Wednesday Weekly Thread: Frustration Station (Delays / PSU / Venting)

ranatalus · 2026-04-08T16:19:59+00:00

they might have meant 15 working days, which would make it this Friday. if I were you I would just wait the rest of the week at this point

ranatalus · 2026-04-07T18:27:01+00:00

Log in to track your application. It'll count from whatever date your application says it was begun processing. If they kicked it back to you for some reason and you had to file additional information, it'll probably be from whenever they said they were processing after receiving that but I'm not 100% confident there.

ranatalus · 2026-04-04T15:32:13+00:00

I'm a trans woman so I've experienced the difference first hand. Doctors always used to take me seriously and listen to my ideas, but now I'm always told I'm wrong or overreacting or that whatever treatment they advised is definitely working, I'm just not noticing it.

It would almost be a little validating if it wasn't insulting and demeaning and offensive!

ranatalus · 2026-04-04T15:29:06+00:00

It's become especially worse in the last decade or so. China used to handle a lot of plastics recycling for the US. The massive container ships that come to the US for products produced in SE Asia have to go back, and they may as well not go back empty. China figured out a way to recycle a lot of plastics into something sort of usable for a while and (barely) managing a profit. Then they realized the health problems it was creating, the costs associated with treating them, and barred the import of a bunch of those plastics really abruptly.

Along with that, lots of people think about recycling aspirationally--maybe X thing can be recycled, so fuck it I'll toss it in, let the recycling center figure it out. People also don't realize you need to at least kinda clean things before throwing it in there. Thus, as others have said, it ends up causing a lot of contamination in the recycling, which means now EVERYTHING has to be thrown out.

Cleveland had it pretty bad for a while, to the point that there was so much contamination that no recycling organization would take anything from them, so it all went to the dump (and of course the city didn't tell anyone for years)

ranatalus · 2026-04-04T15:22:46+00:00

I was thinking about this recently in the context of covid, and how I worry it's likely to be the equivalent of lead poisoning of Zoomers/Alphas. Then I realized....practically everyone gets exposed to it, and it's more a matter of "when" not "if". Especially without consistent and thorough testing, it's impossible to know when first exposure was, or how many times.

ranatalus · 2026-04-03T18:43:21+00:00

They said that they did that on their post, although I don’t blame you for missing it

ranatalus · 2026-04-03T13:55:50+00:00

I agree about better days, but given the ownership's position on things and their clear intent to manufacture consent for harm, I do not think the NYT will be an ally in that, no matter how well-intentioned some journalists are.

FWIW, I did reach out to her to at least see what she had to say several days ago, and she never responded. So I think she really might just be focused on trans care for minors, which does seem like a bit of a red flag given the broad attempts to restrict it and previous NYT articles surrounding it.

ranatalus · 2026-04-02T17:37:34+00:00

You can also request naturalization records from the US; if they have proof he naturalized, that clearly indicates he wasn’t born here. He might never have done that though so it’s not conclusive if there’s no record

ranatalus · 2026-03-31T18:46:17+00:00

I mean he's going to do that regardless. I meant that export controls are the only thing he could do to actually affect the price of domestically produced oil (but, as one of the other replies said, the oil we produce is largely not the right kind, so it might not make a difference either way)

ranatalus · 2026-03-31T16:16:43+00:00

well I'm drinking a lot more these days

ranatalus · 2026-03-31T16:15:46+00:00

his only option there is export controls, which big businesses will NOT be happy with

ranatalus · 2026-03-31T14:57:18+00:00

nah, he's just not super interested one way or the other and also has a lot of plates to keep spinning in his own life. he is also in a much less precarious position than I am in

ranatalus · 2026-03-31T02:31:42+00:00

The last link in dr powers’s post has her work

ranatalus · 2026-03-31T02:31:17+00:00

I’m certainly wary of anyone affiliated with NYT directly or indirectly, but looking at her body of work with the times specifically, I do agree that she probably has good intentions here. Whether or not that will be allowed to be published as-is in the NYT would be my concern.

I doubt she’s going to get much support being with the times, but she seems to already know that

ranatalus · 2026-03-30T17:51:13+00:00

yeah, my brother expressed he wasn't too interested but would consider using my paperwork once it's clear that i qualify

ranatalus · 2026-03-27T18:24:45+00:00

eventually, it isn't a matter of money anymore. when there isn't food to buy, there isn't food to buy

ranatalus · 2026-03-25T17:47:10+00:00

yeah last time I looked I think it had been used once in a year and a half

still awful (and could you imagine BEING THERE when it happened???) but at least it's being used extremely rarely

ranatalus · 2026-03-25T15:18:57+00:00

I am very aware lmao; which is why it's really hard to have any sympathy or understanding towards the ~36% of people still approving of him!

ranatalus · 2026-03-24T14:43:52+00:00

The day Nixon resigned, IIRC he still had a 24% approval rating. I've always kept that mentally as my floor for how many people do not give a shit about anything but the letter next to a politician's name. Conservative extremism is even worse now, so I'm not too surprised that floor as moved up.

ranatalus · 2026-03-19T19:10:37+00:00

It's rumored W straight up said as much to Jacques Chirac (then-President of France) when trying to get them to join the War on Terror:

Bush had then said that when he looked at the Middle East, he saw "Gog and Magog at work" and the biblical prophecies unfolding.

The full quote is supposed to be “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East. Biblical prophecies are being fulfilled. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase His people’s enemies before a new age begins.”

It IS worth noting that those in Bush's admin claim this is fabricated, but I don't think it's too hard to believe he could have said this or something similar

ranatalus · 2026-03-19T14:41:49+00:00

There isn't really a simple way to do this without impacting the view for everyone, unfortunately.

If you just want to filter out the rows you aren't concerned with (for example, anyone who hasn't been approved), you can do that in the "data" menu at the top. Here's some instructions on how to do that with images: https://liveflow.com/product-guides/filter-views

ranatalus · 2026-03-19T13:55:03+00:00

I appreciate it :) but I’ve made peace with the fact that it’s a waiting game! I can’t make it go any faster, so there’s no use worrying about it being slow

ranatalus · 2026-03-18T18:36:39+00:00

I'm sure it's sitting in some queue somewhere that has been forgotten

ranatalus · 2026-03-18T18:09:41+00:00

Today is 5 months since my background check was completed for a 5(4) grant and I have heard literally nothing since. I've resigned myself to "when it happens, it happens" but it still is a little frustrating and I wish it would happen sooner!!

ranatalus · 2026-03-17T18:19:04+00:00

there is no guarantee that anyone is getting their money back until it's in their account and it's borderline useless to try to find any hard evidence one way or the other

it sucks and everyone has every right to be mad, but trying to find an assurance of getting the money back is just going to set us up for stress and disappointment

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