u/neptunemacaroon

On the same side as my lateral, I just found a new lump. My RAI scan didn't show any spread, but I've always been concerned that means it just wasn't iodine avid. And now there's a node I can feel on the left side - and nothing on the right in the same place. We're about to go visit my inlaws for two weeks and then it's another week before the scan. I'm nervous it's back. They took out 45+ nodes (16 positive) and I just feel like ... did she miss one?

I moved around a lot as a kid, so I don't remember what grade this would have been from, but in elementary I was taught Amisare Bebeing Waswerebeen as a way to write more actively. You were supposed to avoid those words for better communication. I think there was a story about that - Amisare Bebeing Waswerebeen was a man to be avoided at all costs. This would have been in North Texas in the early 90s.

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Anyone else learn this? I can't find it anywhere online.

I LOVE watching these clips of sovereign citizens trying to weasel out of whatever situation they're in. Love it. But what I don't understand is where this all came from? What started it? Where is it being shared? I want the origin story. And my God, if you're one of them, what speaks to you about this whole thing? Like, it never works.

My kiddo - who some of you have kindly suggested reading material for on a previous post - has doubled down on his goal to get people to Mars. He drafted this letter to Nasa to help get the creative juices flowing. It's adorably passionate, even if maybe not technically doable.

Thought you guys might get a kick out of seeing the baby engineers who are working hard to be where you guys are one day.

Dear Nasa,

Hi, my name is [_____]. I’m 9 years old and I’ve been studying spaceflight and how all of it works. I've even landed on KSP (a realistic spaceflight simulator) on Eve (an exoplanet) and the moon. I’m trying to get people on Mars so I designed a Non atmospheric Nuclear Fission Engine, so theoretically it can give people infinite thrust as long as you have a star. I want to be a rocket scientist like you guys or an aeronautical engineer when I get older.

The reason I’m doing this is because I wanted to help you guys in the future to send people to Mars and land or get into orbit of it so I also designed an atmospheric lander with the capability of being decoupled. The reason I got this idea was because I was just bored in class and I knew that gases expand so I came up with the first design but this is the 10th, same basic concept, but different in many ways.

Here is how the rocket works. So since the sun makes solar radiation I made a design around that, so it takes in radiation and with moderators from a nuclear reactor it takes in the radiation and the moderators speed the particles to the speed of light. (This design is only meant for use outside a planet’s influence). But we all know that that generates a lot of heat so I put in some heat radiators so they can dissipate heat into space. Then there are some water tanks from pee and everything else being filtered and  it forms a thick layer of the water tank around the capsule which protects it from everything out of Earth’s influence. Then the capsule has ball bearings under it with heaters around them so they don’t freeze in space and one brushless motor or multiple to create artificial gravity so the astronauts don’t have their bones degrade. Then there is the opening for the engine and gimbal and the opening is a brushless motor connected to a circular metal plate for letting the engine throttle by opening and closing it. Then there are solar panels everywhere where there are no moderators to generate electricity. Then the control rods are able to get in the way to slow down the reaction so you can shut it down completely and slow the craft down to no thrust. Then there is the atmospheric lander, so it has a metal fairing to protect the lander then there is a giant adaptor with no fuel in it to put a giant heat shield and heat plate to protect it from reentry. The lander has parachutes to slow it down to land and then cut it off and it also has a docking port so it can dock with the main ship. Every else about the lander is pretty normal, except it uses something like MOXIE from perseverance to make air from mars and what we breath out to turn CO2 into O2 to make it breathable, one downside is that the astronauts on the ship have to have a gas mask like thing to get them air.

So if this ever gets to engineers at Nasa or possibly JPL, please send a letter back. I’ve dreamed about sending this letter to you guys so this is so cool. I’m really happy.

https://preview.redd.it/7dku0kz5bw4h1.jpg?width=670&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e14169997517e037404815021db75e8acb2029aa

My brother/sister (I’ll explain) is 53 and has been in prison since the early 90s. He’s 10 years older than I am, and we didn’t grow up together because we each had different dads. Our mother was a real piece of sh*t and abandoned both of us, so there was always some level of trauma bond there when I was younger.

Another layer to this is that he is cognitively impaired. I don’t know an official diagnosis, but he functions around the level of a 10-12 year old. He struggles with emotional regulation and does not handle being told “no” very well. We used to write letters when I was younger, but eventually he became extremely aggressive whenever he wanted money from me, so I cut off contact when I was 18.

Last year he found my address and asked if we could reconnect. I was very hesitant and explained why. Honestly, part of what made it hard was not knowing how much he would really understand about my perspective or feelings after all this time. But surprisingly, he seemed like he had matured a lot emotionally, even if he still had very limited intellectual capacity.

After a few months of talking again, he told me he was now my sister – a trans woman named "Trixie" (I know). He said he had always known he was attracted to men, but had realized he was actually a woman. This felt ... strange to me. Partly because prison is such an unusual environment, and partly because of his limited mental capacity. I worried about how much he was independently arriving at these conclusions versus being influenced by people around him. I even called the prison just trying to better understand the situation, and all they would confirm was that he was listed as transgender and receiving hormone treatment.

After sitting with it, I decided to just accept that this may genuinely be who she is. She seems healthy, happy, and as fulfilled as she can be, saying this is who she was always meant to be.

But ... fast forward about six months, and now she’s back to identifying as male. He told me he got involved with a church group in prison that convinced him being trans was a sin and that if he didn’t repent, “God will make sure you stay in prison forever.” He has his first parole hearing coming up in a couple years, so this clearly terrified him.

I told him that he needs to be true to himself and not listen to people who are trying to cause him to act out of fear. I said he needed to figure out who he really is separate from other people's ideas.

Things immediately got strained after that, and now we aren’t speaking again. Part of me wonders if I should have just stayed quiet. I can’t really be there for him in any meaningful sense, and maybe my role is to listen and support, as long as nobody is being harmed.

But it’s also hard because of his mental capacity. He’s very vulnerable to influence, and part of why I spoke up is because I wanted him to have an (actually) outside perspective to make decisions.

I'm not sure how to walk that line - do I just listen, or offer my thoughts?

I have been craving a phenomenal bean and cheese burrito. What does that mean? Smooth beans. Cheese of the Gods. Soft, slightly chewy tortilla. Preferably with house-made salsas. Point me in the right direction, please!

I'm just kind of complaining. I was diagnosed with Sjogren's six years ago and plaquenil helped immensely with the fatigue and joint pain. Last September I was diagnosed with cancer, and have had a chaotic few months. Part of it included finding a new rheumatologist, who is a Sjogren's specialist. He took me off plaquenil because he thinks I'm having some ear toxicity, so he is sending me to a specialist to check before putting me back on it. But in the three months I've been off, the fatigue is back and so deep I feel like a completley different person - like I was before I went on it. I feel like everything is slower and muted. I wake up waiting to go back to sleep. I don't want to switch to a more severe medication - I just want back on my old stuff. It's just been a lot with surgery, radiation, etc. and I'm fn tired. Again, just a complaint.