Bay 12 Games Forum

Pfizer pill thingummy showing pretty impressive test results: Nearly 90% reduction in hospitalization or severe symptoms if taken within a few days of plague symptoms starting. They're predicting they'll be able to start distribution sometime early next year, if nothing major happens in the interim.

... iirc, the mechanics behind this one is also likely to be effective on related viruses; i.e. on top of being highly effective against covid, it or something similar may end up as what amounts to a cure for the common cold. So, uh. Here's hoping, I guess.

Just be careful with old cookbooks (old non-fiction in general, really) -- sometimes they recommend things that can't be easily(/legally) obtained anymore, and occasionally things that are like extremely carcinogenic or whatever. It's also not uncommon for there to be some incompatibility between how they recommend preparation or cooking and modern appliances, so you might have to adjust cooking times or intensities.

Mostly just make sure to pay extra attention to what you're looking at, if you're browsing older stuff.

Got more patience for that mess than I do. The few times one of mine tried crap like that over a phone I just hung up and turned off the phone for a few days. S'actually something my mother basically raised me to do, when you encounter abuse you make it fuck right off one way or another, if there's not serious mitigating circumstances*. Nobody should have to deal with that shit, and there's precious few people or reasons worth trying to navigate it.

... or well, one of mine being my mother, since I basically ghosted my dad well over a decade ago and have absolutely zero regret over it, heh. I think he's still alive? If not, no one's bothered to mention it to me.

But yeah, abusive family is pretty bad, especially if you can't cut them off for whatever reason or otherwise put a cork in the proverbial spigot.

*Tolerate a bit while trying to caretake for increasingly demented grandparents, ferex, but if it was serious I'd just straight tell their kids they're now shit out of luck and I'm not doing it anymore. Actually came pretty damn close earlier this year, but things got worked out eventually...

Okay, but then it's like I said. Not breastfeeding is not a crime because there are other ways to feed a child. But not feeding a child is a crime. If there was no other ways to feed a child than breastfeeding it, then not breastfeeding it would be criminal, because not feeding your child is criminal.

You're being completely irrational in your thinking here, as it comes off to me. Your entire argument seem to be nothing but a huge false equivalency between the situations you are describing.

Breastfeeding was mostly just a poor example to use, to repeat that. There's other things where it's absolutely explicit, there's no or near no way for a kid to survive without some sort of blood, organ, or tissue donation from a parent or close family. We don't criminalize choosing not to do that. We don't even try to criminalize refusing to involve yourself in a medical procedure of that sort under basically any circumstance except when it's a pregnant woman, even when the risk is minimal for the prospective donor or whatever.

I think Frumple’s position is that as pregnancy is a unique thing in that it requires the bodily resources and functions of a woman in order to actually work properly, and there’s no other thing like it outside the womb so it shouldn’t be treated like any other medical procedure.

It's not even really unique, though -- there's procedures that basically require two people to be hooked up together for a period for one of them to survive or otherwise heal, and beyond that anything in the general region of organ or blood donation fits in roughly the same category of action. It's just treated differently than every damn thing else.

Most of what I'm trying to say is that if it's your intent to inflict unique burdens on pregnant women, you either own that or you make it clear you don't want that burden to be unique and start treating everything in the same general category of medical issues like you do pregnancy.

Mandatory blood, tissue, and organ donations could be a start. Conscript relevant people for applicable medical issues that requires another body if there's no volunteer. So on and so forth. Feel free to enforce hormone treatments on fathers if you really need the breastmilk, we've apparently more or less figured that one out and we're mostly pretty chill about parents going through lengthy hormone treatments to better care for young (we just let mothers' bodies pay the cost of it rather than insurance, ha).

Well, so far as the somewhat derailment goes. The initial bit was just noting that treating a fetus like a baby would actually reduce the burden of care beyond what was apparently intended. We (to be clear, the US in general -- I'm not trying to speak for other nations on this one, even if it's probably still applicable) just don't handle things outside the womb like we do things inside it, even so far as folks trying to consider things like friggin' heartbeat or breathing differently.

Presumably a primordial hypnotoad, who could then be convinced to bring all other valuable things to the thief.

Hypnotoad immediately shows up, puts them both to sleep. It's a short fight, no harm done to either combatant.

I am very conflicted about abortion before the third trimester, personally, and if I was in parliament I would abstain from voting on it. But during the third trimester IMO a fetus should be treated as a baby, though I suppose it should be allowed if the mother's life is threatened or the fetus has a severe genetic disease.

If a fetus was treated as a baby, or as a person in general, abortion would be acceptable at any point during the entire period, though. Pregnancy is literally the only medical type issue folks try to insist on the sort of care involved. A mother has no medical or legal obligation to act as very literal life support for a child once born, or another person ever. As far as I'm aware no one's even passed a single law demanding a mother breast feed, never mind anything more intensive than that.

There's just no other issue where people in general even consider forcing someone to share the functioning of their kidneys, or their blood, or whatever, and very precious few where they're obligated to risk their life or crippling injury... about the only thing that even comes close is fucking conscription. Even first responders or military generally have more leeway than folks talk about wanting to demand of pregnant women.