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If there is ONE PIECE of hygiene you can do, one rote activity that you can muster the spoons for in the evening, make it your teeth.

Shower? You can skip a shower for one night and just wipe yourself down with a damp towel. Brush your teeth.

Skincare? You can pare down the steps, and your skin can heal from a bit of acne. Enamel can't. Brush your teeth.

Brushing your hair? Fuck it, get a buzz cut! Get a protective style! Your hair will grow back, but your teeth won't! Brush your teeth.

Flossing would be good. Mouthwash would be good. But if you can muster up the energy for just one task, brush your teeth.

And if you can't even manage that, chew some sugar-free gum. If nothing else, it will scrub away a bit of the bacteria and catch some stray food that's loose enough to get with the sticky stuff.

But your enamel doesn't grow back and cavities are a bitch.

(I once had seventeen, during my senior(?) year of college. I know. I know. I have been there. The dentistry was hell. Still is; I consider myself lucky if I have less than three fillings that need repair, and a miracle when it's none. I am not talking at you from my high horse: I am a crab in the bucket with you, but I'm trying to pull you out with me.)

Today, I told my sister to prioritize teeth over skincare because skin heals and enamel doesn't, and she said "really?"

So yeah, this is the PSA: really. Your enamel doesn't grow back.*

Brush your teeth.

No! Remineralizing toothpaste/gum can REINFORCE enamel that is WEAKENED but still present. You can strengthen enamel that has been damaged so long as it is still there.

The issue is that once it's gone, it's GONE.

Kind of the inverse of your hair: if you fry your hair dead with bleach, you can't fix it, but it'll grow back with time.

Itoshi Sae BLUELOCK FAN ART

"PRODIGY"

«A country this weak at football can't produce a team worth my time. [...] Japan doesn't have a single striker who can even receive my passes.

Humans will pack-bond with anything.

Humans will make a competitive sport or game out of anything.

competitive sport or game

out of anything.

One of my friends in high school changed his named as soon as he turned 18, so that the ethnic name his family gave him was finally the name reflected on all of his paperwork. He told me that he understood why his parents had given him an “English” name, but that he felt that if he needed to assimilate in order to succeed, then that was a type of success that he didn’t want.

When I was on my way home from the courthouse after changing my own name, I got into a conversation with my rideshare driver, who was extremely interested once I told him what I was in court for, and wanted to know how I’d done it, how much it cost, was it difficult, etc. It turned out that his girlfriend had chosen the name “Yo-yo” when she came to the United States, unaware of how rare that was as a name, and that she was frequently made fun of because of it. Neither one of them had realized that a name change was so easy, and he told me he was excited to let her know that she had options.

There was an intern at a summer job I had once, who changed her name to be the same name, but a different spelling. She said that she had no idea why her parents had spelled her name so oddly to begin with, and suspected that it was just an honest mistake either by them or by some nurse, but it had been a headache for her entire life, and it was a huge relief to not need to be correcting people’s spelling on important documents anymore.

One of my exes legally changed his name to have an exclamation point, because he liked to sign his name with an exclamation point.

"No, I mean-"

Oh, maybe the woman who had to pee in a public park that only had pay toilets, so she tried to hide behind the bushes but got caught? Public urination is a sex crime.

"What? No, I mean-"

Oh, maybe you mean the homeless guy who had to strip down to get his clothes in the laundromat to clean them for the first time in weeks? He tried being subtle, but someone called the cops on him, and now he's on the sex offender registry for public nudity.

"Rapists and pedophiles! Kill rapists and pedophiles!"

Oh, like the trans woman who got called a pedophile groomer for helping a trans kid escape her abusive parents?

Or maybe the black man who got labeled a rapist because he came on to another man's wife, and he decided to get back at him by charging him with rape?

How about the 17 year olds who were fooling around, fully consensually, in one of their bedrooms? That's still technically underage sex and thus rape of a minor.

Oh, or maybe you're talking about the doctor who performed genital reconstructive surgery in a state that just voted to get that classified as rape?

People will do everything they can to get you convinced rape and pedophilia are the worst crimes possible, then accuse whoever they like the least of being either a rapist, a pedophile, or both, counting on you turning on them just for being accused of the crime.

"Oh, so you're saying you don't want to kill a serial rapist?"

That's exactly what I'm goddamn saying.

Once we decide a group is okay to kill, the government will do everything they can to convince you that their political enemies are either part of that group, or just as bad as that group, to get you to kill their enemies for them.

Two people do not decide that they are "courting". One person decides to "court" someone else. It's an action, not a stage in the relationship. A man decides to court a woman because he wants to encourage her to have romantic interest in him. He's trying to win her favor. It's not an exclusive relationship--a woman could be courted by multiple men at once. She'll spend time getting to know the guy who's interested in her, but they won't officially define their relationship as one where they only show romantic interest in each other. If they reach a point where they want it to be exclusive, that's when you propose.

bizarrely, America has in many ways gotten more conservative about dating since World War II.