How on earth are you reading while lying on your stomach??

Anecdotally, I had a quenching desire to lie on my stomach after giving birth. Like, I was exhausted and sleep deprived and you could have told me that this would kill me and I’d still sleep on my stomach in the hospital. I later looked it up and apparently lying on your stomach helps with the back formation of the uterus.

That got deep really fast xD

Anyway, I’ll be happy to share results once I’ll get to it!

I assumed it was because it helps develop fine motor skills. Also bright colors and contrasts are a visual stimulant.

As a frequent pee-er myself I think I should talk to my doctor

You wouldn’t believe how surprised I was that you could just buy them as a regular person. Somehow it felt like only doctors are allowed to have these. You can’t have that at home.

Well, we do now, but it feels wrong.

I often regret a lot of decisions and long for the paths I didn’t take. Then I remember that I was very likely to take a path that would have gotten me killed. Be it through rape, accident, suicide, or - most likely - by drinking myself to death. My life right now isn’t what I thought it would be, a lot of things didn’t turn out as I had yearned for, but it is a nice life and I am so grateful. So when I get sad about the missed opportunities, I try to humble myself and be grateful and impressed by what I have achieved. I didn’t die. And if I think about what deep pit I got out of, then my “life career” is so much steeper than a lot of people’s. Going from the mariana trench to the coast is quite a climb, even if you’re just at sea level at the end.

First and foremost: good! Let them continue to do research. And hint, any new discovery is good and should be followed up. The caveat is that beta amyloid plaques in the brain have started to gain a lot of critique as a target for Alzheimer’s. The problem is that research has focused a lot on stopping or even reversing the accumulation, but even when this works, this usually doesn’t alleviate the symptoms. And obviously it’s research in mice. So take the enthusiams with a grain of salt.

Damn that reminds me how I felt like things ought to, have to, must and will absolutely change with the pandemic. Lo and behold, 6 years later, we’re back to the same old shit.

I assumed we’d realize that we went too fast and too far. That we need to work together to get over this, cooperate, help one another. That there are things that matter more than corporations. I naively assumed that in times of global crises like this, we would get closer together and put aside all that shenanigangs. Slow down and realize that if we just tune it down nature will come back, the planet will heal.

Obviously, quite the opposite happened society wise, and even in terms of medical policy we are back where we started.

We are currently having Covid. How we know? We still use home test kits. When I told people we tested positive today they are so surprised that we even tested. They are even more surprised I am keeping my daughter home since she has no symptoms but a cough.

Everyone is surprised that I wear a mask when I pick my healthy daughter up from kindergarten when I have a cold and my spouse can’t pick her up. People are surprised I am cancelling a dentist appointment last minute because I have the flu and conjunctivitis. People are back to going to work with a flu. For fucks sake.

Can I suggest putting some frozen kale or spinach in it as well? For extra veggies and taste. We basically cook that every week and I love it. Granted, I put a tad more effort into it (stir fry onion and garlic and tomato paste before I add rice, lentils, greens and broth) but it’s basically the same.

Also try adding soy sauce, smoked paprika, and liquid smoke. Just a drop but it does wonders. Yeast flakes are also great.

As someone who’s actually had this problem (in an urban area) and actually solved it

That’s honestly quite remarkable

Idk wtf 🌚 means

I am so, so sorry about your loss. I’m glad to hear that you were able to feel a beacon of hope last year, and that this painting was a way for you to cling on to it and feel it a little longer. I hope you find a way to keep holding on to it, and through that hope find the courage to not give up and try to support change instead whenever you can and have the strength and energy to do so. But I can’t even imagine how hard that must be. And most of all, carry the love you had for your mom in your heart despite the grief, and the disgust and hate for the system that led to her demise quicker than it had to be.

I hope you don’t mind if I save that picture of yours.

Making an AI meme of Luigi as a Saint is one thing.

Making a painting and having it casually displayed in your room is a whole other level.

Also, I can’t believe it’s already been a year.

Wait this is not photoshopped?

Just want to say I love comments like yours. I love when people know their stuff about the bible (or other holy texts) and can put it into a reflected context. Thank you

I see your point about distraction from the matter, and I agree there. At the same time I am very bothered by the media coverage saying pedophile 99% of the time. Because, as you have mentioned in your first two paragraphs, pedophilia is a disorder, and not every pedophile/ephebophile/hebephile is an offender or consumes CSM. They should be calling them child rapists, sex offenders who raped minors, whatever. At least in Epstein’s case you can reasonably assume he did, indeed, have a sexual disorder, I’m not sure if it is true for all his clients. But they all are child sex offenders, there is no doubt about that.

Language matters. The last decade was putting such an emphasis on this, but with this case a lot of people seem to agree that “language distracts”. Let it be vague, everyone knows what is meant. Don’t distract from the important matter by being specific about the words you use. Well, I disagree, and I disagree not because it is ephebophilia or hebephilia, I disagree because a) It’s not about the …philia, it is about the offenses committed, and thus b) there are more precise terms that should be used in this case, and these terms (child rapist, statutory rape, child sex trafficker, etc) sound much harsher anyway. Also c) you are working against the interest of non offending pedophiles here and dismantle any awareness there is about everything you had pointed out above. Language matters for them as well.

I’m lucky enough to have a very bland, healthy sexual orientation and preference, but I do have a kid, and God knows I want to protect her from harm.

For this, I need people who are attracted to minors to be open about it, and they won’t be if we run with torches after them for just their orientation, or if we keep calling every person who offended a minor a pedophile. They won’t be open or seek help, and the discourse right now is incredibly counterproductive.

I also need people to be more aware that about half of sex offenses concerning minors are committed by people who have no attraction dysfunction. If it were so easy as to just “remove all the pedophiles” to stop child sex offenses.

So, in my opinion, the response to “ackshually he’s not a pedophile” should be “you’re right, he sex trafficked and raped minors. Better now?”

I have to admit it did a lot for me and I can’t believe I am saying that. But I literally just looked at this map for two minutes, trying to figure out what it was that caught me off guard.

Maybe inverting made South Korea look less like a peninsula “down there, hanging”, and more like something “up there, that people want to climb”?

Maybe it’s because I am not used to seeing this orientation and it’s refreshing and hence I look at it more closely than subconsciously thinking “meh I know what countries there are and what’s depicted”?

Like, this shouldn’t make sense, it should not make a difference, why does it make a difference to me, I don’t get it.

I don’t know how many stars you are planning on doing, but I hope it will be ready by next year’s Dia De Los Muertos or Halloween! Looks super cute and well made!

Jane Goodall was still alive when this article came out. It’s nice to know she probably read about that, if not saw this live, before her demise.

It is weird, and I don’t know if they had something like that. My guess is that getting small change in the first place was rare and it was not worth bothering for most.

Just for context, I am talking about копейки (kopek). Around 2003, the ruble was actually rather strong, with up to 23₽ to 1$. So 23 kopek would be 1 cent.

The last time I was there was in 2019 (for two obvious reasons). Back then the exchange rate was shit, with about 60-80₽ to 1$. The thing was that few places even gave you change in coin form. I remember relatives telling me that pharmacies are basically the only place that had prices with kopeks. The way it would work when shopping - apart from the fact that 99% paid with their phones and not with cash, I was the exception since I didn’t have a Russian bank account and couldn’t get one with my Russian passport - was that they would round prices, usually in your favor. So if you owe 2763 rubles (or 2762.88), and you gave them 3000, they would return either 240 or even 250, depending on how much change they have. They would also get majorly annoyed if you didn’t have “760” on you since they usually didn’t have change. I rarely got change back to the ruble (in this example 237). I definitely never got kopeks in a supermarket and just couldn’t use them there.

So maybe accumulating change would take long time?

Please note that I am not a local, so my knowledge of Russian money culture and habits aren’t the best or most reliable source. It’s my experience but there are surely more qualified people around here to chime in.