From the photo, they look pretty easy to swim under. Just a waste of money, plastic and rusting metal for posturing more culture wars.

This looks like an illustration or AI, did you put a filter on it?

I wasn’t directly attacked but my friend and I had the same experience in our 60% Trump area.

We weren’t together when each incident happened, but they’re so similar I’ll describe them together.

We were just at the checkout: me at a convenience store; my friend at a major grocery store chain.

So, we couldn’t reasonably move away. We had to stand there to pay for our purchases.

An old man encroached my space; an old woman encroached my friend’s space. We both politely asked them to step back for social distancing, and they refused.

I wish I had my friend’s ability to think and speak on his feet. After he checked out, he told the old lady “I asked for you to do something, that cost you nothing. All you had to do was take a few steps back. I hope in the future, if you ask someone the same, they treat you like you did to me.”

As for me? Even though I just said my request and didn’t respond further, the guy was a huge jerk who tailgated me for several miles in his huge pickup truck. Like headlights in my mirror tailgating… during the day.

Who tf cares that much? Honestly… just take a few steps back. Doesn’t cost you anything, like my friend said.

The day after the 2016 election, I sent an email to the guy who contracts most of my services. He’s also one of my best friends. It was in response to a job we were working on, so I cc’d his assistant.

Basically said I was disappointed about the outcome of the election, then got into the job specifics.

From his response, I knew I fucked up. He just said he was glad the election was over.

I never liked his assistant anyways, but I looked up her voter registration and she’s Republican. And she’s totally the Trump type, though I hadn’t thought about it before.

She’s been pretty much on the warpath for me ever since. I provide a great service at a good price, so she keeps me around. Plus some clients know me and would possibly revolt if I were taken off their jobs. I think she’s been disparaging me to them for any misstep that I make.

I suspect she asks me for quotes and gives projects out to anyone who bids lower.

This was never the case with my friend; if I made a bid too low or too high he’d ask me to requote it. Yes,** if he thought my bid was too low, he’d tell me to charge more.**

Not so with this monster. She’s nickle and diming me for everything.

And now my friend’s health has taken a turn for the worse, and she’s in charge.

God I wish I never sent that stupid email.

To ensure the authenticity and security of the program, contributors will need to provide verification information, including their email addresses, personal details, and tax and bank account information.

Love it. Last sentence especially.

Wtf is uber ambulance?

And thanks for your service.

I stopped going to a dentist because her office looked like Trump campaign headquarters. Signs and shit everywhere. She otherwise seemed nice and competent but hell no.

Uh… it’s ok sir, you can just keep the money.

Glad you asked.

Short answer: gambling

Long answer: us kids were starting high school and he knew college was after that, so he needed to figure out how to come up with some money to help us. He was good at math, so someone suggested he play the stock market.

He started off investing “fake” money (just his own personal ledger) and did pretty good. So he invested small amounts and continued to do well. He finally decided to borrow money from the bank, which is how the story came about.

He actually did REALLY well; paid off the loan, got a bigger one, paid that off, etc, until he had enough of his own money to keep investing. He beat the S&P every year, he had a talent for it.

But he really didn’t enjoy it, he said it was a lot of work to keep up with the markets and how they interacted with each other. He kept it up for a few years after we finished college until he had a comfortable nest egg and quit.

He only paid for half our college, as a matter of principle he wanted us to come up with the other half. I still have loans to pay off but it was a huge help.

Now he hates capitalism and doesn’t do any investing at all. He used to have some safe mutual funds but he’s jaded about the state of the world, he doesn’t want any part of the system.