Sorry that you're going through something OP. Everything I say after this is probably something you don't want to hear, so read on at your peril.

The reason people tell you to go to your doctor when you ask for medical advice online is because the question itself implies you want good or useful advice and nobody besides you're medical team can give you that. You can find some general stuff online or ask to speak to a different doctor if there's trust issues with your current provider, but nobody without access to your personal medical history is able to advise you accurately. It takes at least 8 years of constant study to be a newbie doctor. Human bodies are extremely complex, and we still don't know how everything works. Even if we did, not all bodies work the same way. On top of that, humans are shit at statistics, and we heavily bias anecdotal evidence, especially when it is our own anecdote or from someone we know.

Here's a simple example.

Say I get an upset stomach after eating meals and I complain about it to a friend. Trying to be helpful, they told me they used to get that too, so they tried switching to a vegetarian diet, and they got better. Sounds innocent enough, right? I know what vegetarian means (it's "common sense", right?) so I stop eating meat and start getting salads or fruit for lunch instead. After about a week, I fell asleep while driving home. Turns out, I'm anemic. I was getting just enough iron on my old diet to keep the worst symptoms that would have scared me enough to see a doctor at bay, but when I cut out meat I went from iron deficient to anemic. Had I gone to the doctor, they'd have easily seen my iron deficiency and put me on a supplement or advised me how to change my diet, and the nausea would have gone away. Instead, I end up imaking my condition worse and landing in the ER after an auto crash.

That didn't actually happen, but I think it's a good example for several reasons. It's a common side effect (nausea) of a common problem (iron deficiency) that you're likely to think doesn't warrant a doctor, but you'd still mention to a friend. It's a super common symptom associated with lots of conditions. The friend even gave good advice (for most people, changing their diet wouldn't have been an issue, but because of an underlying medical condition specific to our protagonist, it was bad advice FOR THEM). The friend had no way of knowing or even suspecting it could be dangerous advice because most people don't spend a decade learning about the body and disease more generally and they didn't know about the specific issues related to the specific case. It's the same reason you shouldn't get legal advice online... It's a super complex system, and every case is literally different.

It's worse than that, even another doctor should not be diagnosing or advising people online...they don't have access to your medical history, current medications, comorbidities, etc and all of that data is VITAL to giving sound medical advice.

Anything beyond "eat a variety of foods - not too much or too little, get enough sleep, and exercise within your comfort limits" without any of that additional information should be considered bad advice and there's probably even cases where those 3 very general rules would be ill-advised.

And we've tried everything from "making guns easier to get" to "absolutely nothing," and we're out of ideas.

I really wish we could have a good faith conversation in this country about the intersections between rights and responsibilities. Until then, I'm fine with people going to prison in foreign countries for this kinda crap.

"Even the babies are being born now... completely nude! It's unimaginable"

Do the debates, and reveal the results of the drug test (taken by both candidates) DURING the debate. Let's do this shit like Maury.

And they'd probably name it something like the "Jeff Landry Satanic School of Science" or something too. chef kiss

He can't possibly be expected to masturbate to completion with some pathetic tradwife on the screen. He's no beta-male cuck! Only 2 or more alpha males railing each other can produce the kind of testosterone-fueled intensity to make him climax.

Unfortunately, the whole scenario is a little contrived, and it feels quite a bit like the same tactic as describing things like fingernails or the "heartbeat" of a fetus...it's designed to get you to act on emotion without learning more.

Now, if a surgeon were to be found doing gender reassignment surgery on minors without the years of therapy and other interventions that are all part of the real process...then I'd be fully on board with yanking their license to practice and probably charging them and the kids guardians with any applicable criminal charges. As far as the real process goes, the whole thing is designed to give the person every opportunity to change their mind or only partially transition before anything irreversible happens. It usually starts with letting the kid pick their own clothes/hair/whatever and therapy. If they change their mind, they just change their clothes and hair. Then, more therapy and maybr change their name ( it doesn't even have to be a legal change yet, as they're a minor), maybe puberty blockers as appropriate. If they change their mind, they just stop the blockers or go back to their old name... whatever they feel comfortable with. Then maybe top surgery as a late teen or early 20s... again, it's harder to reverse but still doable.

Because of the way the process is gradual and guided by medical professionals, actual cases of someone fully transitioning then changing their mind is less than 1%. Gender affirming surgery to make you look more like your ideal version of your assigned sex (breast augmentation/lip implants/whatever) have mich higher regret rates.

Gotta release a bunch of burning ewoks to scare em and start a stampede...

Gotta release a bunch of burning ewoks to scare em and start a stampede...

And some aren't even strawmen...they recognize the police state is already directed against them and guns haven't solved the problem...just made it easier for police to pull the trigger because they're all terrified for their lives.

Personally, I've yet to see a single American successfully use guns to protect any other constitutional right from government infringement.

I have seen lots of examples like Waco and Ruby Ridge, where the government should have tried harder to deescalate, but in the end, everyone died. The closest example I can think of where the government did backoff was the Bundy standoff and all those guys were "defending" was their ability to let their cattle graze illegally on federal land because they didn't want to pay for access like everyone else.

Probably not yet...biggest advantage of moving from Sch 1 to Sch 3 is that it means federal research grants/money can be used now to determine what the actual medicinal uses.

But then the people who want to use that public trust for personal gain won't want to run for office! Then what!?!

Wanted a post-scarcity world but ended up with a post-satire one instead.

He's not happy, but that's got little/nothing to do with his money. He's doing the same things and experiencing the same consequences as a lot of people who fall into the extreme-right. He alianted his family, he's in trouble at work and he's blaming everyone and everything but himself. Only difference between him and the qanon conspiracy-brain who got fired from the plant in some small town for saying racist shit on Facebook is that Elon's wealth and public status means his life falling apart is a public spectacle instead of a private one. That, and the fact that his meltdown impacts a lot more people.

Money actually does buy happiness for most people (up to about $75k USD annually, at which point the correlation fades). I suspect that happiness is a direct result of not feeling like you're 1 sick day from homelessness, but I don't think the data is there to support why yet.

Edit: $75k, not 7k

I was born extremely smart. I always tested way at the top of the curve... far superior to all my peers.

It only works if you ask for vague, non-specific things. For example, if you ask for patience, then feel more patient... that's God! But if you feel more frustrated and less patient, that's also God... teaching you patience by making life suck so you have to be more patient. And if nothing changes? You guessed it; God!

Thanks, stranger. I'm in stormy seas now, and that means more to me than it otherwise might.

I think you're currently in a place where I was in myself many years ago. This is all assuming everything you said was in good faith. You see all of the pain and damage the -isms have caused (racism, sexism, etc) and it seems at first blush that if society simply disregarded the traits those -isms are based around, the problem would go away. There's enough truth in the idea to make it feel like a solution and, even if it's subconscious, it kinda takes the onus of action off of you and puts it on the people that that are actually racist or exist. I don't want to assume your political leanings, but I was farther right on the political spectrum than than I am now, and it fit well with my ideas about personal responsibility and limited government at the time...and I feel like it was regarded as common sense with everyone in that political sphere at the time. At the time, I was a 20-something cishet white guy (I'm still all of those things, except 20), and I felt like everything I had I'd earned, and I legit thought people could pull themselves out of the mire if they wanted it enough. I didn't like being grouped in with the -ists, but I also wasn't likely to call out a buddy for making an offensive joke.

That whole chain of thinking is deeply flawed, but it's an easy place to land, especially in middle-America. I feel like a good analogy that would have hit home with me at that point in my life would have been stories about places where Christianity was outlawed. I remember I had one of those old Christian comic books that were popular in the 90s about it. If you wanted to wear a cross, you'd have to hide it, you couldn't talk about being Christian or meet with other Christians (like a church service or prayer group) without having to worry about the law coming down on you. (Really makes me wonder where that infamous sense of persecution the right has comes from). At the time, I'd hear those stories and think, "Man, government sucks...it would be terrible to have to hide who you were like that." I think about those stories now and I think instead about not wearing the clothes you're comfortable in, not being able to get healthcare for legit medical diagnoses, not being able to have a club or group of similar people you couls safely meet with to build community around shared life experiences. The story about persucted Christians in some unnamed dystopia was also telling the true story of LGBTQ people in my own country. And women in my own country. And racial groups In. My. Own. Country. I never would have accepted the idea that those persecuted Christians would be OK if there just wasn't religion. Just like I know marginalized groups today won't be OK if whatever society deems "wrong" with them just went away. Societies have inertia, and without someone exerting some kind of force on them, they'll maintain their current trajectory. I came to see I didn't like my societies trajectory, so I started trying to change it, probably went a little too extreme in the other direction for a while, but eventually learned to just listen first. It's OK if I belong to a group (or several) that have been bad actors. It means I'm in a position to leverage my privileges to help change society's momentum. I grew up very poor, but I've got pretty much every other privilege society has to offer. I honestly don't know that I'd have been as fortunate as I am today if even one of those privileges was missing. Even with the deck stacked pretty well in my favor, it was a fucking fight to get here...and even now, doing so much better than most, it feels like barely hanging on some days. I agree that humanism is what we should be striving for, but I also understand that I'm part of a group that's done a lot of bad to a lot of other groups. I don't think it makes sense for me to be "proud" of any immutable part of my identity, but that also means I shouldn't feel personally attacked when people talk about that identity. Things like the whole bear thing would have probably bothered me in the past, but now it's more nuanced. I'm sad people feel that way, but I don't blame them, and I've listened enough that I believe them. Now the question I ask isn't "How is this fair to me?" but instead. "How can I use my membership in the group to help change its momentum to something better." Sometimes it's voting, sometimes it's canvassing or protesting, sometimes it's reaching out to someone I see a part of my past self in.