Just a quick clarification. This is a mouse study. This is not a study in humans.

What do mice eat? What do humans eat? Are we closely related to mice? Do we occupy the same niche? No. This tells us about mice eating a ketogenic diet, not about humans doing so.

Monkeys exaggerate, mice lie. Something shown in primates is likely, though not guaranteed, to be similar in humans, though the degree may be very different. Something shown in mice may or may not replicate in humans at all, and the degree is often very different even if it does.

Mouse studies are great in some ways. They are cheap, fast, and very well understood. You can copy the study design from someone else and save a lot of effort designing your study. You can control for really specific factors by choosing what specific mice you use. You can control their diet perfectly, use large numbers at low cost, and see their full life cycle in just a couple of years.

Mouse studies also suck in a bunch of ways. Humans are not mice, so translating the research is not easy or reliable. Something that causes an issue in mice may or may not translate to humans for a bunch of reasons. They make their own vitamin C for example, so you may have to knock out their genes for making vitamin C if you want to make them get scurvy. You have to humanise them and these changes are always approximations.

So this study does show that a high fat diet that causes obesity IN MICE does increase tumorgenesis in the small intestine. In mice. Not in humans. Every claim here needs that caveat to be made clearly and directly. If they do a translational study in humans I will happily read it, but this study? To me it is worse than useless. It is irrelevant at best and misleading at worst.

It is a little more than cutting sugar. If you replace all your simple sugar with complex sugar you will have an improvement in blood sugar control, that is true. You won’t reverse insulin resistance with that change because you will still have elevated insulin levels all the time.

What ketosis allows is a period of time where you are not using large amounts of insulin to push your blood sugar down to safe levels. Instead you use gluconeogenesis (making sugar in the liver from fat) to push blood sugar up. This means you don’t overshoot and have to push it back down.

If you stop using insulin all the time your body becomes less resistant and it becomes more effective, allowing you to actually push your blood sugar down when you need to. This is one of the core issues with diabetes and can actually be solved.

As for your wife’s mum, what she is eating is up to her. She is an adult and has to make her own decisions. If she chooses something you wouldn’t choose it isn’t an indictment of your and your choices. She can do what she wants and so can you. It isn’t a personal insult. If she chooses to take keto very seriously and won’t eat beans then treat it like you would vegetarianism, don’t be dismissive or rude, just be a supportive person and don’t make bean (or other high carb) dishes when she is around for dinner. Or make the high carb dish as well as something for her. Or just make parts of the meal keto and others high carb and mix and match on your plate. Or don’t have her over for dinner. Lots of options that don’t require you matching her diet or pushing back on what she eats.

Diet is personal. It is personal for her, and yours is for you. Her diet is not personal for you. You don’t need to concern yourself with her choice of food just like you don’t need to be concerned with her choice of underwear.

Hey, just as an outsider to your conversation above, I don’t think the overall attitude here is super helpful or positive. That person read your post in a way you didn’t mean it, you bounced back a couple of times, and it ended in telling someone to take their attitude and shove it. That is a fairly aggressive response and probably not great for them or for you. Living with that kind of outward aggression is painful and not actually helpful for defending yourself.

Something you may find helpful is restructuring with the assumption that they have misunderstood in good faith, without malice or accusation. For example,

“Ah, yes, they did list psyllium husk as working, it is one of the raw fibres, but the refined and processed ones don’t work, they fail to gel. As for invalidating your symptoms, that wasn’t my intention, I was trying to provide useful information of what not to do. If I were doing the wrong thing to manage a health condition I would want to know. Good to know psyllium husk is working for you.”

It is much better for you and them, and honestly I have had a large number of interactions like this where the other person comes back and apologises for any confusion, seeing my tone and changing from defensive to conciliatory. It feels nicer than “winning”. Anyway, good luck, have fun.

The sourdough was unscathed, which was the problem, it deflected the knife better than my weak human flesh. Attempt 2 was successful, the sourdough was great, and it is a standard loaf which replaces all other bread so it became Vegemite toast, tuna salad sandwiches, boiled egg mashed with butter toast, and a vessel for butter with sausages. It is also gluten free, made with brown and white rice, buckwheat, and tapioca starch. Finally got sourdough working with gluten free flour, no xantham gum needed, just a touch of psylium husk (2g/500g).

Yes indeed, a tea towel will do the job well, I just got some silicone mats to make the whole surface black (so I can see dirt and crumbs easier) and non-slip. It also does some sound absorption to reduce the noise level, but it isn’t a huge effect.

I did mine two days ago, took a chunk of finger tip out while cutting a loaf of bread on a cutting board which was not on a non-slip surface. People talk about how nice sourdough is, but never how dangerous. Worth it.

On Pixel devices you can unlock and relock the bootloader as much as you like. Most other phones cannot do this because the manufacturer doesn’t want you to install custom software. If I relock my bootloader on my Pixel 6 Pro it protects from one risk, someone gaining physical access to my phone and booting another operating system to access my data without my permission. This is handy, but not really a big risk for most people. Leaving the bootloader unlocked makes sense for your device and shouldn’t cause any meaningful risk for you.

Conversation have a flow, and sequence of performances from each participant. Saying “I’m tired of classic rock” is a stop point for the conversation. If you use this wording you are not making a space for their next response.

Instead you could consider saying something more like “I’m not really into classic rock, do you have anything else?” Or even more directly just add “Do you have anything else?” to the end of your original statement. If you close the conversation around classic rock but open a new one about another genre or a request for their other preferences the conversation can go forward.

That said, this is all masking. If you are not interested in maintaining that relationship it may be more trouble than it is worth then ending things there may work for you. If someone required that level of emotional work from my end but did not reciprocate by adopting strategies that worked with me I would feel it was pretty unfair and not really worth my time. Being flexible and kind is something that should be reciprocal, not one sided. Masking costs you something and you not masking costs them something. Meeting them half way may make sense, but it may also be pointless if they won’t actually meet you there.

Hey man, that sucks. I won’t claim that things will be better because I can’t know that for sure, but it does seem times are changing. When I was a kid a trans person was a punchline. When my parents were kids a trans person was a pedophile and worthy of death. The kids I work with now are aware of trans people and just accept it as part of human diversity, like hair or skin colour.

If you can’t be out now then don’t be, you are the judge of that and nobody should be telling you what to do. That doesn’t mean the future will be like today. There may be a day where it seems more possible or you find a new friend group. You may find that you can be more flexible in that group and take the risk, making yourself more comfortable. I would recommend not closing yourself to the idea, just accepting that right now it isn’t working for you and you are putting on hold for a while. We all wait for things, that doesn’t mean giving them up or never trying again, it just means waiting and making the best of your time now.

I just got a Kobo Clara Colour and it was painless to get KoReader working on it. It runs well, is very responsive, and the battery life is great. It is not as powerful as some other options but for the price it is quite nice. The black and white version is about $30 cheaper here, so it is a fairly good value proposition.

The difference in cost for a black and white or colour ereader is fairly minimal now, mine was about $30 more than the black and white. I’m using a Kobo Clara Colour. I have installed NickelMenu and KoReader and absolutely love it.

The difference between that and my phone is significant. My phone has to be maximum brightness to be readable outside, but my Kobo is fine. Eink relies on reflected light so bright external lights like the sun don’t make it look bad, they actually make it look better. The size is also a bit more suited to reading, though you are correct that phones are often close to that size now. These are reasons, but they are not the main reason.

It can’t do music or web browsing, nor can it have much in the way of apps and games. It can’t get messages or emails, and notifications are not even supported. Why do I use it? To read. It is for reading while doing nothing else. I can decide that I will now read for an hour and just put my phone somewhere else, maybe on charge, while I do so. I can focus on that one task and smash it out without anything else getting in the way. It is glorious.

I am going to get an MP3 player soon given how great my experience of separating reading has been. Using my phone for everything is great for travel but the cost is the constant intrusions. I have notifications off for most things and that helps, but the availability of everything all the time is just not something I cope well with. I think my phone will continue to be my camera for the most part, and my communication tool as well, but moving music and reading off seems to be a good path.

I totally thought that would be about Blender, the 3d modeling application. Instead I found true joy. Thank you.

In biology we often talk about how evolution isn’t about perfection, it is all about just good enough. You don’t have to be the fastest runner, you just have to be fast enough to survive. You don’t have to be the strongest, just strong enough. And when it comes to surviving it is not on an individual basis, it is about the genes surviving, so if only two out of 3 women survive childbirth but those survivors have more than 3 kids on average that is good enough.

Pregnancy is one of the most dangerous things a person can do in modern society and the dangers are downplayed to an insane degree. If we truly valued it then we would thank the people who carry babies to term by making sure they are supported and respected, along with turning research towards promoting health and wellbeing. Our choices display what we value, and in this society we don’t value pregnancy, we appear to distain it.

Did you ever watch Dragonball Z? All the scenes where Goku or Gohan are training to get stronger, building their bodies to be powerful? Piccolo wearing insanely heavy gear to improve his speed?

You don’t need to do sports to train your body. You are giving your body the opportunity to learn how to be strong, to learn endurance. You can’t do that without practicing those things, using your strength, pushing your endurance.

That said, I have found working with kids to be very helpful. I work with a particular young kid who absolutely loves being lifted and thrown about. I use him as my weight training and it is a whole lot of fun, not to mention rewarding making his day more fun. Maybe there is something you can find that is similar?

Options vary depending on your temperament and goals.

You could tell them no thanks, you are busy. Perfectly reasonable, it can be done kindly, and setting a clear boundary can work wonders.

You could also try managing rather than helping them. By this I mean helping them with the cognitive tasks of figuring out what they want to do and planning that out. This would mean finding a tutorial or video of a build, getting the summary of items needed, and then telling them how to go get those things and organise the storage.

If you go spelunking with them then having them come along as a part of the team and helping with something like strip mining can be very good. If they aren’t interested they can go do something else, but this specific task is something they can do to help. For example, I would make two long lines on the same level connected at one end to create a U shape then have them mine from one side to the other with a gap of two blocks. That simple mining is tedious but much better with extra hands, and the excitement of finding something good is enough to keep them interested often enough.

On your motherboard there is a bluetooth radio. That is what is being turned off and on by turning bluetooth off and on.

The USB receiver is likely not bluetooth but a 2.4GHz radio for connecting to the mouse.

Your mouse may also be able to connect via Bluetooth without the USB dongle, some mice can do that, but most just use their dongle.

Bluetooth is not great for low latency things like mouse input or game controllers. It also kind of sucks for audio but that is handled mostly by just buffering audio and having a slight delay in playback. That said, I love Bluetooth because I can have headphones without cables that get snagged all the time. Very handy.

I think this should be a thing. At the same time, I would also want something similar for funding or platforming fascists, but that is unlikely to end up being done. I think a simple tag, the [AI] one would work, is the best current solution. I think extra detail in the post is a good thing to do, for example AI assisted documentation, AI assisted bug finding, AI assisted vibe coding. They are all different and have different effects on the product and community. If someone uses AI to find bugs in their own code I am all for it, that is a great use if it. If they use AI to write their login system I am not keen at all given the likelihood of intense security issues and the low likelihood that they will ever fix it.

What I find frustrating is we know what complaints will be made about this data in advance of doing the study, so why did they do this study? I get that they brought something new by articulating it well and bringing some data sources together in a slightly different way and so on, but what meaningful, tangible change is there to our knowledge with this study?

To be clear, no shade on the researchers, they did the best with the system they have. I mean the system as a whole. When we have study after study which shows that saturated fat is not the cause of heart disease and one side of the argument just refuses to change their mind to match the evidence it seems the scientific system is broken and will not move forward.

A conference on an issue like this would also not work because those same issues would turn up. A panel with 10 researchers would include many who are directly funded by industry. They can’t leave that baggage at the door and think clearly. That simply isn’t human nature. We can’t expect people who have a vested interest in the outcome going a certain way to act with detachment and clarity. They are and always will be biased.

Cis guy here, but I work with a few trans people as a support worker and have heard a lot about their experience that may apply to you.

Puberty is dodgy for everyone. The levels go up and down over a few years for all of the growth hormones, not just estrogen and testosterone. The level of change this causes varies person to person and the timeline is not the same for everyone.

The same applies to behaviours. Some people become very interested in presenting as a given gender fairly early on, others start that later, and some don’t end up settling on a gender presentation at all or have multiple attempts to find something comfortable.

Voice training is a skill building exercise and it is really fun. Viewing it as a fun skill to learn will make it way less awful and may help to not generate dysphoria when it doesn’t make you sound fem in the first ten minutes. I don’t know how far along puberty you are and how much that has impacted your voice box but once you change the growth hormones the growth of your voice box will shift as well. It will take time for the physical shape to settle, so you need to learn how to use what you have to feel comfortable in your body. I would also recommend singing if you can as it gives you way more catchy ways of practicing a fem voice and is more fun than many of the more basic voice training exercises.

As for the fear of pushing yourself back into not doing things, yeah, it is hard. There will probably be days where it feels like that no matter what you do. There isn’t a perfect way to do it. That said, you are doing something way harder than typical puberty, you are doing puberty+, the extension course in growing up. It is harder and it will suck sometimes, but you can do it.

Hey. Just a quick anatomy check here. A lot of women and other vulva havers have never actually gotten a mirror and image out and mapped their parts to their names. In some cases people have been mistaken, trying to push things inside their eurethra rather than their vagina. This can cause a lot of pain and does not generally result in sexual enjoyment.

Secondly, mechanically, this is supposed to be a fairly wet process. Dry fingers are really good for causing damage, but absolutely terrible for pleasure. They can cause abraisions in the soft tissue and even draw blood without any malice or significant force. Try using a lot, and I mean what feels like too much and then some, water based lubricant. I would recommend KY as a great starter as it is more jelly like than many others and lasts a bit longer.

Remember, if choosing between more lube and less more is always safer, more comfortable, and lower risk. It doesn’t reduce sensation, it increases it, so making sure everything is wet is important.

Water is not lubricant. Water removes all the gel features of lubricants and will dilute and wash away water based lubricants. Silicone lubricants are water resistant and can be used vaginally, but generally people find water based lubricants more comfortable and enjoyable for vaginal penetration.

Also, spend time yourself with the lubricants and a small dildo. Get to know how it feels on your own. A partner is fun, but learn singleplayer before joining a multiplayer game, you need to know what works because your partner can’t feel how it feels for you, it isn’t their body, they need your feedback. There is nothing wrong with enjoying your own body, it is natural and healthy and really enhances partner play as well. I guarantee you if you are with a male partner he knows a lot about what his junk needs, so it is a good idea to get that understanding for your own bits.