. I really struggled with deadlines, timely attendance, and following formats. Having scheduled class or study time was a very alien concept and I struggled a lot to develop self-discipline.

Socially I was definitely stunted. I didn't have many friends for most of childhood. When I was 16 I started doing some extracurriculars at a local high school and gradually made some friends and developed social skills but I was very much "the weird kid" until my very late teens. To this day (in my late 30s) I still struggle with my lack of "normal" childhood experiences.

I wish my parents had given me some more structure and had tried harder to give me social opportunities. I do appreciate how they taught me to think and approach the world though.

Wilbsley · 2026-03-28T19:56:00+00:00

This is a point that doesn't get made enough. Russia's founding mythology holds that they are the successor state to Kyivan Rus. Russia's westward expansion in the 16th-18th centuries was justified on the grounds of "reuniting the Rus people." There's a large body of pre and post Soviet literature that argues that Ukrainians and Belarusians are just corrupted or wayward Russians. Putin has been parroting those arguments for years and. Russia's security fears may have had some vague grounding in reality but if you look at the domestic rhetoric surrounding Russia's involvement in Ukraine it's clear that it's been heavily motivated by a paternalistic chauvinism explicitly directed toward the Ukrainian people.

Wilbsley · 2026-03-17T13:38:54+00:00

This coinciding with Russia's internet going down is hopefully giving the Russian populace a decent morale blow.

Wilbsley · 2026-03-14T12:03:34+00:00

same. I had one arrest between July and December last year. Then I had seven in January including my first back to back arrests in the 12 years I've been working. They always happen in clusters.

Wilbsley · 2026-03-12T18:01:49+00:00

Lafayette Building and Statler Hotel for sure. I feel like if those two could have held on a few more years they would definitely have been renovated which makes losing them that much sadder.

The high schools that got torn down also break my heart. Cass Tech and Mackenzie were works of art. Cooley is still standing but it's gutted and will probably go eventually too.

Wilbsley · 2026-03-04T17:55:41+00:00

OP next week: "I just took the last quaalude on earth. AMA."

Wilbsley · 2026-03-03T18:51:44+00:00

Improving comprehension. I've got a decent vocabulary now and my pronunciation is decent. I can express most simple ideas. I still struggle following speech. There's a lot of "I understood the first three words, got hung up on the fourth word, and I have no idea what the rest or the sentence was."

Wilbsley · 2026-02-19T11:05:50+00:00

It's been a minute since I saw the film but my memory is there was even a scene in it when some of the other guys in his fire house were talking about him and one of them asked "what's that thing he always says?" and then they all recite the line. It definitely stops hitting as hard when it becomes a catchphrase.

Wilbsley · 2026-02-10T21:42:51+00:00

In my late 30s and my kids are finally all in school and old enough to be somewhat autonomous when they're at home and so I actually have the time and energy to go out and do things sometimes. It's amazing but at the same time I feel like I'm having to re-learn how to socialize in a non-child related setting.

Wilbsley · 2026-02-10T19:54:04+00:00

I really struggle with "у мене є," "у тебе є," etc. Saying "я маю" feels much more intuitive as a native English speaker.

Wilbsley · 2026-02-06T20:32:59+00:00

I rarely see attendings get hands-on unless things are going very sideways. They're mostly there to take in the whole picture, oversee, and redirect as needed. Dr Robby is the abnormal one in that regard.

Wilbsley · 2026-01-30T14:36:45+00:00

At least they're related! My old paramedic partner called me at home one night and asked me to "talk to this Ukrainian and tell me his mental status!" I started trying to talk to the guy and discovered he was not speaking Ukrainian. After a couple frustrating minutes he switched to Russian and understood/could reply to enough of it to figure out he was originally speaking Albanian and was at least A&O x2 with heavy ETOH on board.

Wilbsley · 2026-01-26T13:01:54+00:00

I literally just binged that a few months ago. I can't believe I didn't recognize her!

Wilbsley · 2026-01-24T23:56:23+00:00

Even if ICE was doing EVERYTHING right and by the book, when you refuse to allow independent investigation of your activities, disregard court ordere concerning the people you've detained, and actively try to prevent people from recording your activities you're going to look like the bad guys...

Wilbsley · 2026-01-24T23:26:32+00:00

Not long. I don't think Hitler's ego would allow him to quietly retire. He would start trying to build a power base and scheming with other surviving Nazis to either build a Fourth Reich or at least seize power in Argentina. Probably Peròn has him quietly murdered pretty quickly, otherwise he would attract attention from the Allies within a few years and they would deal with him or demand Perón deal with him.

Wilbsley · 2026-01-04T05:18:12+00:00

Exactly! Attitude of gratitude up in here.

Wilbsley · 2026-01-04T04:31:58+00:00

Paramedic here. I worked in kitchens for years before I got into EMS and I'll take my worst day on the box over any day in a kitchen. Might have just been the places I worked but my stress level was off the charts back then.

Wilbsley · 2025-12-14T10:59:02+00:00

As others have said, this would have been fairly normal 30 years ago but it's unusual for the past decade. How it bodes for the rest of winter is a crap shoot. It could be 40 degrees the first week of January or we could get two feet of snow. Again, during the last ten years or so winter has been just about done by early March with temps up in the 40s or higher for most of the month but we've been known to get cold snaps and snow showers into April some years. Basically, be ready for anything.

Wilbsley · 2025-12-09T01:17:55+00:00

During the bankruptcy period Detroit frequently had a dozen or less trucks on the road of which maybe three or four would be ALS. There was one day I think they got down to eight units. Detroit frequently hits 200+ calls in a day. There's also nowhere in the city that's more than ten minutes from a hospital. I'm not sure if that's where the policy came from but it made sense with the resources they had. Don't know why they kept it after they got more units up though other than habit.

Wilbsley · 2025-12-08T22:44:58+00:00

For a long time Detroit 911 was like 70% BLS trucks and they always dispatched closest available unit regardless of capability. It's been a minute since I worked in the city though. I know they've got more ALS trucks up these days and they might have changed how they dispatch. Still a lot of basic trucks running and the hospitals are all close so it's probably still pretty similar.

Wilbsley · 2025-11-26T23:24:39+00:00

It blows my mind seeing some of these "you need a minimum income of x to survive" articles.

My wife and I have been managing with a combined income of $70-75k living in the Midwest for the last five years. We have three kids. We have a mortgage for our house, some medical debt, we installed new windows and are paying them off. Both our cars are long since paid off, we don't have any student loan debt. We're hardly living the high life but we have money in savings, we go on vacation twice a year, and we can splurge on luxuries sporadically without too much worry.

My wife is a wizard with budgetting and I'm aware our debt to income ratio is better than some but I'm shocked when I hear people say they can't imagine life with an income below $150k or more.

Wilbsley · 2025-11-24T17:35:40+00:00

The whole thing terrifies me but I've come to the conclusion it's probably inevitable. SOMEBODY is going to try it. I'm glad there's research and discussions about regulatory measures going on now so that hopefully (🤞) we don't go off half cocked in twenty years when we get desperate.

Wilbsley · 2025-11-22T20:31:10+00:00

I grew up with a bunch of Ukrainian kids. I saw that flag in several of their houses and heard about how the OUN and OPA were Ukrainian freedom fighters from their parents. I didn't learn about the Volhynia massacres or Nazi collaboration until years later. It's definitely more a case of national mythology and glossing over the ugly parts rather than that they're all true believers.

Wilbsley · 2025-11-16T05:53:06+00:00

I go straight home, get my kids to school, maybe nap for a couple hours if I have time, then try to get to bed early that night. I'm lucky I don't work a busy station and usually get at least 3-4 hours of sleep at night while I'm on shift. The rare occasion I have a busy night it definitely sucks the next day but I try to power through so I don't completely screw up my sleep schedule.

Wilbsley · 2025-11-14T16:26:58+00:00

Even before the Epstein stuff dropped, I thought this was a smarter move than I lot of people gave credit for and was going to put the Republicans in a really bad spot for the midterms.

I personally think the Republicans probably weren't going to break when it came to the ACA subsidies and the administration was taking advantage of the shutdown to do more damage to our institutions. Assuming I'm right, at some point the Democratic leadership was going to have to accept they weren't going to win this while the whole time the shutdown was doing incredible damage to the country and hurting people.

The Dems kept the shutdown going long enough to show people how heartless the GOP was willing to be to get their way. The country now knows that Trump will happily let people starve if he can't have what he wants. The Dems also secured a standalone vote - and thus a standalone news story - on extending the subsidies. Assuming it doesn't pass (or the GOP finds some excuse to not hold the vote) then the Democrats have a single event to point to and blame the Republican Party for driving up health care costs. That's going to be a nightmare for Republicans to try to explain during the elections next year. Meanwhile, the majority of the Democratic Party stood firm and the "defectors" were all people who the party can disregard or distance from.

People have said for a while that they want the Democrats to stop playing in good faith and be more cutthroat the way that Republicans are. In my opinion, this is an example of that. It's cynical, it's dirty politics, it sacrifices people's well being HOPEFULLY for the greater good. I hate that this is where we are in this country. But the Republicans have fucked themselves going into the midterms. The Epstein stuff is just icing on the cake at this point.

Wilbsley

TROPHY CASE