Good portion of people don’t give a shit.

I’ve spend the past three years trying to get people to investigate the sexual and physical abuse of children in Oklahoma, including some child trafficking. No one cares or wants to do anything about it. More people than we want to admit are okay with children being raped and abused as long as they are a certain type of child (foster kids usually.)

I was half asleep grabbing snacks after a twelve hour shift.

I don’t see why the “100%” is there, other than to try to trick you into thinking it’s “100% juice.” Like yeah, they aren’t literally lying, but they are trying to deceive.

My problem is mostly that HFCS tastes like ass. I was expecting it to be a blend of apple juice, pear juice, and a hint of passion fruit.

The health aspect is more about always keeping an easy to access non-beer thing in my fridge.

My ex was a nepo baby. He had so many speeding tickets. Didn’t give a shit about playing video games on his phone while driving. Fines don’t work when you could spend that same amount on a weeknight dinner without blinking.

Have you watched the Sagan Cosmos? I like it better than the NDT one, although I usually recommend NDT because it’s an easier sell. I love Sagan so much though. He’s just so gentle and kind, almost the same kind of vibe as Mr Rogers.

I dislike the way they present Giodano Bruno in the NDT Cosmos. The church was more miffed at his pantheism than any of his astronomical ideas. Less of a scientist and more of a philosopher.

But really (since this is a controversial thread) I just don’t want my child taking a knife to, and hindering the functionality of, any part of their body that was already working just fine.

But that isn’t happening. You have to recognize that there is a huge fucking propaganda campaign being held to convince you that children are walking to clinics and getting their dicks and breasts chopped off. Surgery doesn’t even make sense until all the parts are fully developed anyway.

Care is mostly affirming pronouns and names, sometimes puberty blockers.

This study on several cis girls suggests that there’s nothing unusual about puberty post blockers.

Girls treated in childhood with GnRHa have normal BMI, BMD, body composition, and ovarian function in early adulthood. FH is not increased in girls with ICPP in whom GnRHa was initiated at about 8 yr. There is no evidence that GnRHa treatment predisposes to polycystic ovary syndrome or menstrual irregularities.

I also want to say here that I have known two kids to be on blockers. Both had to drive several hours out of state to access their treatment. One of them almost was removed from their home by the state solely because they were trans and receiving blockers - a family friend who has received death threats and harassment and has had to go to court several times because she recognizes her son for who he is. The right wing propaganda sphere likes to pretend blockers are being handed out like candy, but that is not the case.

More like they are “anti hormones.”

They’ve been used to help cis kids who would otherwise be going through puberty at like 6 or something for decades. You stop any permanent changes from happening due to puberty. The child can choose to go off them if they change their mind and go through a “normal”’puberty, or stay on them and decide to get on HRT as an adult.

In the long run, this means less medical intervention. If you don’t grow breasts you won’t need top surgery; if you don’t experience a testosterone puberty you won’t have your vocal cords deepen and need voice training or surgery.

It is the “let’s wait until you’re an adult and can make a choice” option.

Here’s an article on their settlement with the FTC.

Heres another that mentions the CSAM, as well as much of a fucking monopoly formerly MindGeek, now Aylo, is.

There’s also connections between that private equity firm and the Canadian mafia, IIRC, but can’t find the article I remember on that.

Most children do not get hormones or surgery. Usually, the most intervention that happens is puberty blockers.

Watching porn on Pornhub or any other large mainstream porn site (all owned by essentially a monopoly) is being complicit in child abuse and rape. They made money knowingly hosting CSAM and should not be allowed to be in business. Even the stuff that involves people who are age is often trafficked Eastern European women.

There’s a story I heard from Judaism, where the rabbis were arguing about whether god was cool with something or not. One rabbi was against all of the other rabbis, and asked god to prove him right. God personally spoke up, and was like “yeah, he’s entirely correct” - but the rabbis end up telling off god. They point out that they only have the rules he sent down to work with, and having to call him for help every time they need a ruling wouldn’t be fair or reasonable.

I doubt old Reddit is going to survive much longer. It’s already pretty broken in a lot of ways.

Amazing how much the difference between “ephebophilia” and “pedophilia” was debated in early 2010’s Reddit. You’d get mobbed with “free speech” warriors if you brought up how fucked up it was that there was a “jailbait” subreddit.

You understand that people on 4chan make stuff up when breaking news happens? It’s a time honored tradition to find a random picture of a trans woman every time a school shooting happens and say it is her. You’re doing the equivalent of going to Stormfront or Alex Jones for breaking news.

The guy who shot Charlie Kirk possibly had a trans girlfriend, and that’s all we heard about for weeks. The fact that the school shooter in Canada last week was trans is all half the media is talking about.

If the media is going to have a meltdown any time a trans person is adjacent to something bad, we can celebrate something like this.

Uh, no this is not “personal” for me.

Why do people feel a need to do “but what about the men?” No one is smearing shit into the bloody penis of a baby. They are not comparable.

These are not comparable issues. I am against male circumcision, but people need to stop acting like the two things are anywhere near each other.

Heres “type 3” circumcision. [Feel free to check out Wikipedia to see what “type 4 entails.”]

Type III (infibulation or pharaonic circumcision), the “sewn closed” category, is the removal of the external genitalia and fusion of the wound. The inner and/or outer labia are cut away, with or without removal of the clitoral glans.[h] Type III is found largely in northeast Africa, particularly Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Sudan (although not in South Sudan). According to one 2008 estimate, over eight million women in Africa are living with Type III FGM. According to UNFPA in 2010, 20 percent of women with FGM have been infibulated. In Somalia, according to Edna Adan Ismail, the child squats on a stool or mat while adults pull her legs open; a local anaesthetic is applied if available: The element of speed and surprise is vital and the circumciser immediately grabs the clitoris by pinching it between her nails aiming to amputate it with a slash. The organ is then shown to the senior female relatives of the child who will decide whether the amount that has been removed is satisfactory or whether more is to be cut off.

”After the clitoris has been satisfactorily amputated … the circumciser can proceed with the total removal of the labia minora and the paring of the inner walls of the labia majora. Since the entire skin on the inner walls of the labia majora has to be removed all the way down to the perineum, this becomes a messy business. By now, the child is screaming, struggling, and bleeding profusely, which makes it difficult for the circumciser to hold with bare fingers and nails the slippery skin and parts that are to be cut or sutured together. …”

Having ensured that sufficient tissue has been removed to allow the desired fusion of the skin, the circumciser pulls together the opposite sides of the labia majora, ensuring that the raw edges where the skin has been removed are well approximated. The wound is now ready to be stitched or for thorns to be applied. If a needle and thread are being used, close tight sutures will be placed to ensure that a flap of skin covers the vulva and extends from the mons veneris to the perineum, and which, after the wound heals, will form a bridge of scar tissue that will totally occlude the vaginal introitus.

The amputated parts might be placed in a pouch for the girl to wear. A single hole of 2–3 mm is left for the passage of urine and menstrual fluid. The vulva is closed with surgical thread, or agave or acacia thorns, and might be covered with a poultice of raw egg, herbs, and sugar. To help the tissue bond, the girl’s legs are tied together, often from hip to ankle; the bindings are usually loosened after a week and removed after two to six weeks. If the remaining hole is too large in the view of the girl’s family, the procedure is repeated. The vagina is opened for sexual intercourse, for the first time either by a midwife with a knife or by the woman’s husband with his penis. In some areas, including Somaliland, female relatives of the bride and groom might watch the opening of the vagina to check that the girl is a virgin.The woman is opened further for childbirth (defibulation or deinfibulation), and closed again afterwards (reinfibulation). Reinfibulation can involve cutting the vagina again to restore the pinhole size of the first infibulation. This might be performed before marriage, and after childbirth, divorce and widowhood. Hanny Lightfoot-Klein interviewed hundreds of women and men in Sudan in the 1980s about sexual intercourse with Type III:

”The penetration of the bride’s infibulation takes anywhere from 3 or 4 days to several months. Some men are unable to penetrate their wives at all (in my study over 15%), and the task is often accomplished by a midwife under conditions of great secrecy, since this reflects negatively on the man’s potency. Some who are unable to penetrate their wives manage to get them pregnant in spite of the infibulation, and the woman’s vaginal passage is then cut open to allow birth to take place. … Those men who do manage to penetrate their wives do so often, or perhaps always, with the help of the “little knife”. This creates a tear which they gradually rip more and more until the opening is sufficient to admit the penis.”

The physics of knitting is so complicated that SciShow fucked it up and had a bunch of people mad at them.

Textiles are complicated crazy wonderful things. The drape of a fabric is going to be related to the materials it’s made of (cotton, linen, wool, acrylics and polyesters, blends of all of the above and more to various percentages…) as well as just the process of making.

Woven is very sturdy and doesn’t stretch. You can’t unwind the whole thing by getting it caught on something. Your jeans and slacks are probably made of woven material, because otherwise you’d accidentally lose your pants to the bump of a nail in a chair or something.

Knit stretches, but accidentally bump into a door hinge and you’ve unraveled a good chunk of your sweater. It’s good at moving though. Most things are done on knitting machines in “stockinette” stitches - look for little ‘v’ shapes.

Gotta keep in mind that the upkeep of clothing was something people use to be spend several hours a week on - beyond just laundry. Weaving takes forever and it’s not particularly exciting. Just imagine how many outfits you’d have in 1600 BC or 1600 AD versus now.

It’s just really crazy that we are all surrounded by billions of tiny fibers that were twisted into single strands that then become fabrics that then become clothes. Each stage presents uniquely complex and beautiful physics problems.