Mezzie

> I’m not sure why genetic testing is suggested here?

A couple of reasons (off the top of my head). Depending on the type of cancer, there are certain genetic markers that indicate how it might progress + impact the overall risk. This is something you might want to communicate to other biological family members. Your genetics also can impact what treatments you respond the best to, and knowing ahead of time lets you start on the things that are most effective for your body in particular.

When SAVE was rolled back, we should have been offered the ability to unconsolidate.

What would stop people/states from suing to prevent the debt relief after it was instated?

Added to that, how do the people enlisting know and trust the program will actually be there at the end?

I'm one of the people with a ton of student loans, and I was also one of the people who consolidated my loans when the Biden admin rolled out SAVE. Now the government pulled SAVE but did nothing for those of us who consolidated to take advantage of it. We were told one thing, and it was almost immediately reversed.

The US government is unreliable and sees no need to keep the promises it made a few years ago. Why would anyone sign up to be in mortal harm's way for relief that has a decent chance of not even happening? They've lit their integrity on fire. The promises of something after a few years means nothing.

I'm not the GP; I'm a separate person who was providing potential context.

Something can be a huge problem and still be small potatoes to people having catastrophic problems, and often those of us in very, very dire circumstances are tone policed to within an inch of our lives and have to constantly consider normal people above ourselves (and make no mistake, people with MDD are closer to normal than somebody with ALS or severe cancer). We're never allowed to express anger, never allowed to talk about having it harder, have to stop and attend to the feelings of others while ours are ignored, etc.

Also, no offense, but depression can end up making people very self-centered. It's your illness that makes you think that what you're going through is more important and worse than what anyone else is going through, and it's not. (And it's not for me either: there are definitely people who have it worse than me and could say they wish their problem was 'just' MS. I just wouldn't get offended by that.)

There are absolutely people with bigger problems than depression. For example, I have MS, and my mental health is absolutely one of my less concerning problems. There are so many options for mental health + the treatments are much easier to access than a lot of my symptom management meds + DMT. People undergoing chemo. People with ALS. People with bipolar (who can't take a lot of first line depression treatments) or other more complex mental health issues like schizophrenia.

None of this is to downplay depression, but there are absolutely people for whom 'just depression' would be accurate. Migraines suck, but someone with cluster headaches might call them 'just migraines' and they wouldn't be wrong.

I was on Cymbalta for a while for non mental health related issues (nerve pain caused by MS).

I absolutely had withdrawal when I needed to go off of it, and I can say with certainty that the mental effects of going off of it were not just the reappearance of the underlying mental health issues since there weren't any. My emotional regulation was in the toilet, I was extremely irritated, I'd cry constantly, I was horny as hell, etc.

My theory is generational and knowledge shifts, namely that now we're seeing the first substantial cohort of non-techies with a decent understanding of tech culture and politics. This is also why we see a lot more anti-AI and anti tech CEO sentiment among the young than the old in defiance of our previously held assumptions.

This is about the right time for the children, nieces, and nephews of the first and second big generations of post-Web software engineers, IT workers, etc. to be getting old enough to become a political force. There's been an explosion of tech workers since the mid-90s, and that means an explosion of people related to them as well. The kids who watched their parents be stacked ranked at Amazon, saw the difference in how MS treated contractors and employees, listened to their corporate IT parents talk about how hostile MS is, etc. all learned that the big tech companies are not anyone's friend even if the specifics of the tech go over their heads. And while the workers themselves might keep their heads down and be quiet in public for the sake of their careers, their kids and relatives are less constrained.

And they can talk to each other and find that it's a common sentiment. Since they don't necessarily have technical careers or hobbies, they're also able to export this sentiment to a wider variety of people through overlapping hobbies and interests (e.g. the IT guy at a school in suburban Ohio has a kid who's a theatre nerd, and the kid is good at communicating their anti big tech position to this 'new' group of people).

The distribution of knowledge about how tech companies operate is shifting and diffusing into channels and communities it didn't before.

That's one thing that I find so confusing about this. Even if we assume that the administration genuinely doesn't care and does want to annex/culturally subjugate Canada, it's really not easy to separate the two cultures and escalating this to a certain degree is going to prompt domestic backlash.

I was born in America. About half of my ancestors lived in Canada on both sides of my family, I know my Canadian cousins, I spent time in Canada growing up/was taught Canadian history as well as American history, I have a Canadian education and half of my professional network is Canadian, etc. I'm eligible for dual citizenship and am pursuing it now, as are other members of my family, whereas we never bothered before because the separation never seemed to matter. With the recent change in Canadian citizenship laws, I'd estimate at least 25% of the Great Lakes population is eligible for dual citizenship at this point.

One of my parents and some of my siblings are Ojibwe/Anishinaabe. My paternal cousins are all French Catholic. (My dad's parents were Protestant but my aunt married into an old French Catholic family and converted.)

I don't even really know how I would separate out the two nations' influence, and that's true of a lot of people, especially those of us whose families have lived here since before America and Canada existed.

That makes sense; I didn't spend any time in the 14th. I did notice a big difference in public bathroom availability based on arrondisement, but all the ones I saw/used were free. (The ones that weren't closed or out of order, that is...)

I was just in Paris and I never had to pay for the public sidewalk toilets. Where did you see paid ones? I didn't get to all the arrondisements, so I'm curious.

Netflix has a larger market base (far more people watch TV and movies than read books, particularly at a level high enough to justify a subscription) and a market base that is far less likely to already be aware of the free alternative (most serious readers of the sort that go through that amount of books are already aware of their local libraries, whereas serious movie/TV watchers are less likely to be so).

Additionally, modern Netflix is a streaming company, and even DVD Netflix was sending the materials directly to your house, which is a differentiator versus the library, whose materials need to be picked up. There's a convenience factor as an incentive to pay. Library streaming exists, but it's awful - very limited library and very limited watches - versus Netflix where once you sub you can watch as much as you want.

Because you have to pay a ton more for a lot of digital copies of books if you're doing any kind of lending and you're competing with existing libraries. So you both have higher costs (e.g. you have to pay more for a digital file that may have DRM, be required to self destruct after a certain number of uses, doesn't allow multiple lends at a time, etc.) and your prospective consumers have a free option so convincing them to pay is going to be difficult.

The economics aren't there.

Good point re: wind. We don't really get substantial wind + sunlight where I live often. Definitely something to keep in mind.

I'm not sure re: the sunscreen being better. Maybe as a platonic ideal, but it's really easy to miss places when applying sunscreen, whereas a UV umbrella does cover everything with no fuss.

Yeah, there are linen pants too, so you don't have to wear shorts if you don't feel comfortable showing your legs. Linen in general is a great option if you want to not die of heat and you don't feel like showing your whole body to the world.

Since you're autistic, you might want to buy them in person: the tactile sensation of linens can be pretty different, so you might want to touch them before buying if sensory issues are a clothing concern.

One thing to look out for is that a lot of clothing that will come up when you search for linen are linen blends, which are better than a hoodie by far, but aren't going to have the same breeziness as 100% linen. Also, 100% linen wrinkles, so you've got to hang it right out of the dryer if you care about that.

Strong recommend a UV umbrella. I also hate the feeling of sunscreen and will also fry the minute I so much as look at the sun.

Also, linen clothing. Far more comfortable in heat while keeping you covered. Hoodies and jeans sounds miserable.