Thank you! Next time I'm in town I have an excuse to head to a bookshop. Not that I need one, but it's nice to have a specific title in mind.

I can see how that would work! Might have to track that book down. Polio is terrifying; my grandmother still remembers her nightmares about getting it as a child. 87 years old, and still recalling childhood nightmares because the fear of the disease was justifiably potent.

I use BRSA (Broadly-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus) in a near-future scifi story I'm writing; a deadly and totally antibiotic resistant bacteria that the characters are terrified of. Starting to wonder if regular-ass run of the mill measles wouldn't be just as effective to scare the cast and reader

Maybe I'm about to have a growth spurt like I did as a teenager, and after 20 years of being short AF I'll finally get to be like, really tall. Like I could gain a bunch of inches and be 5'5 (yes, that is really tall for me, stfu).

As long as I don't end up with bigger tits I'll be fine.

Seriously. Yesterday I walked three miles into town and back in a summer dress and sandals and my bad knee didn't even twinge

Today my spine and knees are like 'booo we hate you' just like they have been since December

One penny?

Well, they're definitely an advocate for bad mental health...

Your regular reminder that "social media addiction" is a made-up thing and using the language of addiction for social media use causes people to pathologize their perfectly normal use and destroys their ability to self-regulate www.nature.com/articles/s41...

(Also body language analysts are fucking grifters. They’re in the cold read range of con artists. And they’re totally fucking useless, incredibly racist, massively misogynist, and grossly ableist when presented with someone who isn’t an upper income neuronormative white man. They’re the liars!)

(Polygraph is bullshit. It will always be used against you. also voice stress analysis. There is no such thing as a lie detector. The more antisocial tendencies, the less anxiety, the more likely to register low reactivity. Yes, honest & scared people are highly reactive, their polygraphs flail.)

I need therapy because babies and baby-related things make me cry but there wasn't a question for that so I answered everything as 0. I have this really bad feeling that all I'll get is going to be out-of-the-box 'one size fits all' bullshit rather than something specific for my miscarriage trauma

The pre-appointment questionnaire did not fill me with a lot of hope. 'How many days have you felt apathetic and hopeless this week?' none, I'm not fucking depressed. 'How many days have you been unable to control worrying' none, I'm not fucking anxious.

Yup. The people we hosted went to Canada after a year; they got a much better offer overall including indefinite stay.

It does seem unlikely, which is a shame because my brother and his family are all trapped in the USA as everything dissolves around them.

I mean, there was the Ukrainian scheme. Weird how when the refugees are white there's suddenly a vastly different system.

Rage and solidarity! My favorite things XD

Oof, I'm sorry you had that kind of experience too! I wasn't diagnosed with most of what I've got until I was in my late 20s. Would have been very useful to know that I had dyspraxia and ADHD before then! You know how it is though. 'We don't need to actually raise this one, because they read novels'

My kid will never hear it, that's for damn sure. I don't doubt a lot of my mother's saying will fall out of my mouth unbidden when I have a preteen, but definitely not that one. Learning to fail was HARD.