This is true, I have not. Iāve witnessed them mooching food from feral cats though. No one of either species was uptight about sharing a free meal. I canāt imagine raccoons being so chill if ā¦ I dunno, a groundhog ā¦ moved in on their supply.
I never have had a problem with raccoons Iāve encountered, but they always had room to escape. I parked in my apartment space which had a kind of wall halfway around it , the possum was caught between me , my car and the wall so neither of us had a way to escape except for me to back up ..which I did .as quickly as possible without spooking the poor thing more than it was already . My son was right behind me and I almost fell on top of him while trying to get away but not scare him either .
Did not want to get bit by a possum that night .
Oh dear, a possum that didnāt want to play possum!
I surprised one in our trash can one morning when I was taking out the kitchen trash. It didnāt move. Husband and I made some noise. Possum was still motionless. I put the trash bag down by the door and went back inside. Went back out 20 mins later and tried again. Possum was still curled up in the bottom of the can. I called animal control to report a sick - or possibly dead - possum. AC dude came over awhile later and found it still curled up. AC dude tipped the trash can on its side. Possum remained motionless. AC dude whacked the bottom of the can with a broom. Possum took off like a bat out of hell. AC dude set my trash can upright and said āAnd thatās why they call it playing possum.ā
Raccoons en masse are terrifying little gangsters. About 10 years ago my sister-in-law was living with us. Our house had a walk-out basement, with an outdoor flight of steps going to the back patio and the yard beyond. It was suburbia, but a liminal space, with a big tree-filled lots, and some undeveloped lots, and conserved areas and a fishing creek and trails all within a couple hundred yards of our house. The kitchen door also opened onto the patio, maybe 20 feet away from the steps going to the basement. We were used to wildlife passing through, and aside from feeding and TNRing the aforementioned feral cats, we let the rest do their wild thing.
So one summer night my sister-in-law went out to the patio to have a smoke. She sat there for maybe 20 minutes, looking out over the yard, enjoying the quiet and the night sky. Then she turned her gaze toward the basement steps - and on the slate wall dividing the stairwell from the patio sat a row of raccoons like a chorus line, maybe a dozen of them, looking toward her, with their little forepaws held up like they were begging. She gasped or said āoh!ā or something and stood up to go back into the kitchen - and they started chattering their clicky little raccoon teeth at her.
She sort of backed up to the kitchen door, came inside, and told us about it the next day. She said sheād never been so creeped out by something that wasnāt human.
They also eat ticks and are a lot less likely to be rabid because of their high body temp. Unlike raccoons, which I will admit are a tad cuter (they are one of the wild animals most likely to be rabid)
Turncoat. Go back to wherever your family came from I guess. Itās so god damn simple to sell your own country out, flaws and all, on Reddit for a few upvotes.
Iām in Portugal atm. Iāve talked to all sorts of people dying to get out have more opportunities. They ask me all sorts of positive questions about the US. I answer truthfully. We have our issues. But you can be a millionaire whenever you like.
Itās not hard. Most just doubt themselves and never try. Iāve gained a million. Lost half. Trying to gain again. Iāve never worried about healthcare, Iāve benefited from Obama era taxes that didnāt tax a dime of my Capital gains (yeah thatās right. Your boy Obama gave people like me a FREE RIDE on capital gains. 75k a year? Not one cent went to the fed. Funny how most politicians are within that category. Soo much for taxing the rich.)
Tell me more about being a millionaire whenever I like? I'm an ignorant pleb who's dying to become better educated on the matter so I don't live and die in poverty. What did I miss and where do I start?
Find a niche. You have more information available to you than ever before. Hell I went to school with the guy who made canned water a billion dollar hit (Liquid Death). CANNED WATER. Thatās all it took!!
I run a Jiu Jitsu gym and got in when the getting was good. Made smart investments that came from my students who were investors and racked it in until Covid.
That whole thing really cost the shit outta me but thatās the game I guess.
I tell you what. Start small. Go to a Jiu Jitsu gym. Just train. Make yourself a bit tougher and stronger, more resilient. Thatās not even the best part. The people in the gym are all doing the same thing. No one (well most no one) trains a hard martial art and is going nowhere. It attracts all positive moving people. From auto mechanics to hedge fund managers to the autistic kid who canāt hold eye contact but smokes everyone on the mat.
Simply, put yourself in a place where successful people are. A lot these āclubsā are not for us dirt of the earth types (I certainly didnāt grow up with measure of silver spoon) but a Jiu Jitsu gym is one place you can find a Joe Rogan or mark zuckerburg or the asshole from Tool.
Yeah those are likely not at the local gym, but they werenāt at mine either in Amish PA. But thatās where I got my start.
Have faith in yourself and others you train with. Take some risks without over playing your hand. Listen to good advice and youāll be ok. Youāll make mistakes sure. But you could end up being very happy with life.
So just to summarize. Hope to find a club in a decent enough area whose membership is still affordable to you, in an age of greedflation, where people can barely afford their rents, where you then pay a fee to spar with people in some capacity, who may or may not be wealthy, to hopefully get the opportunity to pick their brains free of charge by schmoozing them.
So that they can then give you literal puzzle pieces that you then have to put together and hope you did it right, to possibly maybe still fail and be deeper on the whole if you didn't get it right. Does that about summarize it?
Edit: I know this sounds a bit defeatist and I'm not saying it wasn't good general advice, but how about mentoring someone instead? You already have the knowledge so why not pay it forward?
Well I private messaged him because he said I could. Just waiting on a response to see if he takes me on or can give me advice. If he does and he can it's real if he doesn't and he can't it's a lie. Guess we'll find out soon enough š¤·
I did. You asked me and I told you. There are other options. Most still surround finding a place where positive people are and you interact with them on a personal level. I come from a poor PA town with no stop light and only a gas station and pizza parlor, ever since the video store went under.
Yet here I am, in Madeira on vacation with my beautiful wife and daughter day drinking and giving out free advice.
Look homie, itās not easy, esp with a negative mindset. Youāll be where you are for life unless you find some reason not to. You donāt have to try, but donāt hate us who did.
I lost my dad at 22 and my mom basically was dead ever since. No grand parents, no extended family helping. Wifeās family is even more dysfunctional. I just happened to have a slightly less then pessimistic mindset after my dad died in a crash I survived. I shouldnāt even be here. Thatās the mindset I had after.
āFuck it?! What does it matter if I fail. Iām aliveā
Perhaps I wasn't specific enough then. When these rich people gave you business advice, did they tell you what type of loans or business plan to come up with? Everything these days seems so esoteric not all of us have the ability to find it.
So when we find someone like you who's already gotten the information they needed and did it successfully we would rather take that route because failure is less and less of an option these days.
What are the options available to the general public to actually start something. I already have a niche that I think people will be interested in. I'm more concerned with gaining startup capital and the steps to go about doing that correctly without the pitfalls.
There will be pitfalls. My niche required very little start up. I sold - Essentially - my thoughts. People paid me to teach them something I learned so all I needed was a small space to start. I found a out of luck developer on the outskirts of a good town whoād rent me the space on a yearly lease because he needed it rented and I operated a business concept that didnāt require a āvisible storefront.ā I had no overheard besides electrical really.
Now I did go to āschoolā for 14 years to learn how to do Jiu Jitsu at a high level. I moved to SD as a purple belt and slept on mats and taught kids classes to be able to learn the highest from available. So I certainly paid for it. Just not financially.
10k in mats and building costs and about 5k in rent upfront for first and last and security. 15k total. No loans required.
I KNOW thatās not helpful. And i am sorry I canāt walk you through start up loans as well as others. My wealth came from obv running a decently successful school but immediately investing it in the right places with the right people that I had met at my own gym. One specifically was a big wig for Mastercard. Real grumpy cat, hated working but made millions. He gave me some good advice and I took it.
I didnāt own a house. Had a small rental. Owned used shitty cars. Biggest purchases were (besides the necessary) was a PlayStation lol.
My wealth really went tribal from Obama to Trump and got murked during Covid and my business took a MASSIVE HIT.
I never forced a policy or vaccine mandate and lost 50% of my students but in good consciousness I didnāt feel comfortable forcing anything that wasnāt concrete.
I had to shut the gym down in 2022 but was smart enough to move ky wealth to bonds after the markets got mushy.
Iāve been rebuilding it slowly with good advice and patience. I moved my gym to my garage where the good and loyal students showed up. Still make decent money with no overhead because itās my abode.
I donāt pay any capital gains taxes. Thatās the big one. Obama era rule for a group of people suspiciously located within the average holdings of a politician. Tax the rich is hilariously false. People like me pay dick all on them.
Anyways, hit me up in DM. Iāll try my very best to give you anything I can advice or connections or at the minimum hear you out and talk over you niche and ideas. Iād love to help in anyway possible.
While I don't believe anyone can be a millionaire... I would like to learn Jiu Jitsu... I have a background in Kung Fu, but the school I attended closed during Covid. I was really out of practice anyway though.
lol no I am unfortunately not. Much further east near Lancaster, though I troll so much I would be remiss to give my actual location. Some things you never grow out of.
I'd say you dodged a bullet. We just took out a loan for a house here just to be issued a zoning ordinance violation for an issue that we didn't know was an issue because renting out rooms is legal. We were instructed to apply for a variance and the zoning board just flat out denied it, so I would have loved to have known beforehand.
Alleged. It was a negative response about the US and labeled as a statement from a citizen.
Going back to the OP. If you or I went to say Italy and acted like an American weād be ridiculed but someone being upset (albeit hyperbolic) and the whole comment section is a shit dunk on an American being upset about the same exact thing theyād champion coming from a European.
And here you are casually tossing out āAmerica isnāt as cute yada yadaā
America fucks dude. Itās the best god damn place on earth and if you traveled as extensively as I have youāll see how many would cut their arm off to get here.
If it wasnāt for reddit and people who use it (yeah Iām here I get it lol, but itās to oppose) who groupthink āAmerica is a third world countryā bullshit weād be even better off.
But nah youād rather a presidential candidate get there without any actual due process or citizen votes.
Seriously, you took everything out of context. I'm American, I made a joke in relation to an animal. I said nothing about hating my country. You took what I said and ran with it.
I vote, I follow what's going on. I care about the state of my country. Because even when I am not happy with everything, I still love it and fight for it and what I believe in. So yea chill tf out.
No idea why you decided to ramble over someone saying something so neutral and then proclaim America is the best place on earth when there's fact based evidence that we aren't in a lot of ways. We have shit public education, sub par healthcare, laws that favor employers over employees, stagnant wages, tax laws that favor the wealthy and high wealth inequality. When you judge things objectively America isn't the best but easily could be considering our wealth and how strong we are economically, and this is coming from an American who has traveled and has friends who travel and several who left the us because of how shitty it is. I'm not gonna get shot in the back for arguing with some dude about stupid shit in Italy but in the us it's not unlikely.
Don't you know? It's so he can give everyone his stellar advice about how to become an American loving Captain Capitalist millionaire!! Just join a gym, man. Then you too can be sipping Arnold Palmers on the shores of Lisboa while spewing word salads at random internet strangers you took out of context and get your whities a little too tighty.
That implies that those states are self sufficient. The red states have some massive deficits in their budget and state level GDP. So they are more dependent on the Fed that their politicians would ever admit.
So it makes more sense to divide the country based on political/cultural blocs instead. Because if anything did happen to the US Constitution to dissolve the Union, these conglomerates would need to be formed in order for the individual statehoods to still have a pragmatic sense of order.
Definitely, your comment is more accurate. You have no way of knowing I have a Cascadia flag hanging on the wall just behind me, lol.
I live in a donor state - my federal tax dollars don't come back to my state, they're welfare for the aforementioned red states. The citizens who receive those tax dollars never miss an opportunity to proclaim their deep hatred for my state.
Lol because there's Christianity as described in the new testament and then there's the "christianity" of small town America. Not sure I've ever met an actual follower of new testament Jesus but if I have, they were probably homeless.
They know. No one likes to know they are living on someone else's charity. Especially those who make a virtue of their supposed self reliance. The only thing I can offer to make you feel better about it is that taking the money is something which gives them major self loathing which they project as hate of the donor states.
No they don't. They are the first one's to complain about where their tax money goes when their tax money doesn't even cover their state's expenses. You vastly overestimate their intelligence
Iām in a donor state and I still hate where my money goes; namely bombing children in a foreign land for a country that isnāt even our ally.
(And before I get any comments about Israel, they commit more espionage against us than Russia and China. And are the only country we give foreign aid to that does engage in espionage against us.)
I could think of dozens of other things to fund rather than $3000/each coffee mugs for the military industrial complex, and a several billion dollar to trillion dollar bail out whenever big corporate risk takers flunk out and redline.
Also, Iām still angry that my tax dollars get wasted in ways keeping people from attaining access to social programs, rather than being used to drive efficiency. There are ten thousand blockades to obtaining services that could be autorenewed, or set up much more efficiently.
Well there are certainly some who are just dumb along side those who have just been told what to think and havent questioned it. I still think some of them resent having to live cap in hand for a handout and resent it is necessary.
I think its pretty reasonable for people in any state to complain about where their tax money is going if they're in a fairly high tax bracket. Regardless of how their state is doing. Its not exactly their fault the government can't seem to figure it out and they're still likely paying more than their fair share. Of course a lot of the people you're talking about are not in those tax brackets and are, in fact, not paying that much in taxes compared to many others. So I do get your point and I don't think you're wrong necessarily. Just pointing out the nuance and fact that living in a broke ass state doesn't mean someone's not paying their fair share.
Seriously, the most irritating thing about listening to red state white trash whining about California and New York is that their shithole states would collapse in a week without blue state support. Fuckin' welfare queens....
Lol but for real. Itās amusing until the reality of how many Americans died that winter, in a first world country, when any neighboring state would have done more for them. So yeah, Texas can float itself economically - but itāll eventually kill everyone doing so.
Itās why I wish we could split into two countries. Let all the ignorant idiots live in states that help no one and control everyone and let the rest of us have a democracy that cares for its people above all else. I know, I know, itās utterly unrealistic. But a girl can dream.
California pays about $500B in federal taxes and only receives $170B in federal funding, which means weāre essentially donating $330B annually to prop up dozens of failing red state economies. That amounts to nearly 10x the entire state budget deficit per year. So Californiaās economy actually generates a massive surplus, which is how your state gets financial assistance.
Having a " surplus" is no great brag if your state goes out of its way to avoid funding schools, mental health care, feeding children, etc. Unless you are at least a millionaire, you are just another worker bee buying into the idea that honoring a social contract is somehow enabling laziness. The 10 commandments are a social contract and Jesus said something about " what you've done to the least of these, you've done to me" but there's no love like conservative Christian hate.
I was making a joke because that guy was basically saying 50 countries instead of 50 states for the United States so I was making a little funny because I was thinking what other place has a lot of countries together acting somewhat "unified". š I wouldn't really say that that applies to Europe because otherwise you wouldn't have the distinction between Europe, the United Kingdom, Great Britain etc etc š
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u/BadTaste421 Aug 28 '24
Three raccoons in a trench coat is the best analogy Iāve heard yet.