I'm not quite sure how, either. I may try the "create an account" button (I'll have to no matter the server anyway) and see what happens from there.

Thank you anyway!

It says the registration is by invite only. I don't know if you commenting it to me here counts or not, and I don't want to make any assumptions.

I forgot, and thank you for correcting me on that.

TIL my memory is crap and I need to rewatch the whole series again sometime soon, lol.

Crap, I forgot about that. Thanks for pointing that out to me.

The egg sac I had hatched today. I found it last month or so, figured I'd keep it as a non-killed insect-related curio, then thought, "Okay, what if these eggs aren't dead? What if this isn't a dud?" So I placed it in an old plastic Gelato jar but didn't screw the cap on completely to allow for some air just in case. Then I placed it on one of my Pagan altars (Thoth's, though he is making a temporary departure from my life for now. Just haven't packed his things away until whenever he decides to come back.)

Good call on my part because can you IMAGINE THE CHAOS THAT WOULD ENSUE HAVING THIS ARMY ON CENTAUR-INSECT BABIES FROM OUTER SPACE SWARMING MY ROOM AND FREAKING MY CAT OUT?!

I took them outside and sat the open jar and lid down and let them go. That jar and lid will remain where I sat them for... I don't know how long. I'll just periodically check. I'm not very knowledgeable on mantises like I am on spiders and lightning bugs.

I kinda wanna say that the 1995 Tank Girl movie counts (or is at least solarpunk-adjacent?), but outside of the commonly named ones like many Studio Ghibli movies, that's the only one that immediately comes to my mind.

That was a thing in the Tank Girl movie.

No signs on our mattress or box springs. Honestly, looking back on it, there's a chance we could've saved our mattress since we had JUST bought the damn thing a few months prior to the infestation. I say this because my husband and I currently reside in my old bedroom on a bed that's older than me, and our bodies hate us for that, lol. But we didn't wanna take any chances. We didn't get a chance to check the couch despite the fact we had more sightings at the couch and even my computer chair than anyplace else. Plus the bathroom. For all we know, they probably lived in the walls, came up through the stupid vents, and maybe even hunkered down in a couple of cardboard boxes we had for some storage (which we did NOT use for moving).

Regarding the bites and itching, I honestly couldn't answer those questions because of how much trauma I was experiencing at the time. Best I can answer is that the itching itself MIGHT have lasted no more than a couple of days, but I could be wrong. And depending on where they were on me determined what they looked like. Your pics aren't very up close to the bites themselves, so it's hard to tell. They were more intense at my ankles, though. But everybody's body reacts differently. For example, my husband had no bites despite may having been bitten.

The Uber might be a possibility. People can carry bedbugs without knowing. But keep in mind that bedbugs do not discriminate. Your building may be new, but you may have neighbors that have bedbugs and they found their way to your living space. They might not even know they have bedbugs because some people may not have any reaction at all to the bites because my husband didn't have any. Also, just because they're called bedbugs, they don't always make their home in the bed. Sometimes its the carpet, the baseboards of the wall, the bedframe, or even just other pieces of furniture you frequent. They're also usually nocturnal when it comes to them wanting to feed, so I would suggest checking not just the areas I've mentioned, but also where you spent the most time at night if you tend to stay up late (for example, if you spend a lot of time on the couch at night, or at your computer desk, or on the floor if you do nightly meditations or something). My husband also says to check electrical sockets and all around them because they can hide there, too (he spoke with the exterminator because I was too messed up to stay there and noped back to my parents').

I also don't know anything about your life other than what you've revealed, so you also could have been bitten at a different place without bringing any home (hopefully). This depends on whether or not you've spent a large amount of time on a piece of furniture somewhere else like another person's home (not sure if you did or not, considering we're still in the middle of a pandemic, unless you're in a country that isn't as bad as the United States).

I suggest checking with all of your apartment neighbors and ask them to check their belongings for signs just in case. This would also be a good thing to do so that way they're not surprised with an infestation of their own if you somehow managed to bring some home and not know it.

If it turns out there are bedbugs in your building, be they your own apartment or someone else's, I think it's best you all get together and talk to the building manager or whoever is in charge, and urge for action to help treat the whole building somehow (if possible). I say this because if you treat just one apartment, they're going to move to the next one, which is what happened to our neighbor after we treated the best we could while packing what we could save before leaving. Our building manager didn't wanna bother treating the whole building. And bedbugs will usually move under doors or through vents in the walls, which happened a LOT when I lived in a dorm building in Pittsburgh, though thankfully I didn't live in a room that got infested (probably because I was usually out a lot; being absent=no food source and they'll go to the next available source nearby). The point of communicating with everyone in your building is to not only create awareness, but to also demand action for the well-being of everyone there in the building if the manager (or whoever is in charge) doesn't want to help you much. Nobody wants bedbugs, but don't be surprised if whoever is in charge doesn't live in the complex and doesn't seem to care. Our building manager minimized and trivialized a lot of people's struggles in our shitty building because she didn't have to live there and deal with how crappy and sketchy the whole building was (no fire escape, and nobody could find out why either, not even the maintenance guy that lived in the building). And the one maintanence guy I said was totally cool? He's the ONLY BUILDING STAFF THAT LIVED IN THE BUILDING, so it's no wonder he had empathy. The other maintanence guy who half-asses everything he did didn't live in the building.

Honestly, as much as bedbugs give people the heebie-jeebies, this issue needs to be discussed with the public more. Maybe if it gains enough attention, perhaps there would be more effort put into it on a national or maybe even an international scale. (But given how this pandemic is being handled, I wouldn't hold my breath.)

I'm not sure if I do, and I've checked. The pics that I did manage to take, though, weren't all of the bites that I had, and were different depending on the location. The ones on my calves were tiny and almost rice-shaped (I think?) and red. The one on my elbow from what I could see was the same color as my skin, but round and raised like a pimple. But the ones on my ankles were also round and kinda big, almost like they were big pimples or cysts the size of bb's (like from a bb-gun); they were hard and itched like hell, sometimes almost feeling like a sunburn when you don't scratch it, but that was only at my ankles).

I can tell that the bites appeared at least 24-48 hours after being bitten, because I found the one on my ankle the one night. After nearly tearing our bed apart, we found that there were a couple of babies under our bed on the floor, with no idea where any of the adults (or other non-adults) might be. I also found an unfed one crawling on my leg while I was on the couch a day before that (this was a one-bedroom apartment; a real tiny apartment in a sketchy building in downtown Pittsburgh). I saw no adults except a day or two later on one of the cardboard boxes (unfed).

The one adult I saw that wasn't alive was before the infestation hit. Because our building was absolute garbage, the shower wall was tile WITH NOTHING BEHIND IT, so my husband's butt kinda smacked into it and knocked the grout loose. The one maintanence guy that was supposed to come up and fucking fix it took his sweet time coming up days later and caused the tile to fall off into the tub, revealing there was NOTHING BEHIND THE TILE ON THE WALL. The jerk "fixed it" by putting the tile back like that WITH NO WALL BEHIND IT TO SUPPORT IT and taped a trash bag over it, saying it needs to sit for a while. It didn't. It didn't sit properly and fell to pieces. Mushrooms grew and we verbally tore him a new one, with my husband saying he's willing to call up any number of the carpenters in his family to tell him how no, it's NOT "our imagination" and we're NOT doing this on purpose. (The other maintanence guy was cool and made goddamn sure there was a wall behind our tile.) But through the space between the walls, that is where the bedbugs came in, and where I found the dead adult in our tub somewhere within that timeline.

My stress was so high from having to live with my unbearable parents due to literally no other choice, the fact that the building manager said we were overreacting, the fact that we didn't know whether or not we brought them with us (we didn't, thank goodness), that I never thought about photographing my ankles. I was more concerned about clothes at my parents' that might fit me because everything we wanted to try and save had to be quarantined (and thank goodness we have two garages on this farm, with one not being attached to the house). After over a year or so, I went through the duct taped shut trashbags of clothes, the duct taped shut boxes of books and figures, and found no trace of any bedbugs having ever existed. We got damn lucky.

This is why we will never rent ever again.

I'd imagine stress levels might affect symptoms of bites, but I'm not sure. However, everyone is different when it comes to bug bites (be they bedbugs or not).

One rule of thumb is that if you get bites within your home (or a hotel, etc.) and there is/are cluster(s) of at least three, then there's a possibility of it being bedbugs. I would suggest calling an exterminator to come check your home out, if possible. That's what we did (but we didn't pay for him, the building manager had to). I don't know how much calling one would cost, though.

(Sorry this was a lengthy post, but I didn't want anyone else to feel alone if they experienced a similar scenario regarding apartment buildings... Some can be hellholes that shouldn't charge squat at all.)

From my personal experience with bedbugs, while the other commenter says everyone reacts differently, the one thing I can say that MIGHT be an indicator that they arent from bedbugs is the fact that you felt a sharp pain the other day, but started itching recently.

When bedbugs feed, you normally dont feel them at all (unless you're lucky enough to notice them crawling on you). Like mosquitoes, they release some kind of numbing agent so who or whatever they feed on doesnt know they're there.

Of course, I emphasized "MIGHT" and only spoke from my personal experience. However, if you want to know my personal experience with the bites, they were hard welts and either itched or felt like a damn sunburn. I had most of them on my ankles, one to three bites on one of my calves, and one on my elbow. I knew they were bedbugs because I felt one crawling on my ankle, lifted my pajama pant leg from said ankle, and saw the thing waltzing across my skin with a belly full of blood. Plus, we inspected our apartment.

The end result was my husband and I peaced the hell out of there grabbing what we could salvage and moved in with my parents, because $720 a month rent in 2014 was bullshit when the building manager claimed we were "overreacting" despite never dealing with these things before. (We were looking to move anyway but couldnt find an affordable place to move to.) Now we deal with mosquitoes instead. Which I'm fine with, lol.

"Officers, I'm gonna have to ask you to put a mask on or leave. Our customers don't want to catch swine flu."

To compare the ruling class IRL to a fictional piece, the only thing that comes to mind are the rulers in Game of Thrones.

Depends on the area and intention. I live in a rural area and can't drive (and wouldn't be able to travel daily anyhow), and while I haven't had any experience yet, my plans are to help with the local Appalachian forests where and when I can. The oaks have been... not exactly in decline, but they haven't exactly reproduced much lately, which I think is due to a lack of many forest owners (both private and citizen) not liking the idea of controlled burning, which helps stimulate healthy growth of new oaks.

My main focus right now is on the local oak and hickory numbers. We have a hickory tree here on my parents' farm, so I'm HOPING to get some of the sproutlings growing and see what I can do. I don't know when or from where I'm going to get any acorns, so I might not begin oaks this year.

I'm quite lucky to live on my parents' farm, as they have no issue with me growing more trees along the treeline in the back field (they're more concerned with where I plant because roots can fuck with your septic systems if you're not careful). So for the next year or so will be a nice experiment and try-out to see if I have a good knack for growing tree sproutlings and then transplanting them. The purpose of the hickories (and eventually oaks) in my focuses is to provide more food for wildlife and more tree diversity, as we have the invasive "Tree of Heaven" (I can't remember the proper name from the top of my head) and sugar maples are pretty dominating in this area of Ohio right now.

I would also like to get into planting some apple trees at some local parks (they have quite a bit of land for such mediocrely kept parks), but.. One step at a time, lol.

I'd say find out what your local tree species are and just collect seeds from them. That's what I plan to do. (Admittedly, trying to help the local oak forests is going to be a bit of a pain, especially since I have no gardening experience yet, so this won't be for another couple of years for me.)

Don't know if flairs are still a thing to everyone else (they don't show up neither on my computer or the app), but Bikini Kill (if my flair is still that). Of course, I was only just getting into feminism and a friend of mine recommended I check out them and other Riot Grrrl bands back in 2012. A few years later, someone in either a post or comment thread on r/anarchism mentioned anarcho-punk and some bands and I checked them out. It started with Crass and Propagandhi on that front, though.

I'm still working on bettering my music library (too poor to buy much, so I'm ripping audio from YouTube for now), but it's slow partly because I kinda re-discovered goth and I'm trying to build up my little library there, too. Once this whole pandemic situation is finally done and over with (whenever that is), I plan to go out and build up my physical music library. I only have a handful of CDs (used to have a ton of just various bands before but sold them for food years ago) and like, 3 albums un-related to punk.

I'm suspected to have Asperger's, so that sort of explains why I sometimes listen to the same one to three songs over and over again, and finding out in another thread on here about what a piece of shit Michael Graves is crushed me because goddamn, I fell in love with the songs "Dig Up Her Bones" and "Dust To Dust." Good thing I only have a handful of songs he sang. The rest that I managed to successfully rip have Danzig. But back to listening to the same little handful of songs over and over for about like, a week, kinda sorta makes my library-building a semi-slow process sometimes. Depends on how the songs hit me by lyrics or tune. But thanks to this subreddit, I've got a handy little list! I'll be working on the Descendents next! (Audio-ripping wasn't working at the time when I listened to them before, or else I'd have them on my harddrive already.)

Not applicable in all situations. :/

I wish I could laugh with ya. My parents eat that shit up like it's part of the bible or some shit. They will ignore or deny any facts brought up to them that contradicts their disturbing level of indoctrination.

I figured it was because of of the pink umbrella (hence why their homemade riot shields have that painted on them) that was grabbed by a pig who was looking for an excuse to start shit when nobody was doing anything but standing face-to-face with cops? There's a video of that somewhere online where the cop tried to yank the umbrella out of the person's hands and when he couldn't get it, he peppersprayed protesters.

As I've mentioned in another reply to yours of my first comment, these look like banners with their respective messages, with the insignia to indicate who is represented and saying said message(s).

Actually, taking a second look, it looks almost more like a banner? The top of it looks like a horizontal post? (Like a sail on a ship... I'm shit with terminology for this stuff so I apologize.) Maybe it's using the insignia to show that the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army is being represented, and everything else on it is a message relating to the occasion this photo was taken?

Also I'm kinda sad we don't do banners like this in demonstrations anymore, but then I think about wind gusts in these concrete canyons and realize people will suddenly become kites...

I think it's the flag for the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of the Ukraine, though the article I just linked doesn't show the flag depicted in your pic.

If I'm wrong, please someone correct me.

On the border of Jefferson and Harrison here, and so far we havent heard of or seen anything aside from what we are pretty sure was the Flu last month. We are in a rural area, too, which may be why we havent seen squat. No idea about testing, as my parents arent inquiring, hearing anything about it, etc.

However, my husband sadly works for a Gamestop in Belmont and he has yet to run into anyone surprisingly. There's a good chance that store might not be around much longer though. In the meantime, he and his co-workers are taking precautions.

AND MY BAT