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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • Bro, as a woman in a “good state”, abortion rights (it’s not abortion rights, it’s bodily autonomy) did not survive. They are thinly-veiled and hanging on by a thread.

    It took me 3 years, 5 doctors, and 2 ‘health care providers’ to be granted the right to sterilization and I was still asked “what if you meet a guy and HE wants a baby?!” multiple times. There were mental health councilors and board decisions. They insisted I would want more because I would meet the right man, even after having an abortion post-child. That was 12 years ago during the Obama administration in a dependable blue state. That shit is NOT sacrosanct and never was.


  • In all fairness, due to the sheer size of Reddit the likelihood of a drunk expert-in-that-specific-thing that rejoices in oversharing their very specific knowledge is not 0%. Dude was desperate.

    We know his perfect answer was probably buried 12 subcomments deep on a 6 year old hentai thread, though. Only written online as the result of said aforementioned expert butting into an argument about pillow exports or something. Out of reach. Forever lost to the vast expanse of the internet.

    Anywho, sucks for that guy. He’s in prison now because his google search landed him in North Korea.



  • Some fish have little “hairs” on their body that are very similar to the “hairs” humans have in their ears to detect sound. As part of a trial to regrow damaged “hairs” in people with noise-induced hearing loss (soldiers, factory workers, etc), we had to uh, induce some damage so there was a test subject for the drugs. Turns out, tooth brush heads work really well for transmitting high-frequency waves through small volumes of water. Also turns out that I was not cut out for trials requiring living things. It was rough on the psyche.





  • I haven’t combined them directly, but I have taken both Sertraline and bupropion at different stages in my life. I agree that Sertraline eventually takes a toll on your libido, smothering it like a wet blanket over a fire. I can also attest to some people having an increase in anxiety with bupropion because that shit made me want to claw my skin off. I always felt like I was seconds away from exploding while I was on it. It’s difficult to describe. I stopped taking it after a few weeks because it made me an edgy mess.

    To overcome the lack of libido on Sertraline I just “practiced” by trying to initiate intimacy with my partner (or myself), even when I didn’t feel like it, because eventually I could “get in the mood” and it became easier over time after reminding my body that it was, in fact, fun to have sex. I also noticed increasing my activity level by working out a few times a week helped quite a bit with increasing my libido.

    Eventually after changing jobs, finding a good workout regimen, and reducing my alcohol intake, I was able to get off the Sertraline and my libido came back after a few weeks.

    That’s just my experience though, I wish you the best of luck.





  • Well now you made me go and google it. Some snippets from the top results:

    Evolution. Most female mammals have an estrous cycle, yet only ten primate species, four bat species, the elephant shrew, and one known species of spiny mouse have a menstrual cycle. As these groups are not closely related, it is likely that four distinct evolutionary events have caused menstruation to arise.

    Also:

    To understand why menstruation evolved, we have to think of it as a by-product of spontaneous decidualisation. In most mammals, decidualisation – the thickening of the uterine wall – is controlled by the embryo: it occurs in response to fertilisation rather than in preparation for it. In menstruating species like humans, spontaneous decidualisation is one way the parent tries to wrest back dominance of their uterus from an increasingly invasive embryo. The uterine lining now responds only to the parent’s hormones rather than the embryo’s, and the parent controls whether or not they get pregnant. They put their defences up preemptively, by sealing off the main blood supply from the endometrium before the embryo implants there. Not content with this, the embryo evolved to burrow through the endometrium until it reaches the arteries, where it tears through the wall and rewires the blood vessels so that it can bathe directly in the parent’s blood. The (arguably) ungrateful parasite pumps out hormones to make the arteries expand around it, and paralyses them to prevent the parent from cutting off its supply. It produces more hormones, which act directly on the parent to maintain pregnancy and increase the availability of nutrients. The parent defends themselves as best they can: their endometrium fights against the embryo’s invasive proteins, their immune system attacks the invading cells, and their own hormones try to counteract those of the embryo. The tug-of-war rages on.

    Well that’s just metal af.





  • Let’s say you break your leg. Your first reaction is usually “HOLY FUCK FUCK FUCK THAT HURTS” and your mind will do anything to try to escape it. But if you turn your attention towards it and focus on it directly, you can start to slightly diminish it by picking it apart. Is it a throbby or stabby pain? Is there an underlying itchy sensation? If you accept the pain and embrace it, it helps reduce it by seeing it for what it is and, more importantly, is not: You are not dying, even though your brain is reacting like you are.

    The Buddhist mindset is kind of like that, but for all of your reality. The zen doesn’t come from running away, it comes from seeing and accepting everything as it is and understanding that the only thing you can control is your mind’s reaction to it.

    Signed, Someone who’s broken a lot of bones and done a lot of meditation (still a shit Buddhist though)