It’s only fair for the pets to eat us as well.

The US isn’t any more concerned about sexual orientation now than any point in the past. Back in colonial times, it wouldn’t have been safe to be anything other than straight with all the hyper religious colonists. They were even forcing their gender conformity and the straight sexual orientation on the Native Americans. Baron Friedrich von Steuben got a pass for being gay, probably because he was the one in charge of training the troops for Washington. 100 years ago, you could be killed on the street for being anything other than straight or denied jobs. The Lavender scare of the mid century brought this more to light. The AIDS crisis that started in the 80s and bled through into the 90s and 2000s as new medicines were being invented, further brought negative light to sexual orientations outside of straight. The cause of all of this attention to sexual orientation has been the religions brought over by colonists.

In recent years, sexual orientations outside of straight are finally being seen in a positive light with Lawrence v TX (2003) legalizing same-sex relationships and Hodges v Obergefell (2015) legalizing same-sex marriages. In Bostock v Clayton County (2020) legal protections against job discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity were finally put into place over 70 years after the start of the Lavender Scare.

The attention to sexual orientation has always been part of North American history. It has just changed from acceptance with the Native American peoples to hate, death, and intolerance under the colonists, to a more accepting present day. With some of the positive news in recent years, it can be easy to forget (if you’re surrounded by progressives in a blue state) that the hate of sexuality injected into North America in the 15th Century still has hold over large portions of the population today.

Yeah, it’s just like growing up. I remember as a kid hoping the weather would finally cool down by Halloween so we wouldn’t sweat through our costumes. In fact there were a couple years that we changed which costume we were going to buy because it would have been too hot to wear.

Don’t forget, insurance covers 50% before the deductible is met, not after. When a policy has that verbiage, usually there’s a footnote that states how those claims are handled in the future. From what I’ve seen, that could mean that insurance will cover 100% of said procedure after the deductible is met or it could mean a co-insurance of 30%.

After the deductible is met, OP won’t necessarily pay 50%. The percentage of the bill that OP and/or insurance will pay will be on a footnote at the bottom of the blue plan overview page (at least it’s blue when looking at plans from the ACA marketplace).

If you’ve met your deductible, you may not owe for the upcoming procedure.

However, you’d need to look at your policy or call the insurance company to see if the procedure counts towards your deductible. Normally the plan specifies that its 50% before the deductible and by an asterisk or buried somewhere in your plan’s terms, it may say that it’ll be 100% covered after tour deductible is met.

Is your deductible and out-of-pocket max the same? If you’ve met both, you may not even owe a copay. If you still haven’t met the out-of-pocket max, you will still owe co-pays.

Your plan documents or the company will be able to give better answers, as companies and plans can be very different in how they cover things.

He set out buckets filled with water like Davy Jones to keep from setting foot on land.

Enya can be helpful for me. Otherwise soothing classical music, the fast and loud works can be a little too distracting. It also helps me to listen to the same thing when doing a task to train my brain to focus when listening to it.

Lol, sorry I recently went to the dentist and the 2 minutes to brush your teeth was fresh.

Hand washing should be 20 seconds of scrubbing after lathering your hands in soap.

Yeah, they don’t use that specific ingredient anymore, however the same concern is still there. Some bacteria could survive the soap if everyone using said soaps don’t wash their hands properly every time they use the soap.

If I recall correctly from a report early in the covid pandemic, regular soaps attach to the cell membrane of bacteria and to oils/debris on the hands. Physically rubbing your hands together for the 2 minutes rips the bacterial and viral matter apart and dislodges whatever other debris is on them and then the water pulls the soap and everything attached to it down the drain. There’s nothing really for the bacteria or viruses to adapt to in that scenario.

https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/aac.02312-18

They use antimicrobials and don’t always kill everything when washing hands.

They don’t seem to use the same active ingredients as antibiotics, but the concern of bacterial resistance still apples.

"The [FDA] issued a proposed rule in 2013 after some data suggested that long-term exposure to certain active ingredients used in antibacterial products — for example, triclosan (liquid soaps) and triclocarban (bar soaps) — could pose health risks, such as bacterial resistance or hormonal effects. "

https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-issues-final-rule-safety-and-effectiveness-antibacterial-soaps

There’s another web page from the FDA entitled “Antibatcerial Soap? You Can Skip It, Use Plain…” however I can’t open the link to see if there’s mote talk about bacterial resistance.

The antibacterial soaps also help create supergerms that can survive the antibiotic used. They should only be used in medical settings when necessary. The overuse of antibacterial soaps and antibiotics are going to help create more pandemics should enough bacteria become antibiotic-resistant.

It’s probably because they can remember how convenient and cheaper it was to see any movie or show that could be streamed. Streaming was supposed to disrupt TV by eliminating ads and allowing you to choose whatever you want to watch. Nowadays, in order to get the same amount of choices, you need to spend about as much as you did for a TV subscription and now many platforms have ads.

I think it’s more a frustration at what we lost than anything else.

This comment reminds me that one time I came across an hour and a half long ad on YouTube that turned out to be a full episode of some show and something else. It was crazy to see one that long after skipping a couple ads

If you don’t believe the official counts, than where would you go for a source?

We were only 600,000 votes away from a Biden victory in 2020 because we didn’t have enough voters. TX has pitiful voter turnout, even with 2 weeks if open polls, with polls required to be open at least 12 hours a day on the weekday.

In 2020, even with what’s called amazing turnout, with a voting age population of 21.5 million, 17 million were registered, and 11.3 million cast a vote. Then in 2022, when we had the entire legislative branch, almost all of the executive branch, and a good chunk of the judicial branch up for election, only 8.1 million people voted.

Even with these numbers, Biden still received more votes in TX than he did in NY! There’s potential for us to get some better representation, if we can just get more people to get to a polling station (usually open 7AM-7PM during the second week of voting).

We need more people to turnout this year, not only to keep Trump from our electoral college votes, but to kick Ted Cruz to the curb. There is a lot in the news pushing people away from the pills and making people mad at the DNC just like in 2016 and its really scary because those tactics helped keep people from casting their vote.

Turnout number source https://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/historical/70-92.shtml

Use your knuckles and the space between from left to right. The higher points are longer months.

The left pinky knuckle is January, the space between pinky and ring knuckle is February, the ring knuckle is March and so on. The left index knuckle will be July and you continue with August being the right hand index knuckle. All the months that land on a knuckle are 31, while everything else is 30 (except 28 or 29 for February).

How’d y’all communicate with builders? Do you say this building has 0 floors to say that it’s si gle story and say that it has 1 floor to mean that it’s 2-story?

Remember originally that -1 was 1 BC, meaning 1 year before the birth of christ. The negative numbers are measuring the distance away from 0.

Edit: in the positive direction, the 1 was 1 AD, meaning the first year of our lord. Just like when talking about the reign of kings/queens, the first year of their reign is 1 and the 14th year that they reigned is 14. I believe the timekeeping for Ages in LOTR may also be similar.