Lurker > VanananaHeyHey

In high school, it was all the anime club president would let us watch for an entire year (2005-2006). It got so repetitive that I brought in one of those Wal-Mart bargain bin bootleg dubs of some low-budget Chinese cartoon and demanded a vote on what to watch, FLCL or that. The bootleg won. It wasn't better than FLCL, but it was something different at least.

The anime president, two years younger than me, hasn't spoken to me since even though I'm friends with their sibling.

"Being icky" isn't reasonable grounds to deny basic human self-determination. But the ook-factor is why the safest, most compassionate procedure for medically necessary later abortion was outlawed, so props on being as wicked and immature as Justice Kennedy.

EDIT: Yes, I have. A few different methods, as well as a fake video put out by an antiabortion group; plus have seen several other medical procedures on video (not abortion related ones).

Lot of misogynists in here thinking "I'm against abortion unless they deserve it." Rape is already underprosecuted and almost impossible to litigate in under nine months. Roe itself was decided well after the woman was forced to give birth and the suit was only permitted to continue because pregnancy can happen multiple times to the same woman.

Plus, most of the recent state-level laws allow the impregnator to sue women for damages if they terminate a pregnancy, so it incentivizes "the heinous cases." Any and all restrictions on abortion are sex-based hate crimes.

HungryLuma64 posted...

Forgive me, but isn't that better than not being born at all?

No, obviously not. There is no consciousness or thought without being born. Do you lament the children denied life because your parents had sex and you were the sperm? Do you mourn the lives of all the children who aren't alive because there are so many people in the world who never had sex? You speak from a place of pure emotion for hypothetical unbeings without any whiff of sympathy for real humanity. The striking of Roe wholly invalidates women's personhood.

kirbymuncher posted...

I don't think I've ever heard anyone say it's always been 20% and I distinctly remember back when I first started to comprehend the concept of tipping everyone said the defaut was 15%

Yeah, when I was a kid, I was taught that 15% was the standard. However, the tipped/server minimum wage has been stagnant at $2.13 since 1993, so it was 15% when we were growing up and sensibly became inflated to 20% over those decades.

Happy Friday, TC! My bowling league has its last game before playoffs tonight. My team is not good.

Going to a horse race tomorrow with my dad.

I need to do some work at some point, too. I signed onto an ambitious work project due May 13th and have not started (have had the specs since Wednesday and have been busy, so I'm not procrastinating too much yet, but time gets so slippery).

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!

I'd have just enough time to fix my thesis and to reach out to someone I've been kicking myself for not talking to ever since.

NeonOctopus posted...

lmao, i would've laughed at that. Was he doing that on purpose just for his own amusement or was he serious? >_>

He bought the condoms and sashayed out gleefully, so I assume he was serious. I didn't laugh until he left, though I'm sure I made some sort of "wha~!" noise involuntarily when he first asked. It's hard to explain, but it wasn't really cringey at all. It was so charismatic, like ultra-charismatic, that I just thought it was funny/nice/cute/strange.

When I was a cashier in my teens, I never cared when people bought condoms because I was bored and hated my job, just like all cashiers. Except one time, this guy in his 20s came in. He looked left dramatically. He looked right dramatically. Then, he pivoted on his heel to face the cash register, gave a snapping double finger guns, clicked his tongue and said "Hey, where's your condoms?"

That guy could have had just a touch more coyness, perhaps. But I was happy for him.

Nah.

I was a heavy user for about ten years and have been tapering/trying to smoke less for the past year or so. It's worth quitting, especially once it just becomes a habit without any giggles or munchies. Good luck!

Getting busy with work did more to help me quit than any other "anti-drug" or feeling like I "should" quit. The people on r/leaves talk about exercising more, getting a hobby, etc. Those are all good things to add to your life, but because they're "fun" and "additional," it's easier for me to just drop the new hobby, or to get high and pick at it a little, or to make grand intentions that I never get around to. Getting extra work, or some obligation that I can't just put off until later, was the only thing that made me feel like I was really sabotaging myself.

That's beautiful. Way to be!

MrMallard posted...

Abysmal sex ed, abortion restrictions, inaccessability of birth control and the taboo against menstruation are all part of the same type of female oppression that feeds into surrogacy normalization. They're not separate issues at all; each is a part of what makes gender oppressive.

Writing contracts to explicitly use and control a person's body is a slippery slope to other forms of legitimized organ farming. The "protections" overwhelmingly favor the person contracting the surrogate, because women who are engaged in commercial surrogacy aren't in the position to be making demands.

Creating a contract wherein a woman relinguishes the control of her body for the purpose of creating a fetus as a product, wherein her rights are subsumed by the client, legitimizes the notion that there ever could be reasonable limits on when or whether a woman terminates: there have already been cases where a couple didn't want all of the embryos that took and wanted a reduction, as well as cases where the surrogate has not understood how extremely traumatic carrying and giving up an infant is. Whether it's "right" or "hers" doesn't change the fact that this is a year of someone's life, with the most foundational chemicals and processes surging through every second of existence --- it's not just a sperm donation.

If a woman wants to terminate during the process of a surrogacy contract, she cannot without paying tens of thousands of dollars to the people who contracted her. It would take very little for those precedents to be used to legitimize other anti-abortion laws, such as the existing ones in various states that allow impregnators, family members and strangers sue women for damages if they terminate pregnancies. It also would give the men's rights activists "financial abortion" argument more weight, since reproduction is being reduced to a transaction.

An argument could be made also that these types of contracts could be parlayed by extreme megacorps like Amazon to sign off to the absolute right to an employee's body for X number of hours a week, etc., thereby bypassing safety regulations.

Surrogacy is used as a desperate way for women to make income; it's not just your hip neighbor agreeing to sell you her body. Ukrainian and Indian women (and those in other countries) are literally kept in maternity farms so they can be monitored and the contracts 'enforced.' There is a tremendous amount of travel from the richest parts of the world to the poorest to buy these services.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/03/russia-invasion-ukraine-surrogate-family/623327/

Women who can't go to school, or who can't get jobs despite their credentials, are forced to become literal baby factories. It is an industry that requires exploitation to exist, even if there are a few rare examples of women who just really, really, really want to gestate and offload neonates. Coercive acceptance is not real consent.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-surrogate/as-crisis-bites-indian-women-turn-to-surrogacy-idUSTRE53705T20090408

tag

scar the 1 posted...

It's really weird to make a distinction between gay and straight surrogacy, as if it matters. The issue is the exploitation of women's bodies, and trying to disguise it as an LGBTQ issue is really dishonest pinkwashing.

^^^
This, 100%. There are legitimate human rights reasons to oppose all further normalization of commodification of female anatomy and none of them have anything to do with gays being icky.

I called them "Squishamals" for a couple months because I'd only seen the word in print and never bothered reading it all the way through. I don't have any little kids in my life, so it wasn't until I saw an ad for them with sound on that I realized what a fogey I'd been making of myself.

Now I realize why grown-ups couldn't tell the difference between Pokmon, Digimon and Monster Rancher, even though it was so obvious how different they all were, dumbo adults.

BlingBling22947 posted...

Whats the last thing you ate?

Some seaweed salad and protein powder (collagen). They haven't given me any special diet or told me to avoid any foods, so I'm just eating like normal.

emblem boy posted...

What kind of side effects would it take for you to not do a trial like this?

If there were suspected long-term bone density issues or cardiac weakening, I'd be pretty nervous. Or if someone in the first cohort had died, I might back out. Otherwise, I'm pretty healthy, so the later challenge phase will suck, but I'm not worried about anything permanent.

It's not really a side effect, but if there were limitations on my travel that lasted beyond the twelve-day medical observation period in June, I would also have to reconsider it.

I won't be able to give blood for a year, which sucks, but I've had iron too low to give the past few times I went to give over the last several months, so it's not like I was helping with my blood anyhow.

I'm 24 hours out from the first shot. My arm's not even sore, which is awesome, since the syringe they used was really big (just the tube with fluid; the needle itself looked normal size). Going back on Monday for another blood draw and I get dose #2 on May 18th.

But Hermiione didn't post goth pics yet. :(

That's so wild! Congratulations on the new job! NYC isn't really famous for its BBQ, but there will definitely be plenty of places where southern or western transplants have brought their delicacies. There's more than one style of "American BBQ," though, so keep scoping different places.

Funny fact I discovered on my first trip is that Little Italy and Chinatown are literally across the street from each other.

It's sounds dumb, but fresh bagels really are far superior to the ones elsewhere.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

There will be a third cohort in the next few months, so maybe so! If you're on the East Coast, you could look up the shigella study through the University of Maryland Medical Center and sign up now. It's a good mission.

Heads up that there's a twelve-day medical lockup period you have to be able to commit to about a month and a half after you get your second shot.

SergeantGander posted...

How much you getting?

If you mean money: after all is said and done, it'll be a bit under $8k.

If you mean drugs/cootie juice: I 'unno? A few tens of mLs?

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

:'(

:(( ) ~ (that's the tail)

Self-serving bump because I'm filling out the symptom diary for the day.

No fever, no headache, no fatigue, no joint pain, no muscle pain, no diarrhea, no anorexia, no chills, no vomiting, no hard/hot/red lump at the injection site.

Still no tail. >:(

This is good news. Thank you. Tell the dogs they're good, plz.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

I honestly just saw an ad on Facebook, gave them my number and had a short phone screening a few days later. Went in February (on President's Day, I think) to give blood, get an EKG and answer some more questions. Today was lots of blood, urine and stool.

I didn't see the funny ad above; it was just a normal recruiting call. Something like "Are YOU generally healthy? University of Maryland Medical Center/Gates Foundation wants YOU!"

Today at my appointment, the nurse said that they had just finished with cohort 1 and that everyone did just fine. I'm very glad for them (and for what that augurs for my cohort as well)! <3

Shoulda done his research first: three of those female characters are married, the other is not to scale and the male one is dead. Sad.

I was already enrolled before this ad came out, but I think this is one of the best pieces of advertising I've ever seen.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/6/7/AAbYl1AADJW_.jpg

MixedRaceBaby posted...

thats pretty cool.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

<3 Thanks, gang. I figure if thirsty babies can usually survive this, so can I --- I'm not really worried, but it is sort of thrilling to be a 'specimen.'

The vaccine is looking to prevent shigella bacterial infections from developing into shigellosis and dysentery. It's mostly a disease that occurs in parts of the world without clean drinking water, but has experienced an uptick in the US over the past several decades due to purposeful underfunding and political sabotage of infrastructure. Up to 600,000 people (mostly children) die of it every year.

Got my first shot today, a couple hours ago. Haven't grown a tail yet.

omg fuckbois are a weakness <3

It's disgusting and should be illegal. If honesty in your job posting is too offputting, you have no right to be an employer.

I'm getting e-mails for "Social Security Administration" and "County jobs," but they're all actually just CDL hiring for sub-sub-subcontractors.

Karaoke is a hoot. I go three times a week some weeks. It's got all of the catharsis and community of church, with all the spontanaeity and individual verve of sports.

The only way you can be bad at karaoke is if you make fun of someone else's performance.

I got my earlobes pierced a while ago because I inherited a bunch of earrings. I've been keeping studs in my ears since late December. Took them out for the weekend and popped them back in on Monday.

When can I stop wearing them for, like, a month at a time or more? If I wore studs for the next 30 years, but then took them out for a year, would my ears close?

Internet giving answers between 2 and 6 months for initial healing. Haven't had any issues or infections.

Did you not get it, or did you just not see what all the fuss was about?

I didn't read the book, but I saw the movie. It was fine, poetic, lots of saturated colors. I liked it okay. There wasn't too much to get: intertwined souls reconnect across time. It was Inception for people who like arthouse.

tag

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

tag me for this, please

omg omg omg <3

Bishop_Hastur posted...

Might be going to Ocean City in a couple months.

Oh, yow, I haven't been down the ocean in almost ten years. Have a great time! When I was a teen, I juggled at Bethany Beach for a few weeks for change, until I was chased out by the bike cops for "unlicensed busking. They wanted me to pay something like $65 or $85 (in 2005 dollars). So I went to the Ocean City Town hall, paid $2 or $5 for a busking ID and did the rest of my juggling there.

Bethany patrons left more change, but OC was better people watching. :x Have a great time!

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

I love you so much, man, but you gotta wait your turn until Virginia Day on September 14th. You can come over here, but you'll have to wear the local costume.

Heartomaton posted...

From now on, everyone in that state is named Mary.

Because it's Mary Land.

Maryland-approved names: Mary, Anna, Anne, Cecil, Montgomery, Talbot, Caroline, Howard, George, Frederick, Kent, Charles, Burnie, Glenn, Carroll, Aliceanna, Barton, Barclay, Berwyn, Bowie, Brent, Chevy, Chase, Denton, Emmit, Galena, Hancock, Grace, Henderson, Kensington, Laurel, Leonard, Luke, Preston, Ridgely, Michaels. Honorable mention: Accident.

k1zzl3_82 posted...

St. Marys City

Absolutely gorgeous. I haven't been back to the little settler repro town since I was in elementary school, but I've been poking around the state more and want to check it out again.

k1zzl3_82 posted...

a johnnie cake

*love react* And some pit beef if we start early enough.

MegaTech posted...

Where are you getting this free cookie at, Vanai?

I haven't obtained one yet this year, but the opportunity presents itself every year at some point during the day. All kinds of places will tend to, especially mid-size grocery store bakeries. My college would have pastries and bands and fliers. Multiple of my friends have posted breakroom photos of their flag-spangled bagels or thematic cookies. I'll let you know if I hear of any chains doing anything specific. Otterbeins put out a tin of Maryland-themed cookies, but they weren't free. >:(

MacadamianNut3 posted...

Also related

I think I'm blind. :o