When I was seventeen and had my first serious boyfriend, my mother sat me down and said, and I quote: "It's not my business if you're having sex. It is my business if you're not being safe about it."

Besides the risk of resistant bacteria, use of antibacterials kills the bacteria and other microorganisms that naturally live on and in us. These are strains that have evolved along with us, get along with us, and affect our health, often for the better. These are species that are capable of making antibacterial…

Fuck you, man, my mutant power is lactase persistence. I'm going to have all the milk and all the cheese with none of the diarrhea and you can have none.

This was exactly my thought. Bacteria is made with one strain of lactobacillus; a different strain of lactobacillus is known to live in vaginas. This isn't "eating bodily fluids," (the semen comparison is way off base here) it's culturing food using bacteria found on the body.

I like ear cuffs because I can pretend I'm bajoran.

Seriously, is Jezebel this ignorant about things just for the sake of clickbait headlines? I sincerely hope not. I want to rewrite all these articles myself. This is a great thing, so let's not ruin it by alarmist ignorance, okay?

Man, I'm sorry. I just don't understand this mentality: "My parent/spouse is dead, time to make sure I get my share." I'm hoping that, if nothing else, if my aunt and uncle do make the attempt to be greedy assholes, my dad's brothers will wake up and realise that it wasn't my dad "tearing the family apart" when he…

My dad's younger sister sounds like yours. With both of my paternal grandparents well into their eighties, and my grandfather's health slowly failing, the eldest daughter and her husband are making plans to take care of my grandmother after he dies, proposing moving out of their too-big house and in with grandma to…

Maybe I will do this after I get tired of my nails being painted vaguely like the abdomens of drosophilia melanogaster.

Lush is great. Also once I gave a bath to a rat using Lush shampoo so that, at least, was tested on animals. She was the best-smelling rat ever.

I... can't get over how incredibly real this looks. There are veins in this foot. It's perfect. The artistry is amazing.

I have met more small, pampered, vicious little dogs than I can count. Aggressive dogs that don't get trained properly because "oh, isn't it cute." Years ago, I had a coworker nearly lose his nose to a nasty little poodle mix that snarled and lunged at everyone when his owner brought him into a dog-friendly store. …

Yeah, I'm a biology student, and I've had to spend a fair amount of time neck-deep in scientific papers and then translating them into English. This is... not a good job.

It's debatable whether the Maker actually exists in this setting, but the dragons themselves... are interesting.

A probably apocryphal story about the famed judge Matthew Baillie Begbie, who travelled British Columbia in the mid 1800s on foot and on horseback to deliver justice where it was needed in a new province in the middle of a gold rush:

Planned Parenthood is a business. It's a business that sells sex. It's a way to get clientele and to sexualize young people and turn them into lifelong clients.

I read it for a while, oddly amused, and then hit this and had a good laugh:

This summer I lost a pet of the sort who adored me and followed me around and wanted nothing better than to spend all her time with me, and it hit me really hard. Possibly it hit me so hard because she died in my hands. One of the best pieces of advice a friend gave me was to go find and watch the Mr. Rogers bit…

Nah. This just means we need better robots, ones who are capable of discerning emotional states.

I'm a mermaid. Not a particularly sexy mermaid, either, unless fishnet crochet sweaters, fishscale-print leggings, and tutus are sexy. I did make myself a crown out of a thrift store shell necklace and some ridiculous fake pearls.