u/Turbulent-Parsley619

Okay so I love nothing more than a good romance. However because for the first like nearly 30 years of my life it was nearly impossible to find happy queer romances, once they started being mainstream in the 2020s, I haven't read but like two heterosexual romances, one I loved and one I hated. I DNFd a book recently just because the bisexual woman was gonna end up with a man, which obviously doesn't invalidate the queerness of the relationship at all, but I just did NOT want to read a girl and a guy when there was a girl she could have ended up with.

It made me realize my brain is going down a problematic path where I immediately don't want even bisexuals to end up with cisgender m/f partners, and I need to fix this.

My biggest issue is that when I try to find one nowadays, the most popular straight romances tend to be erotica or romantasy and I hate those. I don't mind sex in a book, but I'm not reading it for porn (NOT to shame those who do, you do you!) and even a lot of queer stuff I've DNFd when it's just sex scene after sex scene.

Het ships I enjoy are mostly in tv and film but like, the relationships in Parks and Rec comes to mind because they're all equal footing, mutual respect, adorably in love romances. The last het book I read that I LOVED the romance in was A Novel Disguise by Samantha Larsen, where they were both misfits in the town but fir perfectly together.

I thought about this because I just saw a headline about a woman who got killed by an alligator while swimming in a river in Florida. I mentioned to my British friend, "Well that's why you don't swim in a river that isn't designated a swimming area where the wildlife is kept scared away."

My British bestie pointed out, "If she was there on vacation, she may not know that rivers aren't safe to swim in. I wouldn't be worried about wild animals in a river here."

Having lived in Georgia in the US my whole life, we learned wildlife safety before traffic safety. Like, we teach toddlers 'look where you're stepping so you don't step on a rattlesnake' before 'look both ways before crossing the street' because a kid playing outside is far more likely to step on a snake than make it all the way to the street if they're being supervised by adults (the adult would see them heading to the road vs the adult can't see what's hiding in the grass).

But my best friend has never had any reason to be afraid of animals in nature living in the South of England.

So do you live somewhere wild animals kill people? Or are animal attacks only pet/zoo related where you live?

Okay do I'm writing a FMC that is denied an abortion and decides to go on hunger strike to force a miscarriage.

But would that work? Like I know physically starvation will eventually cause miscarriage, but what are the chances she dies too because miscarriage is hard on the body and if she's already dehydrated and starved, would it just kill her, too?

I don't really have any other options for ways she could force a miscarriage (while under watch, no chance to get a coat hanger or anything) without also dying. Like the stairs trick is more likely to kill her. Blood loss from trying to stab oneself or cut ones wrists is more likely to kill her. That's why I thought of hunger strike.

But reading about it it, I can't quite figure out the survival chances by starvation. Anybody know more than Google?

I feel like I'm getting restful sleep, like I don't feel fatigued during the day. However, I have mild hypertension so I monitor my heartrate with a device. Is it possibly my device or is it normal for your sleep heart rate to be higher than the average resting awake heart rate?

Professor Google says it should be lower, but I don't have any symptoms of poor sleep quality other than my heartrate.

My average resting heart rate is 66bpm and my average sleep heart rate is 76bpm.

My device does measure that I have above average REM sleep, but I don't know how reliable that tracking is or why that is. Otherwise my sleep 'score' is normal everywhere else. Probably not enough sleep for the normal person, but I've never been an 8-hour sleeper. I'm a 6-7 sleeper and 8+ often makes me feel lethargic instead of rested, but it's almost consistently around 6 hours 30-45 minutes.

Basically, the long and short of it is that I was stupid with money and ran up a $2,000 credit card bill. I only make $600/month. It's a HIGH APR credit card because I've never carried a balance so I didn't care about the APR when I got the card and never intended to get charged interest. Only now I'm looking at a solid 4-6 months of 29% APR trying to pay this off.

Is it worth trying to get a short-term loan at lower interest levels? I have good credit, it's over 750. But I'm actually going to have to take out a student loan soon (35 and going to grad school) and don't want this debt to impact my credit too poorly so I get stupid interest rates on the student loans.

Any other recommendations? I feel like an idiot for getting in debt like this, especially when I'm so low-income and in 35 years have NEVER had debt that wasn't like a car loan which has a physical asset linked to that debt.

Books For 8th Grade Readers

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For context, I work in a library and have a patron looking for books for his 8th grade daughter. Idk if she's rising 8th or just finished 8th.

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I realized that some YA is too advanced for current 8th graders, but some Juvenile isn't going to interest 8th graders even if it's on their reading level.

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I'm looking for examples I can compile a list of available (so I need TONS of options cause most won't be in our library) books an 8th grader in the current day and age would like.

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I'm 35 and was already being taken on special trips to the highschool library to find books I hadn't already read in 8th grade so I have missed 20 years of middle school books and wasn't reading them when I was that age.

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Thanks in advance!!!

For context, I work in a library and have a patron looking for books for his 8th grade daughter. Idk if she's rising 8th or just finished 8th.

​

I realized that some YA is too advanced for current 8th graders, but some Juvenile isn't going to interest 8th graders even if it's on their reading level.

​

I'm looking for examples I can compile a list of available (so I need TONS of options cause most won't be in our library) books an 8th grader in the current day and age would like.

​

I'm 35 and was already being taken on special trips to the highschool library to find books I hadn't already read in 8th grade so I have missed 20 years of middle school books and wasn't reading them when I was that age.

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Thanks in advance!!!

Like you know the whole follow the pen without moving your head, hold one foot off the ground and say the ABCs from D to P, walk heel to toe in a straight line without looking down or wobbling, etc.

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If you're sober and just clumsy or not good under pressure, do the arrest you and take you to do a DUI? In that case, do you still have to pay to get your car back when they wrongfully towed it? If so how is that legal when you did nothing wrong to get your vehicle towed?

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I'm just wondering cause my ass has anxiety so I can't perform under pressure and I'm clumsy AF like if I stand on one foot with my other foot 6 feet in the air, I'm gonna lose my balance in seconds. Same with walking heel toe, that's too close together for me to balance in a straight line without holding my arms out for balancing!

I actually visited two with a friend in our 20s! I live a day trip drive from Savannah, which is in Chatham' county where Ghost of Thornton Hall is set, so she came down from NYC and we stayed in a rented room at an old mansion near Bonaventure cemetery. And then in our later 20s we saved up and went to Japan! Kyoto is the coolest place I've ever been. Tokyo and Sendai and Osaka were awesome but Kyoto was the best!

Edit: I actually forgot Crystal Skull was set in New Orleans and Final Scene was set in St. Louis. I've been to both of those! Although I've also been to theaters that remind me of the one from Final Scene.

Edit 2: I totally forgot Stay Tuned for Danger was set in NYC. I have also been there to visit same friend I traveled with.

Like for the US the most substantial one is medical debt.

We're so used to healthcare = extreme costs that in college we learned about a specific communication anxiety subset called Medical Finance Anxiety where basically ya know how medical anxiety is when people don't want to go to the doctor and find out what's wrong because they fear it's really bad and don't want to face the truth? This is very similar but it's where people don't want to get a diagnosis or treatment for an ailment because they're too scared to even find out how expensive it will be, because once they find out the cost they know they have to face the reality of how bad treatment will put them in financial strain.

A lot of Americans even defend our system that financially ruins people for being unlucky enough to get cancer. They are so used to our system that they cannot fathom a medical system where people who need care just... get care. There are so many avenues through which people argue FOR the American healthcare system even though it ruins lives every few minutes of every single day.

What is your country's version of 'so normalized they don't understand it's actually a real problem'?

If you are reading this and thinking, "Rolling, obviously", I am stunned to inform you I just heard it referred to as "getting your house wrapped".

So to try and work out who on earth calls it "wrapping", I ask the subreddit to see which region this is from.

Edit: I feel like I'm in the twilight zone cause apparently y'all don't call it rolling either 🧐🧐🧐🧐

I am looking for a book or some books that explain the very first initial introduction to the concept of 'white people are better than others' comes from. Like I understand the spread is from colonialism and have read plenty of books about that, but where did the idea even begin? I want a book that talks about at least in part about where the very simple concept of one skin color of people being superior to others originated.

TIA!

https://preview.redd.it/7qqel8lrbf3h1.png?width=550&format=png&auto=webp&s=de21cdc1947534bdaa736e3967fe705ade454e90

I thought about this because I saw a video of people seeing an alligator for the first time and being shocked by how big it was, and then my brain went to, "I wonder how it is to live somewhere you don't have to be cautious about dangerous things in the water?"

And then I got to this question! How safe is it to swim in lakes and rivers where you live?

I live somewhere it's cautiously safe. People do it. That photo is the river that runs through my town actually. BUT!!! There are alligators, and venemous snakes and snapping turtles in there, so you probably want to stick to a swimming area where the constant people keep the wildelife away.

(Also there was that one time I was in 6th grade that a boy got a brain eating amoeba, Naegleria fowleri, and died from swimming in stagnant shallows in the hottest part of summer, but that was just once.)

Okay so I honestly could ask a lot of things, but I'm writing a mystery and I have to ask something specific:

The annoying people in mysteries that always go, "Stop stirring up trouble!" and, "Why can't you leave things alone?", and the quintessential, "You're going to get yourself hurt!" .... are they realistic? Like is that what neurotypicals truly would think?

An example is the book I'm reading, a guy has reason to believe the big small town horrible crime from his youth wasn't the murder suicide it appeared to be because the supposed killer may have had an alibi and was likely murdered himself. But EVERYBODY in the story is telling him he should leave well enough alone and that what the official story is is what happened so he should just leave it alone. And when he tells people, "Two people said they saw the alleged killer two times murders he supposedly committed were taking place and he was on the other side of town both times", everybody just goes, "Ah they're making it up, he did it then killed himself, case closed, don't reopen old wounds."

Is that REALLY how normal people (neurotypicals) react to stuff?

Cause to my ADHD ass, a mystery is the most intriguing shit ever AND if someone got wrongfully accused of a crime, even the possibility someone may be proven innocent posthumously, I want justice for them, so I would be like, "Oh wow I hope you find the real killer! Do you need any help? Here's my number if you need a getaway driver when the bad guys come for you!"

But do real people actually say that sort of stuff, or is this just a thing in fiction? I come from a long line of neurodivergence so my family isn't any help, and neurodivergent people tend to flock together so my friends aren't any help either.

That's why I come to you, neurotypical internet strangers, to ask if those characters are realistic and I need to include these types of interactions or if I can just skip them.

Like I'm sure the fertility of the people living in these places with low birth rates is fine. Most people are probably still fully capable of having a baby, they just aren't because of whatever reason (that's not what his question is about, I don't care about that).

Wouldn't birth rate be a far more accurate way to phrase it?

Edit: Okay so birth rate = births per capita, got it now! So why wouldn't it make more sense to call it like 'births per woman' or something if that's what fertility rate means? Fertility leads to the logical conclusion that it's talking about actual fertility as in the ability to reproduce, not IF/HOW MANY times they reproduce. It's just a very misleading wording.

I don't mean morally and I'm not here to debate any of that. (Also I didn't know where else to ask this, which is why I'm asking this here.)

I'm talking what legal issues involved in marriage are so important that the government determined that it should only be between two people? I'm not married so I don't know what all legal stuff is involved in marriage beyond the actual marriage filing. I'm an ordained minister so I know about the process of legally marrying someone and how the documents are filed with the court and such, but nothing beyond that involving marriage is known to me.

I know someone will say 'tax purposes' but I am curious about what those purposes are. What marriage rights or spousal privileges are considered to need to be between only two people and not multiple? Is it inheritance related? Medical proxy related? Is there anything that couldn't be established with other legal documents outside of the marriage that makes plural marriage impossible to legally navigate?

Or is it a matter of just there is a cultural norm based moral judgement informing a law that exists for simplicity sake?