Well yeah, of course the problem here would be child support and not divorce is functionally impossible in Missouri.

That was very nearly my exact same thought. Maybe not for curious children with carrot-sized fingers, but for adults, how convenient! Business competitor’s body won’t quite fit in your fancy frunk? Just while away on your phone for about 10 minutes, let the cat do its magic, and off go the legs! Travel-sized!

Fanning slowly – “I am married.”

Fanning quickly – “I am engaged.”

Using as a fan – “Introduce me to your company.”

…?

I have to wonder who came up with this. One would imagine it was just some idea someone had and they published a whole etiquette book about it, and it slowly but forcefully caught on from there, because otherwise I can’t imagine this just being a thing that evolves spontaneously in a way everyone equally understands. Imagine sitting all the way across the room at a ball or something and witnessing someone break up with their boytoy through body language. With perfect clarity for all to see. You might as well just say it out loud.

From the US: I’m over 30 and this is the first time I’ve heard surrogacy referred to as human trafficking. And now I need to sit and think.

It’s always felt a little bit creepy to me, but I’ve also never wanted kids and the idea of pregnancy for any reason would be traumatic. So I’m starting out heavily biased. I think if you take the money out, it no longer counts…?

But the idea would be so out of left field that it would mostly be dismissed out of hand, probably even by most women.

Yeah? And how many removed the lid that way?

Middle-age would be in your 40s-50s. Not to diss my dead relatives too hard, but you’re thinking of old fucks that would have any solid opinion on that. In a handful of years, the music middle aged men will be up in arms about is *NSYNC.

So apparently if you smack it all around the sides of the lid with a spoon or something, you can loosen the vacuum seal.

It sounds fake but it worked the other night on a jar of salsa I was legitimately considering just breaking, and I’m still kinda mad that I never knew that til now.

God, the taste their AI is about to garner for coconuts.

Christ, do you understand how big this could be if anyone would let it? (they won’t)

Even a ton of “more environmentally friendly” textiles are as bad if not somehow worse than their already destructive counterparts. I ran the numbers once in an argument and a recyclable shopping bag requires a little over 70 uses just to break even with the comparable pollution it took to make it, but most people who even use them throw them out after less than 20.

God, I wish it said anything about how resilient it is as clothing in comparison to regular leather. I’ve known about the making of lab-grown ghost hearts and stuff through a similar method for a while now, but this never even occurred to me. I know next to nothing about bacteria, clearly.

Sadly, there’s still too much money in doing anything else, I’d bet. So many companies put too much effort into PR, greenwashing and general slavery to want to move over, and this would affect more industries than one.

I agree with all your other statements, but offer you this one counterpoint: you’re getting the interesting ones.

Some program out there calculated once that *I* have a low to moderate chance of being female, but very little of anything else I look up could be considered advertiser friendly. Their only option remaining was to make all my targeted ads dumbass sweatshop clothes and feminine hygiene products forever.

Things like, say, an increased need for vitamin D supplements in colder climates, because you need sunlight to manufacture vitamin D to make serotonin and the increased melanin blocks what little sun is available way up north? Sure. That one is a difference off the top of my head that people really just don’t think about.

Kidney function is provably not one of them and never was, so you’re gonna have to fuck off with that. I usually make a conscious, concerted effort to be a better person than I was on reddit, but you already admitted in another comment that you don’t know shit about medicine and you seem bothered in the opposite direction regardless.

So with the possibility of this topic being your emotional support knowledge base out of the picture, the only horse you logically seem to have in this is that seeing ethnic minorities demand that we stop allowing them to die by reason of nothing annoys you to have to listen to.

If that’s not the case, I might be a bit quieter and rephrase everything you said forever, because it does not look like you want it to look. If it IS the case, get the fuck off my platform.

On the one hand, I feel really proud that I got under your skin so much that mine is the only contribution you’ve ever replied to in the 7 months that whole account has even existed. Someone just clearly isn’t having a good day if that’s the one thing that set off a professional lurker.

But also, like…I thought about this all through my quesadilla and it’s just really sad? Is this like Incel Logic: Hobby Edition, where you’re either born perfect and flawless or you’re a permanent shit failure and therefore whichever way the coin falls, you never have to work at anything? Like Big Education is a trillion dollar industry now, and really society is divided up Airbender style and you just didn’t get the CalArts gene?

There’s only one kind of person I can see falling for this weak-ass angle, and it’s the kind of person who’s never taken up any recreation for more than 1-2 days in their whole life because they don’t start out amazing at it and you can’t fail at anything if you never do shit. And honestly, I’m kinda bummed out that you have to live like that. You know you can just look up tutorials for anything these days.

A lot of people you read about who grew to be leaders in their field by some ridiculous age like 25, spoke fluently in 5 different languages, etc. etc. did so because they had three things: dedicated one-on-one tutors, an appreciable collection of slaves and/or other general servants to free up their personal time, and enough family wealth to pay for both from the time they could walk.

Mozart was composing as a toddler, but he also came from a wealthy family of musicians that taught him basically nothing else. Ever. That was the one thing. He hyper-specialized in music and socially he was the guy that got bored and did cartwheels and meowed in public. If Mozart was in your position, with the kind of loving care and finances most students have today, he would have been the kid in class who beatboxes over the teacher.

I’m actually still coming to terms with this myself. with mixed success. I’ve always loved art, but I’ve never been where I want to be. I’ve been making strides again, but the further I take it, the more it becomes apparent that 90% of the problems I’ve ever had with it were not me, they were because no one ever bothered to teach me. And I’m pissed about the decades I lost simply because child me was never shown concepts that would have changed everything.

Do not judge your own accomplishments on the same scale as someone who had ample time to devote to their studies because their family had house slaves doing everything you have to do by yourself.

It probably takes me that long just to wash and rinse my hair.

Oh… I always though Siobhan was really pretty, but it turns out I was just pronouncing it wrong.

True. Problem is, I would consider the question still valid on the basis that not every embryo successfully implants.

IVF can up the odds of success by using multiple embryos at the same time in the hopes that at least one of them will work, which is why people who go for IVF sometimes end up having quadruplets and such.

So every time one or more IVF attempts fail, what, they have to inform the government their 7th child in a row has died? Every post-coital period, do I hedge my bets?

Having a tea party isn’t girly, though. Let kids play how they want.

Definitely south of you, since for me as a kid the frost would kick in from October and you couldn’t expect snow until very late November/early December on through February. By then, it could snow, but in my experience it was mostly turning to sleet. Christmas was always white and we always got a couple feet.

Not enough to dig tunnels in like my mom used to do in Chicago. The mountains to the east protect us from the worst of it. But enough to make one snowman after another, all with the initial base larger than a 10yr old is tall, until we were all too frozen to stay outside. We could go sledding. We could build protective snowball forts if we took the time.

I haven’t seen the snow for 14 years, and both those times were technically one state north. One of those, even, was so pitiful we settled for a medium turtle on my end and what my brother touted as the world’s smallest snowman balanced in his open hand.

My aunt has denied climate change my entire life up until 6 years ago when I finally got her to admit something may be odd. We were out in the parking lot, about to pick up my Xmas present in mid-December. It was 75F.

I don’t hear the birds like I used to.

Please be one of those people that washes their hands instead of this functioning as some broad, sweeping excuse because “it’s already everywhere.” I don’t know how else fecal matter would be expected to travel to a stove dial.

There is only really the one british accent that’s ever depicted in our media/whatever media makes it over here, so I’m sad to say almost certainly we do not.

That’s why we only ever seem to imitate the one (or accidentally mix them, apparently). It’s the only example we’ve got and we assume everything is that one. I don’t know where any of those areas are any more than I know the sociological difference between them, and if I had to name any others, I don’t know what I’d do.

Tomato still has mild southern variations (“tuh-may-duh/ter-may-der,”) but it is a solid choice now that I think about it.