By David Futrelle
A couple of days ago, ProPublica reporter Jessica Huseman tweeted out some advice on a hitherto unacknowledged peril of dating for (at least mostly) straight women in our digital age: when the seemingly normal dude you’re having coffee with suddenly, and for seemingly no reason, brings up Bitcoin.
While there were many Tweeters who seconded this advice, some of them mentioning their own Bitcoin date nightmares, not everyone who replied to Huseman agreed with what seems to me to be her eminently sensible dating advice.
“Is [the] goal to screen out passionate men working on one of the most important technologies of the next generation,” asked one fellow.
Er, yes?
“#Bitcoin bros deserve better, and by the time she realises this he’ll be unattainable for her,” warned another.
There were even some women standing up for the Bitbros — one of them going so far as to write an entire article about it for Bitcoinist, a website that seems to be devoted to constantly mentioning Bitcoin in any and all circumstances.
Christina Comben, whose articles for the site generally sport headlines like “TOP 5 CHEAPEST COUNTRIES TO MINE BITCOIN” and “3 REASONS WHY BITFINEX LEO TOKEN HAS FLOPPED” decided she needed to reassure the men in her audience that some ladies actually like cryptocurrency and the bros who talk about it on first dates.
After acknowledging that the Bitcoin community is pretty much a sausagefest — with only 5% of those in the business being female, according to one source — she plaintively assured the fellas that “NOT ALL WOMEN DISLIKE BITCOIN.”
“Don’t worry guys,” she wrote,
if bitcoin is your thing, it isn’t completely game over. Some women actually said they quite like it.
Her evidence? A handful of crypto-gals replying to Huseman on Twitter.
Comben then delved into the enigma that is Jessica Huseman: Woman Who Doesn’t Care to Hear About Bitcoin. “[A]lthough she seems to hate Bitcoin,” Combed wrote, seemingly baffled by Huseman’s existence, “she appears to be an extremely intelligent lady.”
Huseman, for her part, was considerably more delighted by Comban’s article than she is by cryptodudes on dates.
She now quotes the bit about being “an extremely intelligent lady” in her Twitter bio.
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I previously wrote:
And of course less than 24 hours later someone has fucked things up for me. Again.
Whoever is harassing me has apparently gotten bored of fucking with my hydro and switched back to trying to block my access to medication. The pharmacy is now refusing outright to honor my prescription — the new one, which has NON-ZERO refills left.
Even the I’d-have-to-pay-for-it-myself edition of the drug, in its little really inefficient environmentally wasteful overdone packaging on the shelves, is nowhere to be found at at least two major pharmacy chains here.
I don’t know where to get more, and I’m down to less than one month’s supply. Does anyone know what I can do about this?
I know there are other heartburn meds available, but the issue isn’t the heartburn. It’s those damnable leg cramps. Let’s recap:
A few years ago I started getting these terrible leg cramps. Ever since then I’ve been unwillingly in some sort of chess game in which every move I make to get rid of them is soon met with an intelligently-planned countermove. First, I increased my water intake, and they went away. But then somehow after a year or so they came back, resistant to increased water intake. I suffered with them for several years after that until I became prone to frequent heartburn and sought relief for that. The medication I was prescribed had the happy side-effect of somehow eliminating the cramps.
And ever since then something has been quite-systematically working very hard to keep me from being able to get more. First, when the initial prescription ran low on refills and I went to see my doctor to get more, the clinic was inexplicably closed, even though it was early afternoon on a weekday during their normal operating hours. Next time I could get out there they were open but informed me they’d decided, unilaterally and without notice, to drop me as a patient for no good reason. I was forced to go to the ER to see a doctor to get the renewal, and forced to wait several hours. That renewal inexplicably halved the dosage. When that proved still sufficient to keep the cramps at bay (but not the heartburn, which is prone to flare up again after about 12 hours), obviously my adversary took further action, which now looks like a widespread (at least this entire town) conspiracy to withhold the medication from me despite my having dotted all the is, crossed all the ts, and having a valid prescription from a doctor.
The fact that every time I successfully do something about those cramps, something makes a countermove means I am dealing with an intelligent adversary, acting deliberately and apparently out of pure malice and sadism, since I don’t see how forcing me to endure leg cramps benefits anybody’s bottom line.
That adversary has apparently at least the capability of a local mafia boss, because they can apparently whisper in the right ear and make any business in this town do their bidding, regardless of their normal mode of operations or their own financial interests: close for a day, dump me as a customer or patient, or stop stocking a product entirely, even one that’s been a reliable cash cow for them for decades.
I need to know all of the following, or at least how to find out all of the following because somehow I don’t think a mere Google search will suffice:
1. Who the hell is doing this to me, and why?
2. How the hell do I make them fucking stop?
3. How do I undo the last move they made, so I can get more of the medication that prevents those fucking cramps?
4. And, of course, how do I get all of this done in about 20 days or less?
Notably, I need 3 done within the 20 days, I need 2 done before they have time to make their next countermove after I get 3 done, and I need 1 done in order to get 2 done.
Any suggestions?
Surplus, seriously, SERIOUSLY, you DO NOT HAVE AN ADVESARY.
You need to talk to someone about this conviction you have. IT IS NOT NORMAL.
Shit sucks. SHIT SUCKS FOR EVERYONE. I am NOT going to relate how, when i am feeling low, things i would normally shrug off become day-ruiners or insurmountable problems, because i *have already* and you *never EVER listen*.
Iirc, you take zantac. Did you google it? There has been a massive recall.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/heartburn-medication-recall-explainer-1.5316327
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/oct/09/zantac-in-global-recall-over-unacceptable-levels-of-potential-carcinogen
The most important thing to take from this situation is that your thought process immediately went to something that is in NO WAY true.
Talk to someone. Stop these thoughts!!! This can’t be good for your quality of life.
@ Naglfar,
To the best of my knowledge, nothing else outside of the TERF stuff. However, I haven’t gone over everything she’s ever said publicly either, so she well could have said something else problematic without my knowing about it.
I personally have some quibbles about how she handled certain plot elements, especially Hermione and the house elves thing. I mean, why didn’t Rowling have Hermione ASK the house elves if they wanted to be free from serving the old wizarding houses and Hogwarts’ school, instead of taking it upon herself to free them? Why didn’t Dobby and/or Dumbledore take her aside and explain to her how her actions were p*****g off the rest the of the HEs’, and what they would prefer her to do to help their situation.
Seriously, that whole side plot could have been expanded to reveal more about how the magical non-humans interacted with the magical humans, both pro and con. Like, is the arrangement between the house elves and humans actually a form of slavery, or more like an employment contract – ‘if you do jobs X and Y for Z time, I will pay you A, B, and C’. That sort of thing.
Just make it clear that what would be good for the elves would likely not be good for a human (and hopefully avoid the ‘all SF&F alien races = RL human POC’ tropes), and it would be a good way to add more depth to what is a pretty intriguing fantasy world. At least in my opinion. YMMV on those points.
@Redsilkphoenix
I never thought about the elves that way. I assumed it was some sort of slavery, and that they would want to be free, like humans.
There are some definite racial undertones of the series now that I think about it a bit, in addition to some issues in the depictions of characters of different races.
Regarding her TERFiness, I don’t know that there’s anywhere it presents in the Harry Potter series (though I haven’t read it in a while, so maybe), but as mcbender here brought to our attention on their blog, she’s been a pretty obvious TERF in her other books.
@Rhuu:
How, then, do you explain the systematic nature of the obstruction I am experiencing? Move, countermove, move, countermove. I want to keep those cramps banished. Our civilization has the technological capability for this to happen, as has already been demonstrated. Therefore there is no inherent, “simply can’t-be-done” explanation for me to be having difficulty with this. If I did NOT have an adversary acting to oppose me I would therefore have solved this problem and it would have STAYED solved.
Why hasn’t it? The only alternative to “I have an adversary” would seem to be “There is something I am doing wrong, something very basic that other people nearly universally get right”. If that is your thesis then care to tell me EXACTLY WHAT I am doing wrong? Hypothetically, then, there is some very simple procedure I could be following that would solve my problem. So what is that procedure? Recite it.
Step 1: ____________________
Step 2: ____________________
Step 3: Pop a pill and cramps kept at bay for next 24h.
Go on. By your own hypothesis you can do this. If you can’t, then the adversary hypothesis is the only viable one, because it should be simple and it used to be that simple (in 2018) and civilization has not, to my knowledge, collapsed since then so it must still be that simple — absent active, motivated opposition, that is.
According to the date in the link you posted, that was well over a month ago — far more than enough time for fresh product to get to the retail end of the pipeline from the manufacturing one.
For the recall to (genuinely) be the reason would require all of the following highly implausible things to happen together (i.e., every single one, not any one):
1. All of the manufacturers simultaneously screw up in identical ways. Or, someone in antitrust is asleep at the switch and allowed a single one to monopolize a product that is not in patent anymore and hasn’t been for ages.
2. AND not ONE of those manufacturers, once notified, simply shut down and drained their equipment, scrubbed some vats clean, and then pushed “restart”.
3. In fact, not one of them got around to doing so for at least an entire month.
The only alternatives to that require conspiracies elsewhere.
Oh, and the thing you linked to mentions a voluntary recall. It should still be available somewhere then, shouldn’t it?
None of what you wrote, by the way, answers my original question:
What do I do — what buttons do I push, or what words do I say in whose ear — that will have the consequence that, before
2221 days have elapsed, I have a fresh supply of the stuff again?I’ll tell you what won’t be good for my quality of life. A resumption of those cramps won’t be good for my quality of life. Or quantity. They made the affected leg sore and wobbly for hours, and it had begun escalating to where it could be difficult to walk on it for as long as two days. If they come back, and that escalation continues, I will lose the ability to get supplies from in town without paying 2x over the odds, and sometime after that I will lose my home, and sometime after that, my life. LAST NIGHT was cold enough here to be unsurvivable without shelter. I can’t move closer without a big jump in rent that would also kill my finances. Car ownership is out of the question for the same reason. So is moving to a bigger city that might have an actual functioning bus service — between the rent increase and the cost of a bus pass, no go.
On that basis, plus the evident systematic nature of the obstacles that keep magically appearing in my path right after I’ve overcome the previous one, I have no choice but to conclude that someone out there is making a concerted effort to torture and eventually, after a few years, kill me.
But even if I can’t convince you of that, can I at least convince you, or someone, to answer this:
What do I do — what buttons do I push, or what words do I say in whose ear — that will have the consequence that, before
2221 days have elapsed, I have a fresh supply of the stuff again?@Surplus
That’s not the only alternative. Could the alternative maybe be “you’re having a run of very bad luck”?
I’m sorry, I don’t know much about how the Canadian healthcare system works so I can’t really offer solutions. Anyone else have any ideas for Surplus?
Trust me: you don’t want to go there.
That implies there are hardly any other people who ever struggle to resolve situations or problems similar to your own. How do you know that is the case?
You say that like you’re informing Rhuu of something they don’t already know. I don’t think Rhuu was trying to answer your original question, Surplus.
No one is ever going to want to help you if you continue to treat everyone who tries to help you or give you advice like crap. So, yeah, I’ve got a suggestion: STOP DOING THAT.
The alternative is that sometimes life sucks and sometimes you go through bad patches.
Doubtful. There have been multiple nominally-independent failures here. 1: the cramps appearing in the first place. So far as I know most people don’t have these. 2: the weird development of resistance to increased hydration. 3: the closure of the clinic the first day I tried to refill the prescription. 4: the clinic dumping me as a patient the second day I tried to refill the prescription. 5: the ER doctor halving the dosage, inexplicably. 6: this so-called “recall” that has lasted far longer than it normally takes for a bad batch of $(PRODUCT) to work its way out of a supply chain and become yesterday’s news.
This is, probability-wise, the equivalent of winning multiple lottery jackpots, except bad. If it’s luck, I have exceptionally terrible luck. Far more likely someone has done these things to me intentionally.
Oh, and arguably also 7: the allegedly “voluntary” recall not apparently actually being voluntary. Oh, and 8: the scope of the recall being higher than the article says. The article said 150mg pills from a specific manufacturer were affected. Why didn’t the pharmacy fill my prescription with ones from a different manufacturer? Or with twice as many 75mg pills? Why aren’t the allegedly-unaffected 75mg pills even on the shelf anywhere?
Do you understand why I do not trust any claims anyone is making about the actual cause of this? For starters, there is no way a manufacturing defect made a clinic close an extra day one week, or drop me as a patient, let alone retroactive to months before the defect even happened. And the so-called “recall” isn’t behaving anything like a product recall normally does, i.e. being limited to a few lot#s of a specific product from a specific manufacturer made around a specific point in time instead of affecting, seemingly, every instance of a particular product everywhere from any manufacturer, retroactive to all existing stockpiles and extending forward indefinitely as well. This seems a lot less like a “recall”, in other words, and a lot more like the drug in question has been de-facto banned outright and the claimed reason is just a cover story.
Oh, and that claimed reason is indeed quite bogus. I’ve done a little bit of research and apparently the contaminant allegedly spooking everyone is found in a single hot dog or ham sandwich or similar meal in larger numbers of nanograms than are in an entire pill bottle of the “contaminated” drug.
It’s not a credible explanation for making it completely unavailable to the public, let alone for keeping it that way long past the amount of time it should have taken to clean a few vats and restart a production process somewhere … and even that is pretending that the entire worldwide supply of the stuff is coming from, not even one single manufacturer, not even one single individual factory even, but one single individual production line AT that factory!
So yes, I am calling BS on the whole thing. Ignoring the various dodgy aspects of this so-called “recall”, from the scope being far larger than the normal “these six or seven lot#s of this particular size and formulation with these expiration dates from Company A” to the tissue-thin contamination story, there’s still the matter of all the OTHER obstacles that were strewn in my path first. Where did those come from, and why?
Unless someone can offer a coherent, alternative explanation for the inordinate difficulty I’ve had in obtaining what was, at the time, a bog-standard widely-prescibed ordinary medication, then the only sane conclusion has to be that it’s an intentional game of keep-away.
Reminder: Except for the very first time it was initially prescribed to me, at which time I presume whoever wants to force me to endure those cramps had no more idea than I did that it happened to cure them as a side effect, EVERY single time, EVERY SINGLE TIME I have taken action to obtain more something has gone wrong. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. If not because of some adversary, then WHY? Bad luck is not consistent the way this is. A person with normal luck would go to the pharmacy, get another bottle, go to the doctor, get a renewal, go to the pharmacy, get another bottle, and maybe sometimes they’d hit all the red lights on the way to the pharmacy, and maybe one time five years in the pharmacy would be out of stock the day they went and they’d have to return tomorrow, and maybe one of their appointments with their doctor would have been rescheduled because the doctor took ill for a few days. A person with severely BAD luck would, instead of succeeding 99% of the time at these very basic and commonplace tasks, perhaps only succeed 50% of the time, or if it was truly exceptional bad luck perhaps even only 20% of the time.
So who succeeds exactly ZERO percent of the time?
Either someone with not merely even exceptionally bad luck but impossibly bad luck, or someone not ditzy or even cackhanded but so spectacularly incompetent that they would in reality be an institutionalized ward of the state … or someone who is being deliberately sabotaged by someone else.
Explain by zero percent success rate in any other way. I’m all ears. Please. Because I’d rather there was some more tractable explanation (and fix) than “someone with at least as much clout as The Godfather has it in for me”. But the very fact that still nobody has actually uttered said explanation (and fix) makes me increasingly skeptical that any other explanation exists for what is happening to me. (And that is ignoring every other area of my life where I am also consistently, and persistently, subjected to unusually negative outcomes…)
Explain the more general pattern that any time I do anything to better my situation the universe seems to fight back, consciously. If it (and the people in it) were indifferent, that wouldn’t happen, now, would it? If it seems to actively work to restore the status quo ante (when it isn’t actively making things worse, such as when the cramps mysteriously started happening in the first place), then surely that means someone in it is actively working against me.
Explain it in any other way, if you can. And then tell me how to get more ranitidine, without any exorbitant price tags being involved. Or else concede my points. Any other response than one of those two alternatives is intellectually dishonest on its face.
Surplus, this community is not your punching bag.
Where do you see me punching anyone, even metaphorically? Unless you consider disagreeing with or expressing skepticism with someone’s claims to be “punching”, even metaphorically.
Um, no. My life kind of went to shit last summer. While it’s far from perfect now (the increasing likelihood that my mom is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s being the main issue) it’s gotten much better. It’s actually not that uncommon for a bunch of things to go wrong at once. Last summer, I was broke, depressed, unemployed, and dealing with a shit ton of family problems and was uninsured. Now I have a job that I don’t really love, but am doing well at and am advancing in and pays enough to live on and has benefits. So I feel better about myself and am now planning a trip abroad next year that I’m getting excited about.
It’s just how life goes. You have ups. You have downs.
This isn’t “a bunch of things going wrong at once”. This is the same single thing going wrong over and over and over again, every single time I take any action about it whatsoever. So either that one thing is genuinely very difficult (and yet, other people taking medications chronically don’t seem to find it difficult in this way — though some find it difficult for financial reasons, especially in the US), or something very unusual is going on here.
Now, can someone please answer at least one of the following two things?
1. What do I do — what buttons do I push, or what words do I say in whose ear — that will have the consequence that, before
2221 days have elapsed, I have a fresh supply of the stuff again*?or
2. Where would be a better place to ask item 1 above*?
* Must be free or very low cost. Must not require a credit card or travel beyond a twenty block radius. Online interaction preferred to telephone voice calls or in-person, especially if the latter requires two interactions, one to establish an appointment and a second to actually attend the appointment, except for physical purchase of goods, where in-store interaction is preferred because no credit card, but walk-in is vastly preferred over appointment-required. Offer void in the province of Quebec. 😛
WWTH – yeah. XD
Ask the pharmacy.
Directly.
In person.
Explain that you are running low and they are the only thing that works on you if necessary.
They don’t mind ordering in if it’s not a scheduled delivery. Money is money.
Avoid mention of conspiracies.
This is why no one ever replies to you surplus. If you are this rude and dont listen online, what is it like in real life? Maybe you are rude to all these people too and angry and dont listen? People dont want to help if someone is rude and angry and dont listen.
I have 2 prescriptions, I go to several pharmacies sometimes I have to travel across the city, because the pharmacy doesn’t have it. There is a lady who comes to the pharmacy near my house who tried 10 pharmacies and cant find one with the drugs she needs. This is a common problem for many people. It is not someone trying to hurt you on purpose. If I ask why I got sick in 2017 with something which makes me want to hurt myself just to make it stop, then I will go crazy. No person gave me that illness, no thing gave me that illness, it just started and now I have to deal with it. It sucks a lot when I have to go months without the drugs because no pharmacy has it and then I have to leave the country for 4 months to work. But it is not a single person who is doing this to me, it is many, many broken systems, corruption and poverty which does this to me.
But I know nothing anyone here will persuade you becuase you very clearly have the one belief and that is all. You are never satisfied with the answers here and also lash out at people and hurt them and are rude here, so of course you will never get the result or answer you want. Maybe you dont want the right answer who knows? Maybe you just want to complain and then lash out at people and tell them they are wrong and that your life is the worst. But it’s not going to help you. It will make you more angry and more isolated and it will not solve your problem. This happen every time you ask for advice so I dont really know what else to say. We cant help you if you dont want us to help.
“Unless someone suggests another free or low-cost place where I can ask people to magically solve all of my problems in an instant, I am entitled to keep asking the people here to do so and to treat them like garbage when they don’t.”
Surplus, your belief that you are being deliberately targeted by an intelligent being is harming you.
I could tell you about some of my own really unpleasant healthcare experiences so that you could see that this isn’t just something that you go through, but strangely enough I don’t want to listen to you tell me that my experiences were no big deal, actually.
OMG, did someone just respond to “where can I get the pills that prevent me from being tortured a couple of times a week” with a tone argument? Here of all places?
As for talking directly to the pharmacist, I tried that on Thursday and it didn’t work. I did, indeed, even suggest direct-ordering more from the manufacturer, to no avail. They were having none of it. As far as I can tell they behaved as if it was verboten to obtain and sell on the stuff, even though, again, this so-called “recall” (which, again, doesn’t behave like any other product recall in recorded history) is supposedly a “voluntary” one.
So …
What do I do — what buttons do I push, or what words do I say in whose ear — that will have the consequence that, before
222120 days have elapsed, I have a fresh supply of the stuff again?Surplus, you have no adversary.
YOU
HAVE
NORMAL
LUCK.
… I was going to share some more personal details about my own medical stuff, but no. For the response i get, it’s not worth it.
Also, let me break this “”””””voluntary”””””” recall down. You are telling me, WITH A STRAIGHT FACE, that you expect pharmacies to keep *and dispense* medicine that has been contaminated with something that causes *cancer*???????
Stepping back from the fact that generally people don’t want to kill others *with cancer*, could you imagine the *lawsuits*?????
The fact that they don’t have the other strengths, maybe you’re not the first patient to come in needing a refill, and they are out? Did you ask if they could order some in? Call them and ask if not!
Also, how long do you think it takes to replace *the world’s supply* of something, and then ship it out? Because apparently you think it’s less than three weeks.
… I honestly skipped most of your reply, bit then felt bad and went back to read it. In it, you claim a conspiracy to ban this drug from the entire world.
…And i just can’t.
You’re taking out your frustrations on me, demanding i govive you a *magic wand* to solve your problems. It doesn’t exist.
Frankly, no one here deserves this bullshit from you.
Also, seconding what Valentin said. You’re rude AF here, and i’m wondering if you’re the same irl. This isn’t invalidating your concerns because of the *tone* you used. It’s telling you that one of these magic ‘levers’ you continuously go on about IS TONE. BE POLITE, FFS.
I’ve had a pharmacy hold medication hostage, before. I need it for living. Do *I* have an adversary, or was it just shit people being shitty???
It’s not a tone argument- what you sre doing is not tone, it’s the words you use, the way you talk down on people and dismiss them like they are stupid, this has effects. The effects is no one wants to help you if all you do is say all their advice is shit and tell them like they are stupid. That is not “tone” that is just abusive behaviour.
@Surplus
FWIW I don’t think there needs to be a conspiracy for things to be shit. I noticed you talk about capitalism in similar terms. The so-called invisible hand doesn’t need to be sentient. The evils of today’s right-wing don’t need genius or planning or even any semblance of coordination. Trump is probably the most prominent and blatant examples of this. The system is shit, and it’s shit for different people in different ways. I think most people here have jobs that they’re currently working and have some choice in who they live with because of that. I don’t have that. There are many reasons for me to believe that it is something along the lines of a conspiracy. Especially this feeling resonates with me a lot:
“There is something I am doing wrong, something very basic that other people nearly universally get right”
Apparently the average time it takes for an unemployed person to get a job is 2-3 months.
Yet I have met a lot of people online who are constantly crowdfunding to stay afloat. The fact doesn’t diminish my own problems, but it is something I think about when I feel like I’m alone in my problems. That and there are a lot of potential problems with what I wrote right above there. To name just one, averages have a tendency of being exceedingly misleading when it comes to measuring social problems, precisely because of how fucked up and skewed everything is under late capitalism. Not to mention, it’s questionable who’s being counted to produce such an average. People who aren’t looking for work don’t get counted in these things usually (there’s a term, I just forgot it).
I don’t know what point I’m ultimately trying to make actually… I just felt like I had to get some of this off my chest.
@Surplus
I have a question for you. Does it matter what is causing your misfortune?
Whether it’s simple bad luck, or a malicious system that chews up and spits out thousands of people, or one particular mob boss who has gone out of his way to make you specifically miserable, or God Himself deciding to fuck with you, would this change your approach in any way, shape or form?
If it’s a human person who’s somehow powerful enough to remotely cause you chronic leg cramps and organize massive conspiracies against you specifically, then you aren’t going to be able to stop them, are you? So what good would identifying them do? What good does focusing on this mystery cause of your problems do?
Instead of spending so much energy focusing on how improbable something is and how it’s evidence of some vast conspiracy against you, why not focus on what you are able to do? Instead of spending so much effort shooting down any and all potential sources of help, why not try some of them? Instead of being a dick to people trying to help you and demanding that they immediately fix your all problems to your exact satisfaction with no further effort on your part, why not treat others with respect? It will probably lead to much better results with customer service reps, at the very least.