awesome morning in awesome nation-state:
-- tried to get insulin; had to pay out of pocket because former employer fucked up paperwork and never told me. and health insurance is tied to employment in the US. and diabetes meds aren't subsidized.
-- bike by city center, cops doing their morning scolding/intimidation of the two dozen homeless people that sleep near the steps/entrance of federal courthouse since city outlawed them from laying/sitting elsewhere
-- guy on bus watching insta clips of based-fascist vtubers
-- had to fill-out annual department hire paperwork at HR at school, there's a printed-out sign that says something about "the US Department of Homeland Security now REQUIRES that blah blah blah" with a big scary emblem
-- returning paperwork to counter, HR is like "you didn't fill out a SELECTIVE MILITARY SERVICE sheet?" and i was like "but i'm legally female at state/fed level?" in half-jest because may as well fill it out to avoid government scrutiny, and she's like "but you weren't always?" (how sure are you?) and i'm like "well i'm over 26 years of age" and she's like "well just to be safe" and then i was like "is there anything else the US Department of Homeland Security and/or armed forces would like from me?" but i was too deadpan for joke to land and she just went "i don't know?"
-- sit down to fill out some docs and a new foreign student is being guided through paperwork by an HR person. student is from Vietnam. he asks if he can claim a dependent for taxes. HR person is like "why, aren't you alone?" and he's like "i have nine-month-old daughter and a wife?" and she's like "oh well as a migrant here for under [x amount] of years, your wife and child don't technically count as dependents, so no"
-- biking to campus through super-sanitized "progressive" neighborhood. home with fancy landscaping obviously calculated to superficially appear somewhat in synch with local region landscape yet all shrubs/flowers actually from Europe and team of four guys just unloading pesticides all over the manicured yard (right next to "natural area" hiking trailhead)
-- frown and turn head other direction, directly across street and a cop is parked at the curb just sitting in driver's seat giggling and watching shit on his phone in like a giant military-esque black SUV
