Thats How It Is On This Bitch Of An Earth

so people were immediately confused, and that confusion turned to anger because martial law means people can get arrested much more easily, and also, what the general fuck? and protests began at parliament, and the combination of protestors and police were blocking the way in.

and then 190 parliament members showed up in the middle of the night, at least some of them had to to jump a fence and/or evade police not letting them in, and they got inside and voted 190-0 to un-declare martial law. not a single person there voted to maintain martial law, and not a single person who would have voted to maintain martial law bothered to show up. that vote happened at around 1am.

and within a few hours the president announced that fine, he will undo martial law. and then he undid it. and then people started calling for his resignation or impeachment.

UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting (4 December 2024)

*stares directly into the camera*

Blue Cross denied my health insurance for an emergency MRI for a suspected brain bleed after a major chiropractic injury because they illegally dropped me from my plan when my immigration status changed. I am still waiting to hear the outcome of this almost eight years later.

I’m currently in an open dispute with Blue Cross along with several other thousand people in Minnesota because they refused to cover the cost of epi pens, a life saving medication for those of us with anaphylactic allergies. The reason I was given when I asked about it was “there’s no proof you need it.”

I have been waiting to hear the outcome of this case for over five years.

Blue Cross were actively letting me starve to death in 2018-2019 when my mast cell disorder got progressively worse. I was presenting to the ER with idiopathic anaphylaxis. Blue Cross suggested psychiatric care, much to the annoyance of the ER doctors who kept having to save me.

When I argued against a Blue Cross doctor who wasn’t a mental health care provider for saying, “you’re probably just bipolar” and refused to take the ridiculously high dose of SSRIs she wanted to put me on, I was slapped with a “patient is non compliant” label that followed me all the way to my new provider who was utterly baffled by it and promptly had it removed.

I wasn’t non compliant. I just wouldn’t let their neglect and ableism kill me.

In short, Fuck Blue Cross.

Fuck them all the way to hell and then some. They’re a money grabbing, soul sucking drain on humanity and the fact that they’d even consider something like refusing to cover extra anesthesia when a patient is already on the operating table is a testament to their evil.

Technically it doesn’t need to be aerated, but anaerobic bacteria, which don’t need oxygen, produce much stinkier byproducts during this breakdown process, so most decent-sized urban wastewater treatment plants do aerate in order to spare the neighbors. Very simple rural wastewater plants may just pump the wastewater into a lagoon—an outdoor pond, usually with a liner of some kind—and just let whatever grows in there do so.

As the wastewater is breaking down, it separates into a layer of muck (sludge) and a layer of cleaner water. Large wastewater treatment plants have a series of stages with clearer and cleaner water emerging from each one. Small plants may have a series of lagoons or just one. The more stuff you have in your wastewater that’s not poop (say maybe you accept discharge from a local factory, or there’s a restaurant district with a lot of food waste in their greywater), the longer and harder it is to treat.

Discharge from wastewater treatment plants to natural water bodies is heavily regulated and monitored for quality. In the US, it’s regulated by the EPA, and they take it seriously. The finishing step involves testing your discharge to make sure it’s within your approved discharge limits. This is the only step where a chemical treatment is commonly added: a little chlorine, to kill off the last of your microbes. But some plants use constructed wetlands or sand filters instead. If they do apply chlorine, they also have to take it back out before releasing the water, so that they don’t upset the ecosystem the water will be released to.

(If you have wastewater that’s mostly human waste and a correctly sized plant, you shouldn’t technically need this step. The microbes should be slowly precipitating out of the water along with the sludge. But things like high volume, cold temperatures, and complex effluent can make those benchmarks hard to hit without a finishing step.)

MORE COOL STUFF ABOUT WASTEWATER:

DID YOU KNOW? Potassium, an important component in fertilizer, is actually mined out of the earth? Did you know potassium deposits are running low? DID YOU KNOW POTASSIUM IS A WASTEWATER BYPRODUCT!?

DID YOU KNOW? Some large plants can trap and clean methane from their wastewater and use it for power?

DID YOU KNOW? The precipitated sludge can be further treated and used for fertilizer? I particularly liked the plant that was using it to fertilize fast-growing trees for the paper trade.

DID YOU KNOW? Many wastewater plant operators have a protective—if sometimes frustrated—relationship with their microbes, which they call “the bugs”, and include not just bacteria but also other microorganisms like algae and daphnia. The bugs are the workhorses of the wastewater plant: if their ecosystem becomes imbalanced, everyone’s job gets harder. I doubt they’d appreciate this, but in my mind, wastewater treatment operators are microbe herders. Though I suppose thinking of them as bog technicians is also accurate.

Also, in addition to chemical runoff and other discharge being problems, one of the worst things you can do to fuck up this process is to pour grease down the drain. Please don't do that!

remember, “flushable” wipes

AREN’T. Not ever.