The Will of D

The magician or scammer will *tell you* how he is going to prove his honesty.

The magician rifles through the deck until you say "stop", then he says, "Are you sure? I'll keep going if you want." and asks "Now, you agree that you could have stopped anywhere you wanted, so there's absolutely no way I could know which card you got" and because it's a magic show and you aren't paying close attention you didn't notice he didn't deal a card from where you stopped, he dealt the bottom card of the deck.

The magician doesn't ask you, "What would it take for you to believe this" because you might say, "I'd need you to use a sealed deck" or "I'd have to personally shuffle the deck" or some other proof that would make the trick impossible.

Magicians say "You agree that if I did *this*, it would mean *that*, right?" and you say yes, and it feels like you are the one who got to verify things, but of course the magician is lying and the proof is nothing of the kind.

Scammers do the same thing. A really concrete example is phone scammers pretending to be working for the government will say, "Look, I see you're skeptical if I'm who I say I am, I'm going to hang up and call back, and you'll see on the caller ID it says, 'FBI' and that tells you that I'm really working for the government."

Now, caller ID can be spoofed pretty easily, so it doesn't prove anything at all.

But it *feels* to you like you demanded proof and the scammer was willing to give you the proof.

But you didn't tell the scammer what out would take to prove it to you, the scammer told you what the proof would be.

As long as you are taking a SAFE dose of it, then it's *good* for you. Pain is bad for the body. The inflammation from prolonged pain can worsen chronic issues and make it harder to heal.

Ibuprofen is best for pain that has inflammation, while acetaminophen doesn't help with inflammation but is more broadly effective on other types of pain. As long as you are taking the recommended dose, you can even take them TOGETHER, since they have different mechanisms of action.

You do need to be aware of how much and how often you are taking any pain medication. Overdoses can be very painful (even lethal.) And if you are in chronic pain often enough that you need more than the safe dose, then you need to look into other medications to manage that pain.

As a scientist, this is the way I feel when people in pain don't take the medication that was developed to help with pain:

Especially because as a scientist, I know that pain sensitization is a thing, and that experiencing pain for long periods of time can even train your whole nervous system to be even more reactive to potential pain. So if at all possible, I want my friends who are experiencing pain to try to control that pain as much as possible.

So if you are in pain, and you do not have any massive kidney and liver strain that prohibits you from taking a NSAID or paracetamol/Tylenol?

Please take the pain medicine. Please. Pleeeaaaaaase. I'm a scientist.

The findings of the scientific assessment follow the landmark Montreal Protocol in 1987, which banned the production and consumption of chemicals that eat away at the planet’s ozone layer.

The upper atmosphere ozone layer protects the Earth from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation, which is linked to skin cancer, eye cataracts, compromised immune systems and agricultural land damage."

I'm a millennial and I remember as a child being told that even though humans had stopped using CFCs, we weren't sure the ozone layer even *could* recover. And it will likely be recovered in my lifetime!

We can make things like this happen. We can make governments and corporations listen to us on climate change too. It's not easy, but so many people are already doing amazing things and have started momentum in the right direction. We cannot lose hope, and we cannot stop demanding that those with power make things better.

It is NOT the default, it is NOT human nature to exclude disabled people from society. By nature we look after each other, by nature disability is just a natural part of the human variety that's made us so successful as a species.

What followed was around an hour of her asking about why I'd want to transition, what it meant, comparing it to her own, gay, brother. By the end of the day she had come to fully accept me as a woman and had no further qualms about it, even getting quite defensive of me to others.

At the school where I work, we had a similar lovely Valentine’s moment: 

One of our seniors bought hundreds of roses on Valentine’s Day. Every girl in every grade got one; there were enough left over for staff and extras for others who might want one. This is our library bouquet. 

One year ago, our school lost a student to suicide. As Valentine’s Day was approaching, this sad anniversary was all our student body was talking about and remembering. This senior student decided to try to lift us up from that narrative, and literally fill the halls with flowers. The surprise was carried out flawlessly – even his own sister didn’t know what he was about to do. 

I have rarely seen a happier school holiday. 

I’ve seen EXACTLY those comments on social media about what happened with us, and about similar gestures from high school students. Lots of “spoiled kids with money”, lots of “this is just to get laid”. 

I don’t think this diminishes my senior student or his gesture at all, but it diminishes us when good things happen and we turn around and reduce these moments to their most cynical interpretation. And that’s not even touching on what it says when people feel the need to belittle younger people for trying to do good; the kids can’t catch a break from some people.

Put testosterone in a "female" body, and it'll know how to grow a beard. It just will.

Put estrogen in a "male" body, and it'll know how to form breasts. It just will.

It doesn't matter what the "original" sex was, a human body is a human body and it knows what to do. We were never different. We just think we are because we think it makes more sense. But it doesn't. I make way less sense, actually.

I think that's fascinating and kind of beautiful. Honestly