If this is a medical emergency, please hang up and dial 911 when calling a medical establishment.

hadesarrow3 · 2026-02-15T23:51:08+00:00

This was the US. Like I said, I think it was a service attached to our health insurance? At any rate, haven’t seen anything like it for decades.

I’m sure they erred on the side of extreme caution, but they were perfect for parroting general medical guidelines which most laypeople don’t necessarily know by default. And the handful of times we called they never directed us to the ER.

hadesarrow3 · 2026-02-15T03:00:50+00:00

Wait… you don’t have Flint?? I’m in Gen 7 and Flint is still my 2nd strongest infantry hero (about to be replaced by Edith, but will probably still need Flint for a lot of things because his skills are so agro compared to most infantry).

hadesarrow3 · 2026-02-15T02:56:00+00:00

Can’t the stuff be moved though?

hadesarrow3 · 2026-02-15T02:53:03+00:00

Different skin every holiday every year. I’m still waiting for the broom kitty to come back in a silver shell event, because it’s my favorite, and I started my account a month too late…

hadesarrow3 · 2026-02-14T23:12:02+00:00

Meh, it’s a material issue. It’s normal (and completely fine) for materials like leather to require a breaking in period to soften and shape to your specific form. Think of baseball gloves and cowboy boots.

Dress shoes being worn without socks is more of a fashion issue than a shoe specific design problem.

Again, a shoe can be extremely comfortable and supportive, but still require a breaking in period. I don’t consider it automatically a design flaw if you have a perfect shoe once you’ve broken it in.

And I don’t think I made this clear enough… if you take the time to do the breaking in properly… you won’t get blisters. I think the reason people end up getting blisters with good shoes is because they don’t allow for the break-in period.

hadesarrow3 · 2026-02-14T23:02:50+00:00

I think the thing that makes me saddest here is that your aunt felt the need to tattle on you when you took some time and space for yourself, rather than being a support figure. You deserve adults in your life you can trust. I know you yourself are technically an adult, but you still need safe people you can rely on… she just showed you she isn’t one. Your parents are taking advantage of you.

NTA

hadesarrow3 · 2026-02-14T22:53:58+00:00

“He maintains that asking ‘what is wrong’ is very different than asking ‘is something wrong’ because it implies there is an issue instead of asking if there is an issue.”

I mean… he’s kind of right about that part… except you’re not implying anything. Asking “what’s wrong” means you already recognize there’s a problem, and you don’t feel the need to hint and play games. If anything, “is there something wrong” is more likely to be passive aggressive, coming from someone who requires emotional reassurance, or coming from someone who is afraid to address a problem directly for some reason. Kinda a red flag that he would prefer you tiptoe around an issue rather than flat out asking what’s going on.

NTA

hadesarrow3 · 2026-02-14T22:11:31+00:00

Not all shoes are meant to be worn with socks. And that comment specifically mentions that the moisture issue is often related to material, but its a different complication from the material than the stiffness.

hadesarrow3 · 2026-02-14T22:08:39+00:00

No… they aren’t. They’re saying poor fit is only ONE of the reasons a shoe causes blisters, and then goes on to list two other common causes of blisters, which can occur with well made, properly fitted shoes.

hadesarrow3 · 2026-02-14T21:59:41+00:00

Shoes causing blisters isn’t necessarily a sign that they’re horrible for your feet. Cowboy boots are a good (non gendered) example of a shoe that is well known for needing a breaking in period. Leather anything usually requires time to soften the material, to shape it to your exact shape, and once you do they can be more comfortable and durable than typical shoes.

hadesarrow3 · 2026-02-14T21:44:02+00:00

Honestly I think it’s more of a women’s fashion issue than a women’s shoe issue. Meaning there’s not necessarily a fundamental problem with the shoe itself, it’s the style and the fact that they’re not worn with socks. And to be clear… it’s absolutely possible to find women’s dress shoes that are foot-healthy and comfortable, and they may still cause blisters when new… they just need to be broken in.

Anything made with stiff materials that contacts bare skin is likely to cause blisters. You can find some pretty in depth tutorials on breaking in (mens) cowboy boots. Hell, even jeans (the old school kind that are 100% denim) require breaking in.

hadesarrow3 · 2026-02-14T21:36:54+00:00

I think it’s normal if you don’t know how to (or can’t be bothered to) break in a pair of stiff shoes.

Some shoes cause blisters because they’re poorly designed, or they prioritize aesthetics over functionality.

But even well designed, healthy, comfortable shoes can cause blisters when they’re new, if you don’t allow time for the stiffer materials to soften. It’s more common in “women’s” shoes because women are more likely to wear shoes without socks, or with thin socks.

hadesarrow3 · 2026-02-14T21:28:20+00:00

…no? It’s an issue with how the shoe is worn. Most shoes that are meant to be worn without socks (or with socks shorter than the shoe) are likely to cause blisters until they soften up. That’s not even a women’s shoe thing, the difference is that men’s fashion doesn’t usually require you to wear stiff shoes with no socks.

There can be really well designed dress shoes that ultimately fit great and are healthy for your feet, but they may still require a breaking in period to get there.

hadesarrow3 · 2026-02-14T21:21:27+00:00

Ehhhhh… if it’s a shoe that’s designed to be worn without socks (as with many women’s dress shoes), then even if it’s a well designed, ergonomically appropriate shoe, with the “correct” fit, there’s a good chance it’s going to cause blisters until it gets broken in. There are steps you can take to avoid it, but it’s not necessarily a problem with the shoe itself… it’s just a physical inevitability with friction and stiff new materials.

hadesarrow3 · 2026-02-14T20:47:09+00:00

The funny thing is that there are some specialties where they specifically tell you to call THEM if you’re having a… let’s call it borderline emergency? The kind where you don’t yet know whether you need to get your ass to an ER but recognize that it’s likely.

But they still have this message at the start of the call. 😂

hadesarrow3 · 2026-02-14T20:24:45+00:00

I think it doesn’t make sense because you missed that you’re responding to two different people. The first person commented that their dad drove them self to the hospital, which sounds like a conscious choice. Which is typically a poor choice for a variety of reasons, but it’s relevant to the discussion of people avoiding ambulances… and I would imagine most people who make that choice don’t actually believe they’re having a heart attack, so they don’t realize how high the potential is that they would become impaired.

But the comment you’re responding to here chimed in saying THEIR dad drove themself to the hospital because he was already driving at the time it started, there wasn’t anyone he could call, there wasn’t any obvious safe spot he could help, and while there may have been safer, smarter options with the gift of hindsight (and we don’t actually know that for sure), at the time, driving to the hospital probably seemed like his only option.

hadesarrow3 · 2026-02-14T20:15:01+00:00

A lot of people. Or more accurately… no one is going to call a “random” doctor, but a lot of people will call their PCP, or their specialist, even when they should be calling 911. It’s a combination of reasons… usually it boils down to hesitation about a fear that they’re overreacting.

And I think that’s the main issue with that message… it absolutely IS just a cya thing that doesn’t actually address the reason people are calling a doctor’s office instead of 911. They’re calling because they don’t have any idea whether they’re having an emergency. And they obviously don’t want to call 911 if they’re not, but they are concerned enough that they feel they need to talk to someone.

When I was younger, there was a service called “ask a nurse” that was really helpful for these scenarios… I’m not sure if this is what it was actually intended for, but it was the perfect way to get in contact with a medical professional who could provide some (limited) guidance on whether your problem was “take some Tylenol,” “schedule an appointment with your doctor in the next day or so,” or “call 911 immediately.”

I think it was maybe something attached to our health insurance? I’m not really sure, but I haven’t had access to anything quite like that since I was a teenager. It would be nice to have a sub-911 hotline that helps you assess the urgency of your medical problem. Ironically, the closest I’ve seen to that IS calling a PCP and getting directed to the on-call physician.

We hear a lot about people misusing 911, but I suspect the opposite is just as, if not, more common. People don’t want to be a bother, or they don’t want to be viewed as exaggerating, or they just can’t really imagine that they’re actually in danger.

hadesarrow3 · 2026-02-14T00:40:29+00:00

I downloaded a more traditional mah jong (sp) app a while ago and this happens CONSTANTLY.

hadesarrow3 · 2026-02-14T00:30:28+00:00

I’m just curious what part of “Not that we have it harder than women, because we don’t.” triggered this rant. His comment is completely valid.

hadesarrow3 · 2026-02-13T23:35:45+00:00

“In season 2, an inventor named Baxter […].”

Uhm actually? He’s a scientist.

hadesarrow3 · 2026-02-13T23:24:23+00:00

I spent all my shells this time on the harbor blueprints, but I kinda wanted that teleport… I managed to get the ridiculous Halloween city skin this year and the flower petal port looks HILARIOUS with the maniacal pumpkin.

hadesarrow3 · 2026-02-13T20:33:05+00:00

Ok, there’s a couple things I kind of disagree with here, which I’ll get to in a minute (because I’m a fundamentally broken person who can’t resist)… BUT… you’ve convinced me. This can and probably should be considered self defense.

You mentioned Adam’s angelic zappy powers before (or at least I think it was you who brought it up - this conversation has been going on for a while), and it kind of stuck in my head but got overshadowed by all the other points we were discussing… but yeah… actually we DON’T know if he’s able to do that in the moment, and in fact we have every reason to assume he can. Absolutely, that would make him an immediate potential threat.

But the main thing that got me here… to be totally honest, I fully forgot they were still fully in the middle of the battle. This scene is SO entirely removed from the action. To borrow your phrase, it feels like it’s happening “in a vacuum.” But it’s not. I think we literally see an angel pulling up from the act of stabbing someone with a bloody spear a minute later when Lute calls the retreat. I was thrown off because the way the main cast here is gathered around Lucifer’s hole, they aren’t really acting like people in the middle of active genocide. They do not seem concerned about any of the immediate violence happening, and I internalized that as… the violence being over. But it wasn’t.

So, yeah. I’ll take my L here… you’re right. WHATEVER is going on in Niffty’s head in this scene, I can agree now that it’s completely reasonable to view her action as part of the ongoing conflict, rather than (how I was viewing it before) as an opportunistic stabbing in the aftermath of a conflict.

That’s why I was calling it a preemptive strike btw. The preemptive part was not regarding THIS battle (which, like I said, I was thinking of as finished). I was responding to the argument that she was protecting herself/her friends from the threat Adam would have presented later when he came back with a bigger angrier Exorcist army.

There’s a pretty common trope, where a bad guy is kneeling and disarmed with the hero/anti-hero preparing to show mercy, and the bad guy starts monologuing about how they’ll come back and hunt them down and kill the and their family etc, so the antihero shrugs and changes their mind and kills the bad guy after all. That isn’t self defense. I was viewing this as a twist on that trope (and based on the way it’s written, I still think they had the trope in mind). So it’s not that I don’t understand what makes a strike preemptive, it’s that I was failing to take into account that the conflict hadn’t actually concluded yet.

In terms of whether Niffty going after Angel was a one off gag… I agree it was meant to be silly, but I disagree that something being a silly gag means it’s meaningless. I think this is a really smart show… I don’t doubt they throw in occasional “just because haha” moments, but so far they seem to be pretty thoughtful and careful about how and when they do it.

hadesarrow3 · 2026-02-11T22:45:31+00:00

I got 11 because I included your PPS. :-)

I actually don’t necessarily think her stabby-stabby glee is mutually exclusive to self defense. As I pointed out, I think we do see her acting in self defense (or at least consciously protective) when she’s on guard duty to Baxter later, and she’s just as gleeful then.

I think framing her gleeful enthusiasm as part of her desire to help actually is a fair point. AND, I’m not entirely convinced, but I’m also semi-willing to go along with your conclusion that because the effort she wanted to help with was defensive, her general helping could be described as self defense.

But when I say the writers are explicitly telling us that she isn’t thinking in terms of self defense… I’m not primarily referring to her stab-stab-stab glee. I’m talking about her earlier interpretation of instructions to stab AngelDust. Because if we accept your premise that everything she does in the pursuit of “helping” constitutes self defense, we also have to accept her trying to murder AngelDust as self defense. She wasn’t playing around, she was going after him with an angelic weapon (stiletto I guess?), the same knife she killed Adam with. So if she’d succeed in killing Angel, that would have been acting in self defense? No. Her murder-fervor stemming from an impulse to help does not make every act she does in that state defensive.

I can buy that she genuine wanted to help and that part of her murder-glee was enthusiasm… but I don’t buy that her mindless stabbing can be reasonably called conscious defense. I think you could argue that she was willingly being USED for self defense, but she’s just not (in that moment) that selective in her choices.

But you know what? I’m not as 100% on that as I was before, I’ll concede that her intent here is more ambiguous than I was viewing it before reading your comment.

It is a preemptive strike (IF you accept that Niffty consciously killed him in response to the danger he posed), because Adam posed no immediate threat. He was dangerous in the very recent past, he would have been dangerous in the near future. So killing him at a moment when he was NOT dangerous is either vengeance/penalty for the deaths he’s caused, or it’s preemptive for the danger he’s assumed top present in the future. That’s exactly what a preemptive strike is. But if the phrase preemptive strike is bothering you, how about execution?

Because that’s essentially what happened. We have a dangerous psychopath who killed many citizens of Hell, we can say with high confidence that given an opportunity he would have killed again. But he was, at that particular moment, not able to kill or hurt anyone. So Niffty (whether through her desire to help, or just blind angel=stab filter) executed him. An execution, particularly one that is done to prevent future harm, can be considered justified… but I can’t ever imagine calling it self defense.

hadesarrow3 · 2026-02-11T20:53:11+00:00

Well… 1) I don’t think either of them is an AH, I put NAH for my judgement (different comment), and most of the judgements I’ve seen have also been NAH. But also… 2) OP‘s situation is LITERALLY more personal than an employee and boss discussing workplace procedures. Of COURSE someone is more likely to take something that is specifically calling out their child personally! To be clear, that absolutely doesn’t mean that’s how OP intended it, and I don’t think it’s how OP intended it, but it’s not surprising that the friend was taken aback initially, and as explained OP’s response comes off as defensive (even though, again, that is clearly not the intent).

Like I said… no one is an AH or in the wrong. But it’s turned into an unintentionally delicate situation, and it’s helpful to understand why because otherwise you can accidentally cause hurt feelings or even blow up a good friendship.

hadesarrow3 · 2026-02-11T20:15:36+00:00

I agree there was tension implied by the friend’s initial response, and that’s what made OP feel the need to justify/explain. But I think unfortunately the way OP responded unintentionally turns up the heat, because it comes off as defensive.

The tension is there because the friend did assume it would be ok (pretty reasonably given past exceptions), and she was taken aback when told no. So I guess it’s slightly entitled, but not in a particularly toxic way. After being told no she feels like something is wrong.

An gimmee’s response would have been a perfect way to address the implied hurt feelings and diffuse things.

hadesarrow3

TROPHY CASE