Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts is a not-for-profit health insurance company. I am not sure that it is a full mutual company, but they have no profit incentive. Consequently, they are the best health insurance we have ever had by a wide margin.

Yeah, this is wildly inappropriate. When I play board games with my kids, I find Old Fashioneds are the ideal way to deliver that numbing hit of booze. Wine requires too much fluid volume per unit alcohol, and the red varietals can stain your games.

On the other hand, I very much appreciate knowing which celebrities support an administration that poses a threat to my family. I will not vote for someone based on a celebrity endorsement, but the celebrity may gain or lose my business over it.

I really liked Kid Rock in his early days. The music was catchy, and it had the right mix of redneck, rock, and rap to make this country boy happy. Now I won’t listen to him because he chose to openly throw in with politicians who do not care if their policies and rhetoric kill my friends or kids.

Because it is wrong.

I am not judging sexual practices. I am judging those who choose to betray their partner. Here is the person he is most committed to in this world, the person who expects undying loyalty in exchange for the same in return, and he is seemingly shitting all over that vow.

If you only care about practicality, then consider that one will not care for the people in general if they cannot care for those closer to them. Honesty and compassion mean nothing to this man.

Oh, I see your mistake. Those are Samsung fridges. Nothing has a shorter lifespan than a Samsung fridge. Since there are two they will die together to maximize the inconvenience factor, and they thus must be clicked simultaneously. That is the only way a fake Samsung fridge could mimic the frustration caused by a real one.

Aerobic respiration - the evolutionary moment where our ancestors traded immortality for complexity

That was the phrasing used in a biology of death class I took many years ago. It lives rent free in my mind because ruminating on it so perfectly summarizes the “choices” made by natural selection and the way they echo throughout the history of life on Earth.

That is interesting. I loved the original in my youth, but now that I am older, a cancer survivor, and with a lifetime of challenge and too many dead loved ones, Cash’s version speaks to me on a different level.

I’m not yucking your yum one bit. I am happy that you have a song that speaks to you.

Senators were not elected by the people before the 17th amendment. The House of Representatives represent the interests of the people of their districts, so they were elected by the people. Senators represent the interests of their state as an entity, so they were elected by the legislature of their state or appointed by their governor.

The USA at the federal level is a republic, not a direct democracy. We elect those who vote upon the federal laws. I’m that easy, some worry that more voice of the people and less of the state as an entity runs afoul of that notion and the constitution itself.

I understand that point from a limited perspective, but it is now frequently used as a way to ignore constituents and beat the drum of fascism. Do not trust a politician that is worried about the 17th amendment. That ship sailed a century ago.

Yeah, it is. The injections suck, and the hormone shifts are awful. One of my friends is a general practitioner in the Navy, and every time he prescribes any fertility hormone, he also gives a referral for couples counseling. “I know you believe you won’t need it, and you might be right, but in my experience by the time you realize you need it, you need it RIGHT NOW.” The IVF hormones are around then the ones he can prescribe, and it was a wild ride.

Of course I don’t know your SIL, but please extend my best to her and her family at some point. As one stranger on the Internet who knows roughly the path she walked, I am very happy it went well for her in the end.

Also, real talk, you sound like a great in-law to her for being so aware of everything. Kudos to you.

I agree 100% that it is initially confusing to the outsider. I will admit that I struggle with charitable feelings when this topic gets tossed around so often and it is easily researchable. Perhaps I am just tired of having the same discussion so many times.

And yeah, the “pray to X” used a shorthand by many for “ask X to pray on my behalf” doesn’t help. It also gets further confounded by the huge number of both discrete and nuanced folk religions that exist simultaneously within members of the Catholic faith.

Catholics do not worship the saints. The dogma is that one may ask a saint to pray on their behalf. Do some Catholics not follow this format to the letter? Nope, some do not. Some/many will follow dogma mentally but use a short hand phrase like, “pray to X,” to mean requesting intercession.

The statues, pendants, and other ornaments are not idols but just works of art or symbols of allegiance to a specific order. They hold extra significance for some, but that is effectively as far as they go.

Offerings are to the church. Leaving an offering at the shrine of a saint is not an offering to that saint. It is an offering to the church, possibly to the portion of the church maintaining that specific shrine.

I know this can feel nit-picky, but it is what happens when teachings build upon teachings for thousands of years. One can certainly argue that Catholics are wrong about any number of things in this world, but the notion that Catholicism runs on idolatry is at best an accidental misinterpretation and unfortunately is often an intentional misrepresentation by the leaders of fellow Christians.

The concept of changing the Bible gets a little weird because we are almost universally discussing a translation of the “original” text, with the original as we commonly think of it being a Greek translation that was commonly in use in the years preceding and including the life of the historical Jesus. It gets more complex than that, but it’s a good start.

I am using the historical Jesus as a reference point because there are things that scholars, theistic and non-theistic alike, almost universally agree to as being historical as opposed to matters of faith.

Jews, Catholics, and Protestants number the commandments differently though all contain effectively the same content and total up to 10. The Catholic numbering predates the Protestant numbering by centuries. I do not know the timeline of the Jewish numbering. One could easily assume it predates the Catholic numbering, but many Jewish customs date to later eras (often medieval Rabbinical Judaism). I have not looked up the Jewish tradition recently. Regardless, the Catholic numbering predates the Protestant numbering.

Idols are an interesting thing, especially taken in the context of the belief of ancient Semitic peoples. The short version being that it takes much more than just the existence of a statue or an image to be an idol. There are cultural nuances from the time, but at the very least it requires worship of the image as on par with God. The comment you cite even includes the concept that worshipping these images is what makes them bad. The images in Catholic churches are not treated that way.

We happened to live in the U.S. state with the best reproductive rights laws and have the best health insurer for IVF in that state. It did cost thousands of dollars, but it was still 4 digits overall. We were getting by on a single income at the time, but it was really the health insurance and state laws that made it doable.

We needed two cycles because the first failed completely, but the second cycle (ICSI for those who care) produced multiple embryos. They only implanted one at a time, so my second kid is a freezer baby.

But yeah, my wife has a true, diagnosed needle phobia and did it anyway. She is a God damn trooper.

Would you care to explain that thought process? I mean the idolatry part. Inconsistency is pretty common along religions and nearly universal among Cousins Christian ones. I say that as a Christian, so I’m not even putting them down about it in particular.

But idolatry in particular from Catholics? That accusation is usually not based in the actual faith but I’m in outside interpretations. Still, I’m open to being incorrect.

Edited because I am the worst phone typist ever.

Nope! My wife was enjoying a chemically-induced nap in one room when my kids were conceived. I was in another room with broken DVDs and suspiciously easy to clean chairs. The kids were conceived in a third room by a lab worker and incredibly complex equipment.

The traditional way is much more fun. Try that first.

Lol, nope! Since my blood work and EKG showed no organ damage, I am just under orders to call my PCP in the morning - which I did. I’ll get a cuff late today to track as well. I’m already on BP meds, have been stable for many years, and my BO was even good when I was in cancer treatment and couldn’t take my meds. This is a wait, watch, and control with normal meds scenario right now. I’m take it given the alternatives.

Welp, given that my radiation oncologist (I am in remission) found that I had stage 3 hypertension, I’ve had better. A trip to the ER told us that I am not in immediate danger, so it could also be worse.

I wanna show you a trick mother showed me when you weren’t around.

I belong to several chicken groups on other social platforms, and the number of people who view this as part of a giant conspiracy is wild. Nope, this cannot possibly be the consequences of the known spreading mechanisms of well documented disease in a factory farm setting. It is clearly an attempt to control the populace through a narrative of limited food supply. Or it is a justification to release the next phase of the scamdemic. Or it is an initial cull to drive up prices and make more money by - checks notes - refusing to sell eggs.

I agree the corporations are out to take us over the coals and that large scale government has aspects that should not be trusted but still, people go from zero to pedophiles in pizza basements really fast.

Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea

It is a French cartoon whose English dub aired on a Nickelodeon in the early '80s. It had everything my young imagination could want in a story - an alien world within our own, strange people and cultures, a mysterious guide, a man overcoming a difficult past, and an ancient cataclysm whose threats echo into the world today.

It also had the most slapping opening theme I may have ever heard.

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/CG6aGpnP6kSuiXbY/?mibextid=jmPrMh

Sorry for the Facebook link, but this is the only active copy of the opening I can find because the corporate takedown game is strong for a 40-year-old cartoon that can only be watched in Australia.