This week’s question comes to us from Tuan Son Nguyen:

How do you form a circle of like-minded people to keep your sanity when so many horrible things are happening?

I’m not exactly sure when this happened, or what triggered it. But I remember it was a nice day. Maybe it was a nice day after a few rainy days, or a few cold days, or maybe I was just up in my feelings. But I got home, locked up my bike, and instead of heading up the stairs to our apartment, as I would normally do, I headed out to the dogpark. The dogpark is a block away, and I visit regularly with my dog so he can do all his dog things. We’re regulars. But this time I didn’t have my dog and I had no need to go to the dogpark. I just wanted to. I wanted to go sit on one of the benches and soak up what was left of a nice day. Which is what I did.

Here’s the thing about the dog park, which I’ve written about before. It’s dog-centric. Everyone knows your dog’s name. Everyone knows whether your dog can or cannot have treats (always ask if you don’t know). Everyone’s relationship at the dogpark, with a few exceptions, revolves around the dogs. And that’s been true for as long as we’ve been taking our dog (who is now amazingly close to eighteen years old) to the dog park. This is by design.

When everyone is brought together by geography and your dog’s need to take a shit, it’s in your best interest to get along with the people who end up in that shared public space. You wanna keep conversation light. You discuss the weather. If someone is wearing a local team hat, you take it as a sign to elevate the conversation to “did you see the game?” or “this is our year.” (It’s not.) You mention new restaurants or cafés in the neighborhood, or sadly more appropriately these days—you mention restaurants or cafés that have recently shuttered. But mostly you talk about the dogs.

“Did Grumble get a haircut today?”

“I like Mojo’s Pride kerchief.”

In general, it’s best to avoid more complicated issues with your neighbors, which is why I stay off NextDoor, which is just an online Klan rally. Once you know certain things about your neighbors, you’re stuck knowing them, and you realize how much time you spend around them holding a bag of dog shit in your hand. And the temptation becomes too strong.

This is how peace was kept in the dog park for years. The occasional flare-up for politics, of course, the occasional flare-up for world issues, as well as local issues. Which will happen whenever folks get together, which is good. But those conversations would eventually subside. A regression back to the mean. Back to the dogs.

But neighborhoods are living, changing things. On the day I decided to just go sit in the dogpark without my dog (he was still at work), I realized other people were just sitting there in the dogpark. Yes, some of them had dogs, but some didn’t. They were just sitting there, sometimes talking to one another, sometimes not. Literally in a circle because of how the benches are laid out. And then other people started coming out and wandered over. To be clear, I’m not saying I instigated any of this. If anything, we were all getting pulled in by some cosmic need to be among other people. And for the past few weeks, this has been a regular occurrence. Every day I come home, and I walk to the dog park and sit with my neighbors. Yes, we talk about our dogs, but we also check in on each other, we vent about our day, we trash talk. Sometimes people bring snacks. Yes, we talk about the state of things in the world, which is awful, but having this small community of people that we can hold peace with makes it… well, not less awful. But it makes a difference knowing there are other people on the spaceship with us.

Are we like-minded? We’re like minded in some things! For one, we all like sitting in the park in the evening, and that’s nice. We all love our neighborhood. We seem to all like donuts. And dogs. And a little bit of a breeze coming off the mountain. We all believe there’s one neighbor that goes too fucking hard. We all believe in shared spaces, or at least we believe in this shared space. I think we also believe that it’s important to interact with each other with a certain level of kindness. For example, one of our neighbors recently had knee surgery and everyone’s bringing her food. Another neighbor is out of town and there are a few neighbors moving her car around so she doesn’t get tickets when the street cleaning happens. We watch each other's dogs when we’re out of town, or working a long shift at work. We lend records that better be returned in good shape soon. (This one might be a little targeted.) We hold vigils when a beloved dog leaves us. We commiserate together when someone loses a job, and we celebrate together when a new job is procured. We say goodbye when someone moves away, and we widen the circle when a new person moves in.

Are we like-minded in all things? Fuck no. Way too many of my neighbors still own Ring cameras. Way too many of my neighbors still believe their “I got this before Elon went crazy” bumper sticker is an act of resistance. Way too many of my neighbors still believe Gavin Newsom is the solution to something. (Gavin Newsom is a piece of shit.) And more than one of my neighbors have sat down next to me and told me that the Democrats need to give a little bit on immigration, not realizing they were sitting next to an immigrant. So, no we are not like-minded in all things. But I do believe there is a shared core of decency to all my neighbors, and within that core there may be unexplored areas that need to be explored a little bit. We all grew up believing certain things, things that we hold to be sacrosanct, that could use a little further exploration. And I’ve been able to have a few of those conversations with people, and they’ve been able to have some with me. It’s easier for people to have those conversations when they’re coming from a place of common decency.

That said, not all differences are equal. I don’t sit with Nazis. I don’t sit with terfs. We all avoid the zionist lady. And as much as I’d like to say that I don’t sit with racists, if you are white and you were raised in the US, you are a racist. (I’m including myself here.) So on that one, I must sadly admit that it’s a matter of degree. Although I’ll happily report that there have been difficult conversations in the park that I believe have moved some souls closer to heaven, if not through the gates. We’re getting there.

(By the way, no one in the dog park is going to talk to me again after this.)

In general, I think the idea of “like-minded” is overrated and a little boring. Sitting with people who agree with everything you agree with feels great for about five minutes. Then (and maybe this is because I am from Philadelphia) I want to fight. I want to argue. I want to argue about who the most influential NBA player of our lifetime was, and why it was Allen Iverson. I want to argue about the best Beyoncé album, and why it was Lemonade. I want to argue about why the park needs public restrooms, and yes I know people will use them—that’s the fucking point, man! I want to argue about which of our cafés makes the best coffee. (Trick question. It’s me. I make better coffee than any of them.) I want to argue about street parking. My god, I love arguing with my neighbors about street parking. (Why should the city be providing storage for your private property? Get a bike. Ride the bus.) Street parking is always guaranteed to start a fight in the park. And I love having those fights with my neighbors. I think they honestly bring us closer together. (They may disagree.)

But no, we will not have any arguments about who belongs in the park, because something that every one of my neighbors agrees about is that if you are in the park you belong in the park. If you are in the park, you get the same privileges as everyone else in the park. And if you want to join the community circle in the park we will make room for you. And also, if shit starts coming out of your mouth you will be called on it.

Everything is shit. And when everything is shit, minor differences become less important than the things we hold in common. We’ve seen this in LA. We’ve seen this in Chicago. We’ve seen this in the Twin Cities. Punks fighting next to suburban dads. Wine moms fighting next to anarchists. Socialists fighting next to librarians. (I’m kidding here, all librarians are socialist. I love librarians.) We see this when people come out to protect their neighbors. We see this when people yell at the ICE goons. And someday we will see this when we put all these fascists on trial. Roomfuls of people, who may not agree on much, but they agree on this:

The shittier they treat us, the more they bring us together.

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The latest effort to make healthy women believe they are ill is a new movie on perimenopause, “The M Factor 2: Before the Pause,” which debuted March 19 on PBS. The film is a sequel to “The M Factor,” a movie that not only medicalized menopause, but lost accreditation as an education activity for physicians after our project coordinated a complaint that was co-signed by international women’s health experts.

“Before the Pause” expands medicalization to midlife, telling women in their 30s that their hormones are starting to run amok and will ruin their cognitive, physical, and mental health. The film begins with a woman’s frightening retelling of the day that she was asked for her name and could not recall what it was. The film encourages women to “shred the silence” on the epidemic of menopause and offers merchandise to help supporters spread the word.

Read the rest…

If you’ve heard about “droning,” you might think it’s something out of a sci-fi movie. But recently, a story in the U.S. Sun highlighted a growing trend that is hitting much closer to home.

Insurers are now using drones to capture video of your yard, your roof, and the overall exterior of your property. They then feed that footage through Artificial Intelligence (AI) to look for issues. The result? Some homeowners are receiving notices that say, “Fix your roof right now, or you’re canceled.”

My Personal Drone Headache

I recently had a very frustrating experience with my own homeowners insurer. They flew a drone over my house and used AI to grade my roof. Their conclusion? They claimed my roof dated back to 2004, making it 22 years old.

There was just one problem: I replaced my roof in 2017.

You cannot imagine the hassle it was to get this corrected. Even after I provided the proper documentation, they asked for it a second time. It became very clear to me that these companies now trust their drones and AI more than they trust their own customers.

Why the Data Matters

In politics, there is an old saying: A lie unanswered becomes the truth in 24 hours. The same applies to your insurance record. If your insurer “drones” your home and comes up with a report that is factually incorrect, you cannot simply ignore it.

If you let an incorrect report stand, you risk:

• Policy cancellation: Being dropped by your insurer with very little notice.
• Sky-high premiums: Paying more because the AI thinks your home is a higher risk than it actually is.
• Claims denials: If a storm hits and the insurer believes my roof is 22 years old instead of seven, they will depreciate the value so heavily that they’ll pay me nothing. They’ll essentially tell me to “go have fun” paying for a new roof out of pocket.

What You Should Do

If you receive a notice from your insurer based on a drone or satellite inspection:

• Don’t take it sitting down: If the information is wrong, challenge it immediately.
• Provide proof: Keep your receipts, permits, and contracts for any major home repairs (especially roofs).
• Be persistent: As I found out, you may have to send your documentation multiple times before they acknowledge the error.

Your roof’s “official” age is a vital piece of data. Make sure your insurance company has the right numbers, or it could cost you thousands of dollars down the road.

The post Is Your Insurer Secretly Using Drones To Drop You? appeared first on Clark Howard.