Relevant to your point:

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

-Terry Pratchett

To help bolster your point, a saying I have heard my whole life is:

You get what you pay for.

The implication is that you get a better product by paying a higher price. This saying is deep cultural meme (not the internet kind of meme, rather the Dawkins kind of meme) in the US. I have heard it used my whole life from fellow citizens.

I’m no saint, I just don’t understand why they would hurt me when I have tried to be nothing but cordial with them.

Oh I hear you on this one. I don’t have the best relationship with my family because of similar behaviors. That’s kind of where I learned the value of forgiveness and the difference between forgiveness and trust.

So it’s odd to me that someone can experience pain and want to pass it on, knowing how it felt to be hurt.

A lot of the time it isn’t a choice. I don’t get pushed to a wild rage of abusive language very often, but I do occasionally. Both my parents were wildly angry and rude to each other. I didn’t and don’t want to be that person, either, but I can also see that childhood exposure to such loud anger taught little boy Snot this is how you deal with stress, frustration, and anger at selfish disrespectful people. I am in therapy because I want to be more stoic. I don’t want to make others feel pain, not really, but in my worst moments I do whether I like it or not, which is why I want to get past my own issues and get better myself.

Other than that, I learned good things from mother (my dad is a lost cause and always was) and I can see her own brokenness that was given to her by her own parents. She never wanted to teach me through trauma, either, but she accidentally did. She’s cried about her regrets as a parent a lot, but that’s because she genuinely is trying to put the work in to get better herself.

I have cut off my dad because of his selfishness and narcissism. He still doesn’t understand why, I don’t think he’ll ever truly make the effort to understand why. I know he had trauma, too. His whole chest got melted from a pot of boiling water dumping all over himself when he was a child, and those scars are still visible to this day. None of the bad things that have happened to him justify his behavior, especially since he won’t make apologies and then turn around and steal something from you when he gets a chance.

The difference between the two is my mother feeling and expressing deep remorse for it, and my father not giving a single shit. My mom still drives me up the wall, but not enough to go no contact because there’s still something good and healthy to salvage from it.

I can give people who feel remorse, who are listening, who want to change the benefit of the doubt. The stubborn selfish jerks can just go if they don’t wish to change, and there is only so much stoic attitude I can muster to deal with them.

First, I’ll just say this: How you feel is valid.

Secondly: I can’t diagnose people because I’m not a doctor. It’s also the internet any mental health professional would know how unprofessional and as such they wouldn’t be diagnosing online based your version of events instead of hearing your aunts as well. If you went to some joint therapy sessions, the way she acts could likely get a diagnosed disorder and the therapist would be a lot better in figuring out what the issues are with your aunt.

Thirdly, everybody deals with grief differently, and while from your end it seems narcissistic, a therapist might connect her behavior to how she was raised. It might be that the way she was raised makes her think these kind of things are “normal.” That’s how generational trauma works, and some people never have enough self reflection to get past it and keep dumping the generational trauma down on people like yourself.

I guess I am saying that she may be broken mentally and emotionally, and she will struggle to change without good therapy. It doesn’t and shouldn’t invalidate your feelings about her and how the death of your father was dismissed with cruelty. It’s just, if she’s fucked up like that, that may really just be how she was raised and is dragging up her pain and trauma, and then dumping it on you.

You can force her to get help, but what can do is do your best to minimize contact with her, because you clearly don’t have the same values as she does.

I’m with you thinking that behavior is terrible, but I also try to remember that other people are always dealing with their own shit. It’s like being cut off in traffic from asshole driving aggressively. I can’t and shouldn’t make assumptions and say they’re a selfish asshole, even if I feel that. For all I know they’re rushing to the hospital to be with a family member, or any number of things that distract them because of being over-stressed.

So I would be trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, but it also doesn’t mean I have to be their friend and pay attention to what they do. Forgiveness isn’t the same as trust. You hopefully can find it in yourself to forgive your aunt because you recognize their own trauma who made them who they are, but I also hope you find the strength to walk away and cut her off if you need to. Recognizing their trauma and treating them like a human matters, but also your own feelings matter, and so the trauma she is giving you is unacceptable, whatever she has been through.

I may be rambling because I’m still recovering from a surgery earlier today, but the TL;DR:

She is very likely broken and it’s a good thing to think about how she became the person she is, but that empathy doesn’t have to extend to forcing yourself to be around someone who won’t deal with her own trauma and instead gives you trauma.

Stop shitting on your own legacy, McConnell. Own this as a result of your own decisions or shut the fuck up.

Them luxury bones are gonna get even more luxury.

Not just lied to, gaslit.

If only they had a mammary museum. I bet it would be more popular.

Exactly, its like having a Ransomware hacker working directly for the government.

SSDI, Social Security Disability Insurance

SSI is Supplemental Security Income.

Without those payments they would just die I guess.

Yeah that’s pretty much the goal from the vicious freaks. Also, the payments for both systems are so low that plenty of them just die anyway as it is currently.

What I hate about AI art: How it’s based on stolen work. How it is purpose built to replace real, talented artists and devalue their labor. How it uses way more energy than it needs to and is pretty wasteful

What I love about AI art: Instant stupid shit for meme madness.

If AI art was all just stupid jokey shit like this that a friend of mine made when we were discussing how people were making Ghibli-fied versions of important moments in history, and we decided to go with “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” but make Mike Myers dressed as Austin Powers, I’d be okay with it entirely. It’s not for profit by devaluing artists and using this work instead of a real artists work, it’s just stupid shit that makes us laugh. Everything else aside, I can get behind stupid shit that makes us laugh. The rest of the issues with AI art suck though.

Someone’s gonna lose their job for telling the truth.

Trump was riding a wave of exhaustion with Democrats’ cultural overreach.

I’d meet people at parties, reading groups and “salons” who would whisper — or, when intoxicated, shout — that they could finally say what they really thought on issues such as gender identity and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives without fear of being ostracized.

The Washington Post can eat shit and so can Bezos for peddling this kind of slop.

The idea that these fucking assholes ever shut up about their backwards fucking opinions is a joke.

The people supporting progressive ideals have always been the ones shouted down and being told they are being divisive.

“They can finally say” my ass they never, ever shut the fuck up about how they feel. They just feel emboldened to be a legitimate fucking all-out asshole now is all.

This is, sadly, not shocking. They are going to send dissidents back to be murdered by Putin. Fucking assholes.

Corporate America, who the cops are actually here to protect, not us.

Well, I’m also personally of the opinion that violence being the first answer is a losing proposition in a surveillance enabled police state with the largest and most advance military in the world.

I think it’s a much better idea to organize on a national level mutual aid groups, community gardens, community doctors, community mesh-networks not connected to the internet for information sharing, people working outside of capitalism and then when enough of a support network is built, going all-in on a general strike. Violence will still happen anyway, but take the time to prepare parallel systems and starting from a defensive position instead of offensive is the smarter move.

I think with the massive boot of law enforcement, the surveillance tools they have, and the military backing them, starting by fighting is a fools errand that will be crushed quickly, mostly because there won’t be enough logistical planning. I’ve met enough antifa wannabes who just wanna go out and recklessly shoot shit to understand that it’s not organize enough.

We need to be organized at a community level to care for each other so people can feel supported enough to stand with each other.

Right, which is why I advocate for fewer protests and more community organizing so we can care for each other outside of these broken ass systems. People are going to wait until after the last minute to start organizing ways to protect and care for each other, but that’s America for you.

Season 3, episode 4.

From Wikipedia:

Douglas finds the love of his life in a journalist named April, but mishears that she used to be a man, thinking she said that she is from Iran. After learning the truth about April, Douglas breaks up with her, but their ensuing fist fight disrupts the shareholder meeting, crushing “the internet”, and causing panic. Later, Douglas, alone at home, regrets breaking up with April.

Channel 4 removed the episode from its streaming service on 5 October 2020 after complaints of transphobia regarding the reaction of Douglas to a trans character and Graham Linehan’s controversial opinions of the trans community.

It stuck with me because I really like Matt Berry and it disappointed me that he was down to make a show of beating the shit out of a trans woman for comedy.

Ehhhh, Season 1 and 2 were, and it fell off for me when Graham Linehan started pushing his anti-trans shit in season 3. Never even checked out season 4 because I was so put off.

Looks like the BBC even eventually pulled the episode in question from streaming.

I don’t expect to be here past that point so I haven’t looked that far ahead lol

Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’ll be gone in the second wave. Either dead from losing access to my cancer medications or dead in an El Salvadorian prison without my cancer medications.