searabbit

I think this is a good call out to either get your immunity tested or just get the booster. I have a good primary doctor who routinely gets her new adult patients tested for immunity to the common diseases vaccinated against in childhood, and I tested negative for measles. I would’ve had no idea that I lost immunity and needed a booster otherwise.

that’s how life was in those cultures

What are “those cultures”? Because the person you replied to only mentioned GoT and that’s not a real culture.

I feel for your friend because my mom had acne until (I assume) she hit menopause, and my acne starts back up if I ever take a break from continuous birth control. Doctors are also incredibly dismissive about these things because no one understands female hormones -yay for us!!

I can’t diagnose your friend, but I can point you in some directions to bring up at the doctor:

Starting about 2 years ago her face started getting acne, and any treatments just made it worse. the only thing that helped was antibiotics.

What treatments? (you don’t have to tell me, but have it ready for the doctor) Usually they’ll hand you some benzoyl peroxide and salicylic acid along with the antibiotics as the initial treatment. Maybe tretinoin (retin-A). These are very harsh actives, so they can be very irritating if you use too much or don’t combine them with a skincare routine. They also just don’t work for everyone. She can go back to the dermatologist and try something else.

Some of the spots are very tiny, like pore-sized, and get white heads

This sounds like it could be fungal acne (again not qualified to diagnose, go to a doctor). If it’s itchy and also gets worse with heat/sweat, try some anti-dandruff shampoo with ketoconazole or zinc pyrithione and see if that helps.

Before her period she gets very irritated-hyper, one time she got so pissed off at a pretty mundane thing she threw a mug at the wall.

She should speak to her doctor about PCOS and/or PMDD. They will likely recommend birth control for these conditions if she has them, but that is not the only option if she doesn’t want to go on it.

she says she only looks young because she has big eyes and a small nose

“Looking young,” “big eyes,” and “small nose” could be indicators of various genetic or endocrine conditions, but I wouldn’t bring this up to the doctor since it’s super vague and doesn’t point to anything in particular. She should just stick to symptoms that are bothering her. Presumably the doctor will be able to spot the connection if there is one.

Since 31 is still very young, is this normal for her age?

I don’t think this is a useful question. Acne is a common condition even in adults, but it is still a condition that most people want treated. The point is she wants treatment. If a doctor dismisses her with a “oh it’s normal” or a “it’s just a sign that you have young skin!” (my mom got this line into her 40s…), go to a different doctor.

I think we agree for the most part. I also didn’t mean to imply reading literature = intelligent because I also don’t believe that. The people I described are people in my life who I believe are incredibly intelligent, just not academic.

On my last point, it’s my realist take. I have EDS (excessive daytime sleepiness), so even if I really really believe I will enjoy a tougher read, sometimes I can’t stay awake long enough to get through a page. During those periods, I’ll take the easier self help or scifi book to keep me going. But yeah, challenging ourselves is part of the joy. When I was a struggling college student, I became very depressed for a while, and I distinctly remember picking up a philosophy book at the city library and reading an excerpt about hedonism and eudaimonism which changed my outlook for the better. The idea that we need both short term pleasures and long-term purpose to feel happy/fulfilled helped me work through the challenges, making sure I still went out and had fun in between, which now I look back on with some sense of fondness and pride. I see reading a tough book that interests me in the same way.

for his essays, there is an excellent anthology available from Penguin, ‘The World-Ending Fire’.

Awesome! I’ll add that to my reading list :)

That story was a wild ride, but somehow putting aside the quadruple amputee part, you really need to have the “would you help me hide the body” conversation with your buddies before just shooting a guy in front of them, that likely was another buddy of theirs, and expecting them to not immediately go “wtf dude” and nope out of there.

I love this comment and I’ll look into Wendell Berry since I haven’t heard of him before.

To add on, I’ve met a lot of otherwise smart people (smart as in curious and skeptical to not accept things at face value) who frustratingly have no interest in literature to flesh out their own philosophies about the world.

They’ll go on a rant about this or that and I’ll chime in to say, for example, “oh are you talking about prisoners dilemma?” or “you’re basically describing nihilism” or “well, that person likely disagreed with you because you are using different definitions of the same word/concept” and they’ll look at me with an expression of ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about and I don’t care.’ I’d be so happy to explain things or recommend what to research to engage with topics they’re clearly passionate about, but it’s sad to see the curiosity end so soon when so many people have collectively devoted lifetimes on expanding the ideas they think they just invented.

So I won’t comment on what makes someone intelligent (because you’ll never find me calling the people I described unintelligent), but if you want to improve your own, I emphatically agree on reading literature, even fantasy like Tolkien, whatever you enjoy.

I don’t even see a point in commenting on the current version of reddit anymore (and I haven’t for a couple of years). You’re either replying to bots or about to get into a useless argument with a bad faith actor. I’ll gladly comment on reddit alternatives because it’s a better experience for me and it’s more likely to get other people to make the switch.

People generally hang out with other people of their general socioeconomic class, so it doesn’t take much guesswork. Usually, they just have nothing in common with poorer people (not the literal poors, upper middle class is poor to them), don’t go to the same places that poorer people go to, and unfortunately, poorer people generally tend to be less attractive than rich people due to lack of access to cosmetic care. The cosmetic care includes skincare, dental work, and I’ve even seen growth hormones as soon as elementary school.

One last point, multimillionaire and billionaire circles are extremely small because, as you can imagine, there’s not that many of them! They tend to know way too much about each other, so if you do happen to be poorer and run in their circles, they’ll either know and/or you’re smart enough to be playing their game.

Lol it was cocaine and he got a visit from the fbi from what I heard but not much more than that. Rich kid of course.

I knew a kid in college who got drugs delivered straight to the dorm mailroom, so people can really be surprisingly brazen…

I think people who grow up middle class in a first world country are so sheltered from suffering that animal cruelty is the first example of it that they can actually empathize with and understand as a black and white issue (to them). Unfortunately, suffering is just a fact of life for everyone but the most privileged. The logical conclusion to “if you can’t give animals the standard of care that I expect as a global top 1%er of wealth, then you shouldn’t own any pets” is a PETA type policy of killing any pet that is living a suboptimal existence. Which, if they were humans, we would consider that genocide. It’s really just not a reasonable stance at all.

This feels like the poison scene from the princess bride, so I’ll approach it with that level of intellectual derangement.

Which means the obvious first step is to recognize that the house is a cheater who wants you to stay poor so your choice doesn’t matter. There is poison in both cups and I will lose either way. Money no longer influences my decision.

Next, I flip a coin ten times and note my reaction to the choices. That’s my gut instinct and obviously what the model predicted unless it’s either not smart enough to know my gut or smart enough to predict my double bluff, therefore useless.

Next, I decide which variables are most likely to influence the prediction (gender, age, education level, big 5 personality score) and realize this is the adult marshmallow test. I obviously think I’m smart and want the model to know that, so it obviously predicted that I would take one box because I’m a good little goodie two shoes who delays instant gratification for the potential bigger payoff. Therefore I choose two boxes because the model would never expect someone as smart as I to make such a dumb greedy move. Surely, I have outsmarted the supercomputer with my quadruple bluff and have won.

And then I remember I am dumb and the model knows that, because in my excitement, I forgot that the house is a cheater who always wins (and there was likely never any money in the mystery box because researchers never get that kind of funding). I am forced to believe that the model accurately perceived me to be a greedy idiot who took two boxes against my better judgement, shattering my ego.

But hey, I at least got $1k out of it.

I did it slowly over time. Every time reddit made a site wide change that worsened the user experience (which has been a lot since I joined a decade ago), I’d take one step to distance myself. First it was unsubscribing from major subreddits and engaging less, then staying logged out, then deleting the app but browsing on the web, and finally reddit pissed me off enough to try an alternative. So far I’ve already spent much less time doomscrolling online since this place isn’t filled with rage-baiting bot content.

I’ve never met someone who decided to write a history book as a hobby. Just wanted to say that’s awesome, hopefully you can make it accessible online to other history buffs who may enjoy it!

As expected, poorer people with no insurance and chronic illnesses are most affected, but even in their highest earning group of $240k+, 25% of people said they delayed a major life event to pay for healthcare. It underscores this as an issue that affects the bottom 99% of Americans as we all pretty much could guess.

I do think further studies should expand the survey questions because I go to the doctor way too much for chronic illness and I’ve never considered cutting back on utilities or literally skipping meals to pay for healthcare since where I live those savings are not enough to cover the costs on their own. In my experience, it’s more common to travel for medical procedures/diagnoses, get medications shipped from other countries, and to literally just stop paying any medical bills that they don’t make you pay upfront because fuck them.

Lyft already has this feature, it’s called women+

I don’t think this issue is reflective of American gender wars in particular. I can think of dozens of countries I’d be way more terrified of being in a car alone with an unknown man as a woman. I’ve never had a bad encounter with any uber drivers in the US, but I have heard directly from drivers that drunk riders can be a fucking menace, so I don’t mind if female drivers would rather take their chances with drunk women vs drunk men.

There is no point in being scared and stressed for the sake of it. If you’re not channeling those emotions into real action, you’re really just better off chilling tf out until there is some real and immediate threat to stress about.

If you have ever tasted the defensive secretions ladybugs make when they feel threatened, you know what these worms taste like.

You say that like it’s a normal thing to have tasted. Please don’t tell me I’ve also been unknowingly eating ladybug secretions this whole time😭