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The hottest tea, the spiciest gossip, the fiercest commentary and no fucking censorship. We are the Los Santos VIXEN. Hope you've been doing your kegels, babe. Letter from the editor: Sis, stop reading the story and BE the story. Submit your gossip to our handy and under-fucking-utilized gossip submission form. Chop chop. Also Like, Subscribe, Share, is this your first time online? Click HERE ! LSVIXEN XOXO ❤️ A Vixen's Guide: To Communicating Clearly Without Fucking Up (Totally real people with real communication skills /s) Hiya cuties! So I've been flourishing in a golden age for the Vixen and I thought long and hard about what brought me to where I am today. Clear. Direct. Empathetic. Communication. It's more than just saying shit when you think about it. Human nature is a delicate balance of give and take and there are intricacies to our language, our posture, and the timing we use when approaching moments of true and honest communication. I'm not going to pretend this is a golden guide to all your communication issues, that'd be like... a whole ass book. But, I do think if you poke around the few points I mention below, you might be able to at least be a little more mindful of how you approach talking to friends, bosses, dates, and even strangers! Let's dig in! Who the HELL do you think you're talking to? 😲 Woah there, subtitle, you're coming in a little hot there. But you make a good point. Who are you trying to communicate with? Knowing who you're talking to and why is the first step, babes. A cardinal rule of thumb for me is that not every conversational topic is for every person. I had a friend named Tina back on the East Coast and given her spate of four divorces she wasn't great at being supportive of me when I tried to date these twin Albino underwear models. From the start, the topic was colored by her own life experiences and perception of love as necessarily leading to heart-ache and grief. Know your audience. Tina was one of the best people to talk to about work stuff and even trouble with my family. She was a phenomenal friend and just because I wasn't interested in talking about boys with her, doesn't mean I didn't cherish our friendship. Scan your friend groups for a second and notice if certain topics bring up the most trouble in those relationships and decide whether that topic ever really has to come up with them or not. What are their strengths and how meaningful is their support in those areas of your life? Finally, there is no one-stop shop. As much as we want to believe there is one person in the entire world we can confide our everything into, human beings deal with their own stuff and if you put all your eggs in one bastard- well. It can burn them out, babe! This is just to say having a diverse and varied group of lovely humans that you truly adore can lead to a mutual support network that is strong and lasting. And I want to emphasize here, there is zero shame in hiring a shrink and putting some of the pressure onto them, it's literally their job and it gives you the vocabulary and perspective to know who to talk to about what for the best quality communication! Defense Mechanism LIMBO!!! 💃 Shake. Shake. Shake. Senora. Shake your body right under the defense mechanisms for the best results. Difficult topics happen, we're not always going to be able to avoid them and avoiding them usually only makes them worse if you want to keep that lovey-dovey human in your sphere. In this household, we appreciate productive confrontation. It's non-aggressive, empathetic, assertive. and most of all solutions oriented. Yes, it can be all of those things at once. When you're talking with people, you've got to understand that different things can put up emotional and mental walls that make people stop listening and start rabidly defending themselves. This can be as subtle as a raised voice creating a sense of anxiety in the other person, an environment that isn't suitable for conversation due to noise or chaos (Lol. I know. Los Santos. But I mean an immediate environment.), and most importantly the words we choose and the timing we use in saying them. Everyone you know has defense mechanisms and coping mechanisms. It's how we survive in Trauma City without completely breaking down. If you're still reading this, I want you to think about the last few times you spoke with your closest friends. Did you vibe any sort of topics that get them anxious or tense? Did they clam up about particular points of discussion when approached about them? Those are prime defense mechanism territory and the best way to slip under them to address the underlying topics they 'protect' is to approach calmly, in a safe place, checking in with them before talking about it to see if there in a good mental place to do so, and to probably have a hot tea or a stiff drink with them. B-but Vixen, how can I go from being a Stumbling-Lad... to being a Smooth-Talking Chad?! 💋 Practice, babe! What you want to do when talking to people you care about is to establish common ground. If I were to bring up a conflict with my boyfriend, there's a solid way I tend to approach it. First off, before this imaginary conflict, I establish at the beginning of any true relationship, friendship, or even work relationship, that I love honesty and communication. I make sure they know they can come to me with any issues that might crop up from the often messy human dynamics that go into being friends with the LS Vixen. By setting that up ahead of time, it makes them more likely to welcome me when I bring up issues, especially given the fact that I re-establish common ground before every tough discussion. Trouble with a lover? If you tell them that you love them deeply, that you know they love you deeply, and that you're both in this for the same goals, it can eliminate the "US VERSUS THEM" mentality that happens when people feel threatened or attacked. Boss calls you in for a review? Reiterate your commitment, own up to mistakes, be humble but own your victories, and you can both leave the meeting feeling like you're on the same team and on the same page. If you find the common ground isn't so common any more and that the person just sees you as a hostile outsider, well there unfortunately isn't much you can do through communication. One of the big lessons is that we can only change the way we express our feelings, we cannot change the feelings and emotions of others ourselves. We can offer opportunities, support, and space, but the minds, opinions, feelings, and dreams of others are in their wheelhouse. Knowing your lane and knowing what is beyond your control can allow you to forgive yourself for things you've inadvertently blamed on yourself and grief that clings even years later. Woah. You went deep there, Vix. 🥺 Fuck off. I can do what I want, me-from-two-seconds-ago. Seriously though, the journey towards clear communication with the people you love can amp up your sex life, your work life, and generally speaking make you someone people want to talk to. I can say from personal experience that I love those in my life who make me feel like I can truly talk to them and be seen and heard. If more people in Los Santos committed themselves to clear communication, it's not silly to imagine we might have a little less division, hatred, anger, and violence. It wouldn't be perfect, but it'd give us a chance to see each other as allies rather than enemies. God, that was fuckin' sappy. I'm gonna go get laid. VIX OUT! XOXO, DISCLAIMER >Comments are enabled!

Bernie Sanders, US Senator from Vermont, Presidential Candidate, and Vocal Proponent of "Medicare for All" [New York Times] Opinion: Is "Medicare for All" A Good Idea? Ryan D Price Vermont is one of the wealthiest (per capita) and smallest states in the Union. It’s also the state that Democratic Socialist darling Bernie Sanders has represented in Congress for the past twenty-eight years. In the small, wealthy state of Vermont, a bill was passed by its State Legislature in 2011. It was called H 202, or “Single-Payer and Unified Health System”. This law, which was enacted in the state, creating “Green Mountain Care”. This taxpayer-funded healthcare pool was meant to provide universal healthcare coverage for all of Vermont’s citizens. The kicker was that it was also expected to reduce healthcare costs. It all sounded wonderful. Fast forward to 2013. Under the provisions of the law, Vermont was supposed to have, by this time, figured out how to fund the thing. They hadn’t. An 11% payroll tax hike was proposed, but this was - naturally - determined to be unfair and even crippling to small businesses in the state. By 2014 the state had still not figured out how to fund the law with the $2 billion in additional state spending it required. The law was abandoned by the state. What happened? Two-thirds of Vermont’s citizens agreed that even if it meant a tax-hike, they wanted universal healthcare. The people felt ready to pay up for the collective good of their state. Reality set in though. That’s what happened. A line touted by opponents of single-payer healthcare is simple - nothing is actually free. This is important, especially today, as we hear the terms “free healthcare” and “free college” being thrown around. It’s easy to say that we can tax the rich to Hell to pay for these things. It feels good. It feels like the right thing to do. However, it’s just not how things work. A national “Medicare for all” plan, like the plans touted by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, would establish a costly and ineffective government bureaucracy overseeing all aspects of our healthcare system. Let’s take a second to think about that. The Federal Government, along with its low approval ratings and generally accepted inability to govern effectively, would be in full control of the entirety of our healthcare system. That doesn’t sound like a good idea to me, and you can take a quick look at the failures of the Veteran’s Affair’s healthcare system for reference. Then comes the other issue. How do we fund this? “Medicare for all” would cost the Fed over $32 trillion in its first ten years. Let’s take a shot in the dark here. Let’s say we doubled the corporate tax rate as well as the individual income tax rate. Obviously a 100% increase in taxing would cover this, right? No. It’d fail to cover the expense of this program. These programs don’t work on the state level once the invoice hits the desk. They’re great to think about, and well-intentioned. But the reality of the situation is that they can’t feasibly be funded in the United States - whether it be at the State or Federal level - without crippling our economy. If a doubling of corporate and individual income tax - something I think most voters would not get behind - can’t cover something, then the writing is on the wall. “Medicare for all” is a dud that would never be enacted even if it passed in the house and senate and was signed into law. Just like Vermont, the cost would come in, and the plan would fail. Focusing on other common sense ways to reduce already existing healthcare costs is the way to go here - not a wholesale handover to the Federal Government with all of us expected to foot the bill. The opinions expressed in this piece do not reflect those of Saints News as a whole, but those of its author Ryan D. Price. Saints News