Idk about elsewhere but in the Midwest If you are driving and a semi wants to merge into your lane in front of you, you can flash your lights (off and back on, NOT high beams) a couple times to let them know they are clear of obstacles. Often they will turn off their lights (specifically tail lights or running lights) a couple times as a thank you.

I’ve never driven truck, but my step-dad did and I watched him signal this way for someone once and I’ve done it ever since. He said it makes it a lot easier as a driver, and gives me warm fuzzies when they do it back.

“Just”.

Most shit doesn’t even make it to clinical trials, much less show such striking efficacy so quickly.

This is exactly where this sort of thing needs to start. Super rare stuff we don’t have a real cure for that makes lives miserable and can be fatal. And so far, the results are incredible.

If this was a normal pharmacological therapy, I wouldn’t be super excited about stage 1 trials showing striking results, because it would actually be limited to that one therapy. But it isn’t. It’s “magic bullet” therapy that we should be able to modify for nearly any problem related to bad genes. If it works as effectively in further trials, it could very well change medical treatment as we know it for a whole range of stuff.

The most logical answer to this that I’ve come across is production value.

There is a lot of porn out there, and a lot of it is not very good quality for one reason or another. Now go back a decade or more, and remember it was worse then.

Niche fetish porn, however, was typically pretty high quality because that’s what people were paying good money for. It never started out as free.

Because you can, if needed, just skip the talking bit to ignore the incestuous plot lines, it’s basically just straight vanilla porn, that was what people went looking for. It was the closest to vanilla you could get with the high production quality of fetish studios.

Not understanding the why, production companies saw the spike in that specific result and started making more of it, then it started getting memed, and here we are.

Idk if it’s true, but it makes the most sense to me, considering when it started to gain popularity.

On the other side of this, I’m white as they come, born and raised in the Midwest by very white parents also born and raised in the Midwest.

People ask where I’m from way way more often than they should, in my own home state. Where I spent all but 5 years of my life.

I have no clue why, but they don’t think I’m from the US.

Some possible related things - When I was a kid people used to tell my mom I look “exotic” and I still don’t know what that means in relation to my appearance; I look like everyone in my dad’s family. I spent a couple years in California and a couple years in Texas, and learned Russian, Spanish, and Japanese (and a spattering of phrases and grammar from other languages, almost none of which I remember), plus consume a fair bit of foreign media. But I don’t really think I picked up accent features, at least none I’ve had anyone able to pinpoint.

Either way, that conversation always turns into a slog of “there’s just something that tells me you are from somewhere else, are you sure I’m wrong???”

That slurry is fantastic for compost piles. It’s loaded with bacteria and nutrients, and seeps down into the pile to help jumpstart the internal brown waste decomp. Extra bonus if you add it right after turning (if you bother with that).

I… may forget, and let things liquify more than I’d care to admit.. which is great news in fall and spring (added heat from active microbes helps warm the pile and keep it active longer), less great in winter when the pile is frozen solid.

Middle age white chick here - might depend on the crowd you are around. I have a lot of friends who wear kilts (as in most of the men I consider friends, including the 6.5ft 400lb giant of a man. Just totally happens to be that way, they don’t know each other for the most part, and I find out years after becoming friends) and they don’t seem to have any trouble getting laid (not all of them are strictly into women, but they get teh secs so whatever floats their goats). But kilts aren’t the only counter-culture they actively and clearly participate in, both aesthetically and personally. That might make the difference; that’s just who they are and they are comfortable with themselves enough to do whatever.

If I saw some dude in a kilt and leggings I’d be super amused and chat with them, but I’m asexual so I also wouldn’t be interested, but I’d be interested in you, the person. The same way I’d be interested to talk to a dude in a prom dress or whatever. If their spine is so shiny they can rock that shit in public, I probably want to know them.

Thank fuck because as an android user who swapped to iPhone recently I’ve thought it was just a me problem..?

It’s so bad, and the keyboards suck. I miss my number line and long-press secondary characters. So so much.

The mute toggle on iPhone doesn’t mute media if you play something with it enabled, and you can still increase/decrease the volume of that, you just don’t get any notification sounds. So bit different than just turning the volume down for the whole device.

I keep mute enabled all the time because I get the notifications on my watch, and I forget it’s on because media still plays with sound. It’s actually really nice. One of the few things I actually like about iPhone.

Of course it’s bullshit. Those trees already exist and haven’t offset the pollution yet, why would not cutting them down now be literally any different, even assuming that actually happened (which the article made pretty clear isn’t the case, those scamming scammy liars)?

Planting and maintaining new trees, maybe, but simply not cutting down the little that’s left? That’s a money making scheme, not an actual solution to literally anything except maybe deforestation.

Considering the pollution-saturated world we live in at the moment, it’s very likely both.

The article does mention that more sensitive screenings are partially responsible, but the specific cancers they were looking at are largely digestive or related to obesity and or alcohol (but probably a lot of other unsavory shit in our food as well).

There were some demographics for whom the cancer rates fell, but this can likely be attributed to social health campaigns (like anti-smoking)

https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007321171-Can-I-send-SMS-MMS-with-Signal-#:~:text=SMS%20is%20not%20secure%20or%20private%2C%20and%20that,anyone%20snooping%20on%20your%20traffic%20could%20read%20them.

SMS was supported back when I was on android, roughly a year ago, since it handled all of my texting (signal or standard) but it was already broken up in iOS at that point, and they were dropping support for SMS on android (announced October 2022).

I combine the two. I doomscroll looking for things to read and learn about, which enhances the doom significantly!