I must be co-luckiest person because I’ve also had no problems and have had mine for over a year.

I must be co-luckiest person because I’ve also had no problems and have had mine for over a year.

I trust the stats on this but my own personal experience in the US is that no one will ever give me drugs for anything ever, even when I need them. My experience with an acute back injury that then led to chronic pain was that really no one gave a single solitary fuck about my pain levels. A case of being injured…

Yes, they produce money for the Church. They are the ones leading the classes that people pay thousands of dollars to attend, they’re the ones running the centers, cleaning them, keeping up the grounds, pushing all the paper around (right now the podcast Oh No, Ross and Carrie is reporting on several courses they took…

There’s similar stuff in Beyond Belief by Jenna Miscavige Hill. That’s totally the book to read if you want to see how Scientology treats kids.

The experience of childbirth is different for every woman and their pain management needs are going to be different. And you know going in that it’s temporary and normal and at the end you get a baby, which can help you get you through it. I imagine with a kidney stone it’s all just depressing from beginning to end.…

There’s really not much you can prescribe that would do much for the pain of childbirth and also be safe for the baby. Your options in childbirth for medical pain management are basically an epidural, in some places (more popular in Europe and Canada) nitrous oxide, or sometimes a narcotic. An epidural is anesthesia…

Epidurals are administered by anesthesiologists. Even if you are in a hospital and want one, they call in the anesthesiologist to do it. It taps directly into the spinal cord. You do NOT want anyone but a highly trained specialist doing that.

Simple. All midwives should be trained and certified through accredited medical and nursing programs.

I think Sea Org is best described as clergy. For every Bishop and Archbishop, you have legions of low-level deacons and priests and such. I mean, they’re not priests, but it’s a similar kind of structure. There’s nothing above Sea Org, but just because you’re in Sea Org does not mean you’re in a leadership position.

It’s not legally binding. I don’t think they really pretend that it is.

The “theology” of Scientology is that children are just adult souls (excuse me: Thetans) in small bodies. They have a long history of treating kids like small-statured adults. Putting them to work at 12 is just the tip of the iceberg.

And when mothers are allowed to keep their babies? They literally warehouse them. Parents in Sea Org are still often forced to work 80 hours a week, so their children are kept in childcare which... the conditions that have been described are horrific. Neglect, abuse, and then when the kids reach school age, they are…

This election seems to be mainly a referendum on how many people just want to watch the world fucking burn. How nice for straight white dudes that they were born wearing an asbestos suit.

The property tax thing is so dependent on where you live, no one can make any general pronouncements on it at all. In my city, reassessments have been a political football for a couple decades. There are anti-windfall laws on the books saying that even if reassessments are done, the taxes can only increase by so much,…

Indeed. And you have the option to roll them all right into your mortgage payment. I write one check a month and some of it goes to escrow for payment of taxes and insurance, and some of it goes to principle and interest. And all together it’s way way way cheaper than renting.

For me, this is 99% of the reason to buy. Owning a house can be a pain in the ass, buying/selling a house is stressful as fuck (hello, doing it right now), etc etc etc but we’ve been paying the same dollar amount in mortgage since 2007 while meanwhile in my city rents have at least doubled, if not tripled depending on…

I studied abroad in PRC in the 90s and taught English to grad students (at one of the top 3 universities in China—these folks were older, smarter and just all around way better at everything than me except speaking English) as a side hustle. I became friends with a few of my students and wow things got weird when…

No, Vitals just has a weird hate-on for calorie tracking in favor of random fad diets that eliminate entire food groups and aren’t sustainable for anyone who enjoys a wide variety of foods. Keep counting your calories. I lost 35 pounds in about 9 months and have kept them off.

I love my Fitbit and have been wearing it for over a year, but remember exercise alone does not generally make you lose weight. Diet is for weight loss, exercise is for fitness.

Yep. I also lost 35 lbs with calorie counting last year (so far I’ve kept it all off for over 6 months now). You have to be honest with yourself and when in doubt, round up, not down. And never ever ever “eat your calories back.” The amount of calories your burn in a 30 minute cardio session is, like, half a cookie’s…