jadesailor14 said:I’ve got this weird thing going on with my pupil dilation. One measurement shows 65, but then if you actually take a second to look closely and measure properly, it’s more like 62. the difference when looking through the lenses is night and day. maybe you're dealing with something similar.
Yeah, I kind of feel like that's what's happening with these glasses I have... was that just an issue with the place where I had them made?
If we assume there’s one case per month, then I guess you could look at it like this: The average lifespan for a woman is about 74 years—men probably hover around 72, I think. If one man kills a woman every single month for these reasons, that’s 12 a year. So, 12 times 72... that works out to roughly 900 of them over the course of an entire male lifetime.
Now, if the US population is around 330 million, let's say there are 165 million men. Out of all those guys, maybe 1,000 will actually end up killing a woman. That means less than 0.5 percent of them would ever do something like that... Honestly, I feel like the conversation should really be more about the state of journalism here in America, because statistically speaking, we're talking about a tiny, tiny group...
But, I mean, yeah, there is definitely more "everyday" abuse happening in our country...
So, after decades, I finally went out and got new glasses. It’s not even like I have some massive prescription—just a tiny bit of nearsightedness (+0.25, +0.75) combined with that same old astigmatism I've always dealt with (it says D: cyl 1.25 axis 170, L: cyl -1.00 axis 10 on the script)..
Everything seems fine enough when I cover one eye, but the second I try looking through both at once, my brain just can't fuse the image properly... I've lost all sense of depth perception, and everything feels way too close to me. It's not like things were blurry before, but I actually tripped over a curb outside a Starbucks the other night because I didn't realize there was a step down right in front of me (and yeah, I was wearing the new glasses)
What the hell could be going on? 😕 I stopped wearing my old pair about three weeks before these arrived, and I've had these new ones for less than a week now...
You’re basically the definition of a local... and I don't even mean because of where you were born, but more like your whole way of life...
So, what I'm getting at is, you hate working for anyone else, you can't stand being in this neighborhood, and you wouldn't even bother starting your own business because, let's face it, it isn't worth the hassle... so what's the point? TOTAL LOSER!
There are plenty of spots in Chicago for people like you... just go hang out in some dive bar, talk politics or complain about them... you don't have any actual responsibilities anyway...
If you were actually living in New York, for instance, you wouldn't be talking all this trash. Because if you were just sitting on your couch doing nothing, you wouldn't have health insurance, which means you couldn't even see a doctor... so you'd eventually have to get a job... and you wouldn't have time to sit around acting like a bum.
I guess I’m jumping back in with the same old thing...
Is anyone actually spooked by the fact that Olena Popikova traveled all through California and then died from AIDS? Does anyone even remember that cafe owner who was always surrounded by girls and turned out to be positive?
As far as I know (Hannah Scott69... :ceka-ceka🙂 Regarding how contagious this stuff is, there was also someone else who was sick, or maybe just "positive" for IBM.
Does anyone recall that case where a guy caught IBM through a blood transfusion? How did it happen? The guy donating the blood had a "risky encounter" and didn't report it during the transfusion—basically, he was with a sex worker... So, look, there’s clearly a group of people within America who are promiscuous and mostly positive... shouldn't we be more worried about some highly educated doctor who is (most likely) aware of his responsibilities rather than some 10 or 20 positive sex workers who can pass the disease along pretty easily?
I mean, I don't think the real issue is whether that doctor is a "healthy" person who isn't going to spread anything. It’s more about those specific groups of people who actually know they're sick and just go around spreading it anyway—like that cafe owner situation we heard about... honestly, I feel like those types are way more dangerous than some single doctor or anyone else who's just living their life normally.
As for intentionally passing a disease to someone else, that's a straight-up criminal offense. You're looking at years in prison if you purposefully spread an illness like that.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but apparently, it’s been established that even when you aren't technically "sick"—just, you know, HIV-positive—the virus doesn't just sit there. It keeps growing. Like, the viral load just constantly climbs. So, I guess the only real difference between being HIV-positive and actually being ill is just the sheer amount of the virus in your system.
I guess I’m just going to sound paranoid here... but how much does AIDS actually exist in the US? I mean, we had Jane Doe, and then there was that bar owner from San Diego—the one nobody could confirm was positive until he passed away from AIDS... and the guy had two girlfriends at the time too...
Look, I'm not going to sit here and argue that things are better now than they were five years ago... but let's be real, we're buried in debt compared to before. It makes me wonder how much longer this supposed "better" period can actually last before everything hits the fan.
goldengull3 said:So what, there aren't any loans for houses or cars in the West? What, everyone just pays cash? I mean, paying rent instead of a mortgage is a fantastic move. Just hand all that money over to some landlord. I tried it once and, honestly, I wouldn't do it again. It felt like I was just burning cash. I don't see why people think buying a house is better than just renting.
Regarding the dollar, the issue is it getting too strong—it’s not losing value because there’s way too much cash floating around the market. We've been using this currency for over a decade now, and we haven't had inflation issues. If anything, it's the opposite.
Yeah, the real issue is when, say, a friend of mine who works at a bank tells me that if she takes out a loan, her monthly payment will be $0.93 for 30 years, even if she's making maybe 5-$2000k a month. The problem is having 40% of your paycheck swallowed by a mortgage for the next three decades...
As for the dollar, a strong dollar is a headache because it kills exports, and the Federal Reserve isn't exactly in a position to defend the currency if it starts devaluing. It's not that there's too much cash on the market; it's that there's not enough liquidity because everyone is busy taking out loans. Inflation is like chickenpox to me... you can get over it easily enough, but the underlying mess remains...
The inflation rate and GDP growth percentages are just delusions used to convince us that everything is fine.
America is just such a fantastic country where everything runs on credit, and I guess the only real question left is when those foreign bankers are going to stop laughing at us behind our backs and start laughing right to our faces. People have been buying apartments on 30-year mortgages, basically turning themselves into modern-day slaves—especially if (or more accurately, *when*) the Dollar loses its value one day.
The government keeps bleeding us dry with taxes, but look at this: - they took out a massive loan for medicine about a year or two ago, like 600 million dollars, and they still haven't even started paying it back. - now they owe a billion dollars for medical supplies, so pretty soon we won't even be able to afford stuff for the flu. - meanwhile, you've got guys like Šuker claiming the budget is overflowing, and then two weeks later, he’s getting chewed out by farmers who didn't get their subsidies from last year, and he's whining about how there's no money left... - and those subsidies? They've already been slashed by almost 50% compared to three or four years ago. - that's why they brought back the sales tax for tourism. - that's also why they dumped the funding for firefighters and preschools onto the cities, just because the federal government is spending too much. - at the start of this year, the government actually took out a 2 billion dollar loan just to cover the first installment of an existing debt.
And now the Dollar has started fluctuating up to 10%, which means the Federal Reserve just doesn't have the strength to keep it within certain bounds anymore (which isn't really allowed if we're thinking about joining the European Union).
I’m not really a religious person, but I guess Jesus might have gone through something similar... you know, that whole fear of suffering and death thing. To me, it feels like the suffering is way worse if it happens right before death, like when there’s just no way out of it. Any other kind of pain, I don't know, maybe you can just push it down somehow.
Look, if this is way too much text or if I’m totally out of line for posting this here, just let me know. Anyway, here’s a copy-paste from some site that goes over some info regarding HPV:
Genital warts. Honestly, just hearing about them makes my skin crawl. It’s one of those things that people try to act like isn't a big deal, but it really is a massive headache. Whether it's the HPV strain or whatever else is going around, it's just... ugh. I guess it's just part of life now, but still. Such a mess. So, look, genital warts aren't just some random skin thing—they’re viral. It’s basically clusters of infected cells on your skin or mucosal tissue. And honestly, it gets messy because these things actually trigger abnormal blood vessel growth just to feed themselves. I guess that's how they stay alive. The whole mess is caused by HPV. They've officially identified 78 different types so far, though I heard there might be over 100 out there. It’s not like they're all the same, either. Different strains cause different kinds of warts. Some are way more aggressive than others, some spread faster through your skin, and some have this scary potential to turn malignant. It also seems like how fast they grow or spread depends a lot on whatever kind of shape your immune system is in. Just one of those things, I suppose. So, here’s the thing about HPV—it doesn't just pick one spot. It attacks basically any squamous epithelium on the body. We're talking the mouth, the tongue, the vocal cords, the esophagus, eyelids, the anus... it's everywhere. And I was thinking about smokers, too. You know how smoking creates those "patches" where the squamous epithelium starts replacing the normal cylindrical or ciliated epithelium in the bronchi? Well, there's this theory floating around that HPV might actually be playing a role in how bronchial carcinoma develops in smokers. I guess it's possible, maybe. It's worth looking into. So, I was looking into this, and apparently, research suggests that maybe 80 to 100% of women between the ages of 18 and 25 end up coming into contact with HPV. That sounds insane, right? But then they say only about 30% actually develop symptoms. I guess the reason for that gap is this whole phenomenon of spontaneous clearance—basically, your body just heals itself naturally. It all seems to depend on how strong your immune system is at the time. If you're dealing with the low-risk types (like 6, 11, 41, 43, or 44), you get genital warts, which are obviously contagious through sex. But the high-risk types (16, 18, 31, 35, 39, 45, 51, 52, 56) are the real problem. They can be dangerous because they cause abnormalities in the cervical epithelium without showing any actual symptoms at all. It’s scary stuff. A chronic HPV infection can bump up the risk of cervical cancer by 65 times, and if we're talking about those oncogenic high-risk types, that risk jumps by 130 times! Still, I suppose most women who test positive won't actually deal with warts or dysplasia. Maybe. There’s a real risk of passing an infection to a baby during childbirth. It usually shows up as issues with the eyelids or the vocal cords—basically those typical spots where HPV likes to settle in. I guess that's just how it goes. So, people say genital warts mostly spread through direct sexual contact, though I guess you can't totally rule out other ways either—like using someone else's razor or maybe getting it through shaving. It's not like they're passed through blood transfusions or some kind of respiratory droplet thing, though. To actually catch an HPV infection, there are two things that have to happen first: So, I was thinking about those tiny micro-traumas to the mucous membranes—you know, those supposed "entry points"—and... I don't know. It just seems like one of those things people obsess over. Maybe it matters, maybe it doesn't, but it feels like we're always looking for a reason to worry about how stuff gets in. I guess it's worth considering, but I'm not entirely convinced it's the huge deal everyone makes it out to be. Direct contact between skin or mucous membranes and someone else's infected skin or bodily fluids. I guess that's how it happens. The number of people catching HPV is just climbing and climbing. I don't know, different studies seem to put the infection rate somewhere between 5% and 20%, which is pretty wild. Everyone keeps pointing the finger at promiscuity as the main reason this thing is spreading so fast lately. It’s actually a huge deal, though, because it's been proven that certain types of papillomavirus can basically mess with the genome of epithelial cells. That's what leads to things like cervical, vulvar, penile, or even throat cancer. It's scary stuff. So, most HPV strains are basically invisible to the immune system. It’s because they block those TAP1 and TAP2 molecules—you know, the ones responsible for hauling viral epitopes over to the MHC molecules. If those epitopes aren't presented alongside the MHC molecules, the immune system just can't flag the cell as being infected by HPV. I guess it's pretty much the same way tumor cells dodge immune surveillance too. Just one big evasion tactic. So, if you're looking at how they actually diagnose condylomas, it’s not just one simple thing. I guess it usually comes down to a physical exam, maybe a colposcopy, or using some kind of magnification during the checkup. Then there's the standard stuff like a Pap smear, biopsies, and then testing the tissue or bodily fluids to figure out the specific virus typing. It's a whole process, I suppose. Dealing with genital warts can be such a massive, exhausting grind—honestly, it’s a headache for both the patient and the doctor. I guess it just takes forever. You really have to be relentless about treating both partners at the same time, too. And you can't cut corners; you've got to use condoms strictly during the whole treatment process, and even for a few months after everything seems to be cleared up. It's just a long road. I guess the best way to actually handle this is just physically "removing" every single visible wart and then doing some kind of thorough "scrubbing" of any suspicious areas, followed by whatever chemical or drug treatment they suggest. There are a bunch of different ways to treat these things. Pretty much without exception, they all rely on either using high energy on the affected spots or basically using chemicals to destroy the infected cells. When it comes to physical methods, you've got cryotherapy (freezing), thermal coagulation, electrocoagulation, radiofrequency vaporization, laser vaporization, or just plain old surgical excision. From what I can see, cryotherapy seems to have the worst results, while surgical excision is technically the most effective—but unfortunately, you can't really do that in most cases. All the coagulation methods seem about equally effective, though the vaporization techniques usually give the best results. For therapy, they might also use cytostatics like podophyllin or Efudix 5% in a cream or ointment form. Even though local interferon therapy sounds logical—since it’s supposed to stimulate TAP and MHC molecule expression—it hasn't really delivered the results people expected. Still, it's recommended as an add-on to one of those vaporization techniques. The biggest wins in treating these come from combining methods, like vaporization plus cytostatics or vaporization plus interferon. Patients always ask me, "Wait, wouldn't vaporization + cytostatics + interferon be even better?" It makes sense, I guess, but from an immunology standpoint, it's actually the opposite. That triple combo isn't any more effective than just doing two at a time. Early complications from treatment (doesn't matter which method you pick) are usually swelling, stinging when you pee, pain, or changes in vaginal discharge. Later on, you might deal with dryness during sex, or pain and tearing of the vulvar mucosa. All these issues should clear up within two or three months max after the procedure. Honestly, the laser vaporization technique seems to cause the fewest complications, and when they do happen, they aren't nearly as intense as the other methods.
Alright, let’s look at the math here... There are about 78 types of papillomavirus out there (though some say even more), and 9 of them are considered high-risk.
So, logically, if a girl gets exposed during her first sexual encounter, she picks up one of those. That would mean roughly 1 in 9 girls—about 12%—would be carrying a high-risk strain right off the bat just from having sex once... which is crazy when you consider how many different types people swap back and forth throughout their lives. I guess it makes you wonder if they’re basically just walking around with a biological disaster zone inside them.
edited by Rachel Brooks63. Megan Peterson87's sex life is off-topic here. And honestly, if you’re acting like a journalist (if I remember correctly), you really should know how unreliable the internet can be as a source... there are official sites out there, but they don't always sit well with people who just want quick answers... anyway, just "being in contact" isn't the same thing as actually getting infected. It's like saying being in contact with someone who has HIV is the same as becoming HIV positive. It's just not. On the same websites, you'll see some claims that maybe 5-20% of people carry HPV, which means those numbers are just estimates—and they're obviously worlds apart from that 80% figure. To actually get infected, you need a micro-tear or a little scratch, and both people have to be unprotected (direct mucosal contact or fluids) and the other person has to be positive... basically, if someone just rips through you without any protection and you don't even know them.
As for the vaccine, it's only going to target the specific strains that pose the highest risk for cervical cancer...
Look, giving advice to one person isn't going to land you in prison... if you're out there branding yourself as a 'financial advisor,' pitching services and collecting fees, then sure, you might be in trouble..
besides, just because I show people how to make money—the same way I do—doesn't mean I'm headed to jail...
See, I call myself a 'stock specialist,' not a 'financial advisor.' If I used that title, they'd probably shut down every single boutique firm trading penny stocks or anything similar overnight..
and when those guys from the SEC eventually show up at my door, I’ll just flash my broker's license in their faces and slam the door shut. But for you? You're looking at a report for fraudulent claims.
Aha... alright, then why don't you explain to me what an authorized financial advisor actually is? Please... Is that some kind of thing from Wells Fargo?
As for profit sharing, I’m not even going to touch that, mostly because I have no clue how much you're planning to put in...