Reading over the posts written by “Nurse Tom,” who I suspect was an alter ego, I wonder now if Cindy was just telling he

Don’t let the naysayers and the outrage peddlers fool you. They are running out of time. They are in the final death spirals, lashing out because they are losing power over us.,But, there are a lot of us who are bullish about the future. It’s on us to lead by example. Let’s use the present moment, the next week, the rest of the year, 2021, the rest of the decade, and the rest of our lives to show other people how it’s done.,Many of us have spent the past year not just coping with the present moment, but getting better. When the conditions are back to normal, we’re already going to have momentum. The golden age is upon us.,There are no limits on what you’re capable of doing with your life. There used to be. Feel fortunate that you live in a gatekeeper free world where you have so much access to education, technology, and other people that your limits and oppression are almost entirely psychological.,Build profitable skills with this free checklist — The Ultimate Guide to Discovering Your Natural Talents and Strengths. Learn how to become a top Medium writer with my free 5-day course,As questions about veracity abound, it can be incredibly difficult to ascertain any credible proof about someone else’s illness. We are not entitled to see someone’s medical records, nor are we conditioned to ask. GoFraudMe’s Gonzalez makes the case that GoFundMe has become “like a personal journal,” where people are already revealing intimate details of their lives. “Health is a very private issue but do you still have the right to privacy as a patient if you’re putting your story out there to solicit money?” she asks. “Does giving someone $5 give you the right to ask intrusive questions?” Questions about privacy are also being raised in the context of scam hunter communities harassing individuals, some of whom are legitimately unwell.,As award winning journalist and former senior advisor to Bernie Sanders, David Sirota rightfully pointed out, it’s absolutely no coincidence that one of the most aggressive critics of Bernie Sanders is being selected to head the office of Mangement and Budget (with almost no chance of being confirmed by Republicans) at a moment when there’s a possibility that Bernie could become the chair of the budget committee if Democrats take the senate. It is not an accident that they are attempting to force Bernie — as a final act of humiliation after everything that he has swallowed, taken, and brushed aside from the party in order to ensure that Biden gets the Presidency — to dutifully accept and push forward the nomination of a woman who has done more than arguably anyone else among the Democratic establishment to smear his name and intentions.,“In the strictest definition, ice is the solid form of water. However, planetary astronomers often use ‘ice’ to refer to the solid form of any condensable molecule. These tend to be highly reflective, form clouds, and (unlike minerals) can readily change between liquid, solid, and gas states at relatively low temperatures. Frozen water and carbon dioxide (‘dry ice’) are the most familiar ices on Earth, but methane, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and phosphine (PH3) can all freeze in the atmospheres of Uranus and Neptune,” Amy Simon, planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, writes for the Planetary Society.,I just feel something in the air. I feel an awakening. I have this strong conviction that a large portion of society is just done with the pessimistic outrage culture nonsense. We’re ready to take control of not just the discourse, but our own lives. Personal responsibility is making a comeback and technology is pouring gasoline onto that fire.,Wright says that the signs of a scam are genuinely unique to each case, but there are some general tells. When someone is blogging about a legitimate illness, she notes — even in the most extreme cases — there are days of tedium: lying on the couch binge-watching Netflix or sitting on the porch, a weary face turned to the sun. “Constant drama is a big red flag,” she says. “[In legitimate illnesses,] every day is not this big dramatic roller coaster, where you have a bone marrow transplant one day and the next day your cousin dies in a car crash and the next day the dog runs away and the house burns down. With the scammers, every day is sweeps week.”,Build profitable skills with this free checklist — The Ultimate Guide to Discovering Your Natural Talents and Strengths. Learn how to become a top Medium writer with my free 5-day course,With considerations of people like Representative Cedric Richmond and Rahm Emanuel for top positions, it’s no secret that the Biden administration is already shaping up to be even worse than the left expected before he has even taken office. Frankly, for the sake of my mental health I have refused to give any of these selections the anger they certainly deserve. But it should come as no surprise that few of his picks have been more of a blatant slap in the face than the nomination of Neera Tanden to serve as the head of the Office of Management and Budget.,I wondered if Cindy’s case was complicated by more than one type of greed. And that marks a fundamental difference between the standard malingerer and Munchausen by Internet, says Feldman. “I think the bulk of people who look to raise money through crowdfunding schemes do so not so much for the money but for the care and concern they’re able to mobilize,” he says. “They tend to be people with poor people skills, people with personality disorders, which means they have trouble getting their needs met in healthy ways and resort to desperate measures.”,But sometimes scammers choose something more obscure. “People pick esoteric illnesses that people have had very little exposure to so they don’t know what it should look and sound like,” says Feldman. “It makes the deception that much easier.”,On one hand, Cindy’s two-year probation sentence didn’t seemingly square with the level of hurt and exploitation she participated in. On the other, it appears that Cindy was badly damaged almost from the very beginning. One early fundraising post ran through a lifetime of bad luck, including childhood trauma, being placed in foster care, having a pacemaker implanted at the age of 32, and being hit by a car. It’s unclear which of those things are true, but it’s easy to imagine that she was much less content than she appeared when I was initially scanning her Facebook pictures.