Valentina S. Pallin

I get sucked into the rage bait click machine too. There’s hateful comments from “the right” and “the left”—people tearing others down. I wonder what percentage of those comments are actually bots. I feel like we are being PSYOP’d into rage. Who even speaks like that in real life?

Protester in crowd holds sign reading “Patriots don’t bow to kings” in front of her face.

Signs from outside the Chuck Edwards Town Hall in Asheville, NC (3/13/25)

“Today’s multinationals see government programs, public assets and everything else that is not for sale as terrain to be conquered and seized—the post office, national parks, schools, social security, disaster relief and anything else that is publicly administered.” -Naomi Klein #shockdoctrine

The compassionate urge to live in a society that values people over money, where human dreams have more meaning than the bankrupt “American Dream” of having more money than everyone else…

Remember how popular dumb blonde jokes used to be? We should start a new category, “dumb man jokes”

First submission: The World.

#darkhumor

I feel like Our Leaders are Bond Villains…actually they’re just two kids in a trench coat cosplaying Dr. Evil.

Got an email from my bank warning that surcharges for overdrafts have increased from $15 to $25. Adios consumer protections. Thank god I can drink raw milk to help me process the pain in my gut. Can’t afford health insurance so my retirement plan is to hope and pray my way into old age #America

Yes this is really happening, no they will not steal our joy

youtu.be/PfOq40k5O6I?...

2021 by The Dolltones.

Just the beginning…
#thedolltones
#2021thedolltones
#indie
#rock
#altrock
#asheville
#ashevillenc
#musicvideo

Text Resist to 50409. Re: Stop the freeze!

Resist OUT LOUD. Do not let this one slide: write your Congress members easily by using resisbot: Text 50409. Re: Stop the Freeze!
#resist #stopthefreeze

@abedalton.bsky.social we had the best time recording a music video with you this weekend!

Signed I love you!

2021

Good morning. We released music. open.spotify.com/album/4Ljyc2...

Tomorrow: Reflections on Fear, Hope, and Humanity Notes on MLK, the inauguration, and a Holocaust survivor.

open.substack.com/pub/valentin...

“When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door that leads to ultimate reality.” -Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Opinion | How to Keep Your Own Soul Safe in the Dark (Gift Article) Even at my lowest, I have never entirely given up my faith that good people working together can change the world for the better.

This week I wrote about a moth I saved, a book I read, and a despair I (mostly) averted. www.nytimes.com/2024/12/09/o...

Mission Hospital to work for a private company because HCA did not treat them well.

What will happen to your loved ones?

Surely, no one deserves to be murdered in cold blood, a lamentably preventable death.

Something is very very wrong here.

I sobbed my eyes out on November 5th because I am scared of what will happen if my brother can't afford his insulin. If my father can't access his cancer medications. What will happen if his insurance company decides to stop covering his treatments when all of the Oncologists have quit working at

when he began to lose his eyesight.

A concerned coworker called me saying:

"I called an ambulance but he declined to go to the hospital."

Luckily, I was there in 10 minutes. He didn't want to get in the ambulance because he couldn't afford it. At age 28 he was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes.

A disease that would have been easily treatable in its early stage is now a terminal illness in an otherwise healthy and well loved man.

Earlier this year, 2024, my younger brother, age 28, skirting along with an "affordable" policy, was working on a production set for BCBS

Every year at his physical he got all recommended tests, believing they were testing his PSA. No one told him that insurance companies in NC stopped testing for prostate cancer because they believe that too many men are being diagnosed with Prostate Cancer!

The scan revealed a tumor squeezing his cervical spine so tightly the nuerologist was shocked he had not become fully paralyzed. The prognosis? Advanced Stage IV metastatic prostate cancer. A slow growing cancer and one of the only cancers detectable by a simple blood test.

In 2023, my father, age 62, a vigorous man, had been seeking medical care for a pain in his neck. No diagnostic tests were performed—he was told he might have arthritis. Finally, after months, a doctor ordered an X-ray…

In 2011, at the age of 49, my uncle Thomas went to the ER. He knew that something was wrong but the hospital declined to conduct any tests and sent him home. He died of a stroke the next day, at the same hospital.

It’s hard to truly quantify the extent of harm that these corporations are causing the patients they are “caring” for when they deny coverage and intimidate people away from seeking medical care…But I can qualify the damage with personal experiences. I’m sure you can too.

Murder is wrong. No one is gleeful about the amount of gun violence in the United States. People deserve to feel safe. But when someone feels the need to go out and murder the CEO of a major Healthcare corp maybe that’s a sign that something is very very wrong and that something has got to change.

“I wanna do right, but not right now” -Gillian Welch