true blue

@KevinEspiritu oh yeah. mint. 🪓 also found out lily of the valley is pretty nuts. would like to replace my lawn with something (creeping phlox, moss, etc?) I’d rather mow occasionally or not at all. needs to grow in shady to dappled partial shade. suggestions?

@shagbark_hick MA way better than NY, of course. Western MA is unknown by anyone east of Worcester. It’s where the hillbillies live aside from the mega progressives clustered in Amherst/Northhampton. But you think NH is more expensive, what?! Where in NH are you looking, Meredith & Hanover?

It is very funny, I hear many people saying bad things about Massachusetts, but honestly MA is much better than Upstate NY in many ways. NY is #2-highest overall tax burden in USA. MA is #21-highest. The Cato Institute ranks NY at #50, or dead last, in overall personal freedom. It ranks MA at #26. People in MA are friendlier overall. The scenery in rural Western MA is fantastic. The cost of real estate is comparable in rural areas (slightly higher in MA but fairly reasonable IMO). And in many towns in deep rural Western MA, the local authorities can have a surprisingly laissez-faire mentality about property owner rights. I know of at least a few towns where the codes enforcement is extremely lax or bordering on nonexistent, where quite a lot of shenanigans are tolerated. You really just have to avoid the rich liberal areas and you'll find people are not really that rulesy. Moreover, MA people tend to be pretty educated and I find that they are 10x more social than Upstate NY people. We just visited some friends in rural W. MA and even at the local dump, everybody's just chilling out and socializing. There's a big crew of young men that get together at the local pub weekly without fail. Unheard of where we live in NY. MA's rural parts also seem WAY younger than NY's. Quite common to run into friendly, well-read folks in their 30's out in the hill towns -- and once you get away from the bigger cities and college towns, they do not tend to be uniformly liberal or woke. Usually more "independent". In other words, NY is so bad for so many things that someone from Upstate NY would put themselves way ahead by moving to MA. And I find that while MA real estate is pricier than NY's, you can get cheaper real estate overall in MA than in VT or NH. There are a lot of "sleeper" options in that state, and none of them are *that* far from some really excellent amenities and communities.

@mymomcare Lady Elaine!

Therapist: Did you experience any anxiety when you were a child? Me: Well……..

@wil_da_beast630 I voted D up until 2016 then couldn’t tolerate their platform nor progressives themselves. I’ve become a conservative liberal (aka classical liberal or centrist). I sometimes agree with u, often don’t, but like the balance. You try to point out the bs on both sides to an extent

Out of curiosity: like this if you follow me and are on the political left. Say why, if you want. I won't block you, or any punk ish.

@colorblindk1d ha!

I have a stye so I uploaded a picture to ChatGPT and asked "what is this?" as a test. It told me what I knew but ALSO reminded me that I asked about another bump on my face 5 months ago (which I forgot about) and told me to go to a dermatologist if this is recurring.

@SketchesbyBoze when u give 0 f*cks who the Rizzler is, wax poetic about the times u saw Pearl Jam, Soundgarden & Tenacious D live, collect books about the civil war, birds, orchids & Tin Tin, and have opinions on the vendors at your local farmers markets u might have finally found peace

Middle age comes at you fast and hard. Three years ago I was with the times. Full of hope. Now I find myself googling “who is the Rizzler”. I get very grumpy about kids & screens. I’m stockpiling books on the Second World War. I have opinions on the best Steely Dan album

@wil_da_beast630 no woman could withstand being prudish if men were truly good at this. my instinct is its a combo of men not developing the skills or being squeamish in which case they might reconsider their orientation

It's worth noting that this is exactly the orgasm gap. The real question is whether male callousness, or female "prudery," is actually causal here.

@Aella_Girl nah. because one doesn’t need to be a vegetarian to avoid the horrors of the meat industry. agree it’s essential to not support this by never purchasing anything from Tyson, Perdue, Hillshire Farm et al. sex trafficking and lots of porn would fall under this criteria.

a great test of "would you have been chill with owning slaves, if you'd been born into a slave-owning family" is whether or not you're vegetarian today

@NancyAFrench ha! that’s a riot. It looks amazing.

Enough time has passed to admit this: on this day, I forgot to bake the crust. My guests pushed it around on their plates politely. I opted for the fruit tart. Only the next day, when I served it to a neighbor and took a bite, did I realize my mistake.

@anishmoonka people are dickheads. weight loss is good. why on God’s green earth wouldn’t we be glad a person became healthier through medication? GLPs aren’t super easy; there are side effects and you need drastically change. should we refuse chemo/radiation and instead just toughen up?

Researchers showed 1,313 Americans a profile of someone who lost 35 pounds, and people rated the Ozempic user as worse company than someone who never even tried to lose weight. The study comes from a team at Rice, the Mayo Clinic, and UCLA. Each participant saw the same profile of a 38-year-old, 220-pound person who lost 35 pounds, and only the method changed: Ozempic, diet and exercise, or no loss at all. They rated the person on a 1-to-7 scale, where 7 meant they'd love to spend time with them. The dieter scored 5.51, the person who never tried scored 5.25, and the Ozempic user came in at 4.99. All three differences were statistically significant, and the Ozempic user fell twice as far below the dieter as below the heavier non-loser. The trait ratings followed suit. The Ozempic user was rated lower on positive traits like honesty, generosity, intelligence, warmth, and friendliness, and higher on negative traits like laziness, lack of discipline, self-indulgence, and weak willpower. The team traced the gap to one belief: that an Ozempic-style drug is the easy way out. Older surgery research went the other way: a 2018 paper in the journal Stigma and Health found surgery patients rated as more desirable than higher-weight people who had never lost weight. The visible difficulty of an operation seems to register as proof of effort, in a way a weekly injection does not. A second experiment with 706 participants showed that regaining the weight didn't help. The judgment looked nearly identical whether the regain came after Ozempic or after a diet, and the Ozempic group was still rated less positively than someone who had never lost weight. The authors call it a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" trap. About 30 million Americans are now on a drug like Ozempic, double the count from 18 months ago, and 14 percent stop because of the cost. The drug delivers the weight loss; the research has now put numbers on the social cost that follows.

@naturaholic 😭

A peaceful Sunday in the 90s

We live on a planet where trees communicate, octopuses dream, elephants honor their dead, bees dance to find their way, crows remember, ants build, cats heal with their purring, and the forest, after the fire, blooms again.

@MattPinner_ marry him

If someone invites you on a date and serves you this, what would you do?

@anishmoonka this is fascinating! also surprising that the stranger sperm was so frequently selected. since these were IVF couples, this might be an indication of why these couples aren’t getting pregnant. perhaps in non-IVF the egg would be pulling the partner sperm

Researchers in Stockholm put a woman's egg in a dish next to sperm from two men: her partner and a stranger. Half the time, the egg pulled in more sperm from the stranger than from the man she'd chosen. This was a 2020 study from Stockholm University and the University of Manchester, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Until then, nobody had shown a human egg doing this. The fluid that surrounds an egg in a woman's body releases chemicals that act like a scent trail. Sperm follow the scent. The team put samples in thin glass tubes and counted how many sperm from each man swam in. All the eggs and sperm came from real couples going through IVF treatment. The pull was uneven. Eggs attracted 18 to 40 percent more sperm from one man over another, and inside the egg's fluid, sperm built up about 10 times more than in a plain comparison liquid. The team ran the experiment over and over, and the same pattern came out every time. The bigger finding came in who got picked. In half the cases, more sperm got pulled toward a stranger than toward her partner. The same sperm performed differently depending on which woman's fluid it was in. Sperm tails have a tiny gate on them. When the gate detects a hormone called progesterone (the same hormone tied to a woman's monthly cycle), it opens and the sperm kicks into a higher gear. Each woman's fluid has its own chemical mix, so different men's sperm respond differently. Some sperm get a strong push. Others barely react to the same fluid. Roughly 1 in 4 UK couples in fertility treatment have no idea why they can't have a baby. Every standard test comes back normal. If the egg and sperm reject each other chemically, no test catches it. The cycle fails. They get no answer, and they have to go through the entire thing again. In fertilization, the egg gets its own vote. The woman never feels it happen. Half the time in this study, that vote went to a stranger.

@fwmarqix Beatrix Louise needs ice cubes in her water otherwise she dehydrates herself

My brother got a dog last year. He called me during the first week and said, "Nobody told me dogs have opinions." I said everyone told him dogs have opinions. He said, "Not like this, this dog has positions on things." I asked what positions. He said, "He refuses to walk on certain streets, won’t eat before 7 a.m., and has a specific chair, if you sit in it, he just stands next to you and stares until you move." I asked what he did about the chair. He said, "I move, obviously I move, Have you seen how he stares?" I have seen how the dog stares. He’s right to move. What’s the weirdest rule a pet has ever enforced in your house?

@sarahhepola thank you for asking this question!

Realize this isn’t the most pressing issue, but when Billy Joel sings in “Piano Man” that someone is a “real-estate novelist” —- what is that?

@MeghanEMurphy this seems to be taken out of context. by my lover, of course I want to be sexualized! by my boss, or by advertising body parts 24/7 or at age 14 by men driving past — not at all.

I think... most women are ok with being sexualized? By their partners and/or men they are into/having sex with? Are legions of women claiming otherwise? x.com/desirecode_/st…

@KJP LOVE ❤️💜💚🩷🤍

Our new summer madras collection ⛵️⚓️☀️

every school should have a "fix-it lab" where students learn to repair their clothes, bikes and electronics. we should grow up knowing that not everything is disposable, that care and repair are part of living well on this planet.

@KILLTOPARTY I love this for them! pretty sure they don’t have kids yet because she won’t be walking around topless after boobs are wrecked by pregnancy & breastfeeding but I sincerely hope he is still attracted no matter the changes from life & aging.

Being a wife guy must feel so good