I believe 211 works everywhere in the US. Call them (if not call your county's health and human services). They have access to all the health and human services for your county, and can direct you to all the people that can help you. IMO it's much better than blindly calling around to different departments/services yourself. The ones here in San Diego are really helpful, and can tell you about things you don't even know are possible.

Not to diminish anything enlisted woman have gone through, but this is by no means unique to military service. I am a women, who works in a very male dominated field, and the hostility, belittling, sexism, etc I have to endure, that my male counterparts don't is massive.

Contact them one last time, and try to get them to refund the extra day, and personally, I'd be going for the original rental fee as well (everything you paid to them) for the headache of the whole deal. It's their truck and they are required to maintain it/inspect it BEFORE the customer takes it.

If they refuse to meet you where you are ok with it all, then do a chargeback with your bank. Give the bank every single detail you can, including EVERYTHING you listed here, and any other info you can remember/have. Chargebacks almost always go in the customers favor. I personally would have been LIVID if I was forced to sleep in a moving truck in a isolated, unsafe rest area (I'm a woman though, so these things can be scary for me).

Also, not to pile insult to injury, but next time, make sure to go back inside, and make them give you a whole new truck, to avoid anything like this in the future.

Ok, probably going to get downvoted, but here we go. I HATE hate hate hate children and especially babies. They cause a visceral reaction in me and it’s not good.

Their awful high pitched squeals, their sticky filthy hands, their germ carrying drippy snotty faces, their awful baby talk that doesn’t make sense, their smell (barf), that awful cooing/laugh I could go on forever. Add in the terrifying idea of carrying one of those parasites in my for 9 months and then popping it out, while destroying my body? No fucking thank you.

Add in that if you say you’re childfree people ALWAYS try to convince you that you need one. “Oh when are you and husband having baybeeeeees?” Never. “What!?!?!? Why!?!?!? They are soooooooo pwecous”. “You need to have at least one. They are miracles, and gods gifts.” “Who will take care of you when you’re old, if you don’t have kids. How will you have purpose in your life?” Idk Karen, maybe I have other interests, and hobbies, or volunteer. I’m fully satisfied with my life WITHOUT kids. Of course this doesn’t ever shut people up.

There are very few places on the internet, and really anywhere, where childfree people can actually, openly say how they feel. If you say things like “god won’t someone shut that screaming brat up” in public, best case you get the look of death. More likely a bunch of people chastising you for not being sympathetic to the poor mom, whose REALLY stressed out, obviously.

All of that eventually breed the comments like “I’m going to put the baby in the microwave”. I know I’ve had to resort to it a few times with extra pushy people, who pester me every time they see me about kids. You get macabre enough and everyone eventually stops asking. Plus hyperbole is fun.

Absolutely. Ask Apple. Even the “VIP” all end up in the spam folder all the time too, and there’s no way to tell it “this isn’t spam”.

I respectfully disagree

this kind of reductionist summary of the very real conflict of priorities does not help the situation.

scientifically speaking, it's 100% accurate. Just because imaginary sky daddy tells some people that it's already a thinking, breathing, living person doesn't matter.

If being unborn really counted for nothing, we wouldn’t have any laws that restricted action based on long-term effect. (For example: laws to prevent climate change, to prevent cluster bombing, etc)

We don't really though. There are no real punishments for any of those actions, or anything to actually stop people from doing them. Yes, we do have laws saying you can go to jail if you do drugs while pregnant, BUT that's because there is an INTENTION to carry to term, and have an actual human happen, that will be great affected by those drinking/drug uses during pregnancy. If you are so early on that you can/are aborting, SCIENTIFICALLY it's a clump of cells, with no chance of being a human at that time.

The abortion debate is one of those uncommon instances where two conflicting rights meet.

yeah....... not really. If I'm forced to carry the parasite, I have the only say in what happens to it. I'm a living breathing already existing human being. The cells are not, and they cannot live outside of my body, so please take them out, and let them do their thing. Please let's see what happens.

However, it’s important to keep in mind that this decision isn’t a law of nature-- no more than “killing in self defense is allowed” is a law of nature; these are societal judgments.

nature is pretty indiscriminate in what it kills, but humans have added their own beliefs, which vary wildly from location to location. Regardless, the government and especially religion should have zero say. Abortion is a medical procedure, whether you, imaginary sky daddy, or some religious zealot thinks otherwise, and should be treated as such.

In fact, you probably believe this to a degree when it comes to “stand your ground” laws, as implementing in places like Florida or Texas.

Not related, so not really relevant to this topic, but generally, as far as I can tell, those laws are simply and excuse to kill for the sake of killing, and because the person already WANTED to.

It’s important to keep in mind that there is no objectively right or wrong answer; if there were, it wouldn’t be a conflict point.

Except scientifically, and objectively, there is a right answer. Certain people just don't like it, but it doesn't change the reality of it. That's like saying I don't like religion so no one can practice it. Doesn't work, does it?

It necessitates a dialog to convince people to agree with you, and dismissing the argument as foolish doesn’t do that, which means it will remain an “undecided” conflict point for longer than it needs to.

I'm pretty sure, based on historical data, and observation, we all know that a respectful discourse isn't going to happen, and if it did, it wouldn't sway the party in the wrong. Also, at this point, I do not believe there are any "undecided" people left. Either you follow reality and science, or imaginary sky daddy. Those seem to be the only two options left in US society. Other countries see the value, and necessity, and treat abortion as such, but we aren't one of those countries.

I totally don't miss all the flashing shit, and awful music on every site. Nor do I miss super long load times, but I do miss the more personal feeling. I also miss feeling like every click wasn't someone trying to get me to give them my money, or steal my info. Don't get me wrong, there were toxic parts of the internet back then, but I feel like its everywhere now.

Oh, and I'll never miss that dial up sound, or dropping because someone picked the phone up. I also know popups and ads existed back then, but I feel like every site I go to now, I spend at least 45 seconds trying (often unsuccessfully) to close all the pop up and ads, just to attempt to read an article. Of course more pop up if you scroll to keep reading too.

Basically, I mostly agree with the article.

So afaik love bombing requires you to be trying to get something out of it. Like if you were an asshole, and threw a chair through a window, and raged for an hour and stormed out of the house. Then you come with flowers, and candy, and some big elaborate date, in order to get them to forgive you and stay. That's love bombing. You're manipulating the person into thinking you'll never do it again, and you'll change, and all that BS.

IIRC it also applies to people who neg others. Say a whole mess of shitty things to someone, to bring their self esteem down, and then throw a compliment every so often, to keep them hooked.

It sounds like you really felt the way you said, and didn't have an ulterior motive, so love bombing doesn't apply.

Yeah, totally in agreement. Dude was always a horrible, dumb, asshole.

I mean, he wanted to blow a nuke up in the atmosphere of mars, to change said atmosphere to be habitable to humans.

He also overrode engineers on Tesla's autonomous driving, and forced them to only use cameras, and zero sensors (like every other manufacturer knows doesn't work)

He bought twitter for far too much, and we are witnessing him kill it slowly.

I could really go on and on. He's always been a moron, and a horrible person. I really don't understand why anyone ever thought otherwise.

Oh, and should we mention that he tried to cosplay as a poor person, who started these multibillion dollar companies from nothing (this one is kinda disputed, but the only source that claims that he really was broke is musk himself)

Eh, it's still required to work on cars/engines. Thankfully we work on smaller vehicles (Mazda/Nissan mostly) and not some big ass diesel stuff.

I can "engineer" my way out of most situations, and have been very successful accomplishing things that many men can't, because they can't "think outside the box". What I mean by that is that I have to approach things differently. I have to understand things more completely sometimes, so I can work my way around the lack of brute force, where many men can just push/lift/torque something without thought, and they get complacent. That allows me to see different solutions to things that may stump others.

That said, I have found instances where I am just not physically big, or strong enough to do something, and need help.

I also have the benefit of being much smaller, so I can get into places a lot of men can't. It has its benefits and drawbacks.

Can definitely do an AMA, but not sure how interesting it would be.

We have built multiple kinds. We have build engines/cars for Rolex GrandAm, Drifting (Formula D), Land Speed Racing (we actually hold a bunch of records in our class), King of Hammers/Baja type off-road (engines/wiring only, not chassis), and then the more casual type stuff for the weekend warrior types (autoX, desert toys, etc).

Haha, yeah I'm DEFINITLY not "normal" or "well functioning mentally".