Someone else mentioned it’s houndstooth, but there’s a company out there who turned that pattern into “catstooth.” I own pants with this pattern and they make me very happy!

Isn’t that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, not Frankenstein?

You and I are on the same page. My only point was that there are unfortunately many people out there now who believe they have a “healthy” level of skepticism, but are actually misled, misinformed, and not educated enough to distinguish reality. And I named specific groups who frequently fit this pattern.

When skepticism is truly healthy, it’s great. But there are many people who are unable to identify what “healthy” means here. No where did I say or mean to imply that some skepticism is a bad thing.

Unfortunately this also gets abused by some people who believe they have a healthy level of skepticism, but actually are way off the deep end. Like anti-vaxxers, flat-Earthers, and other anti-science people.

So “healthy” in this context shouldn’t be defined by the individual.

I have a black cat and an Abyssinian, so I like to say can stare into the Abyss or scream (quietly) into the void any time I want, lol.

I’m sure you know this so I’m commenting for others.

Sodium chloride alone can really upset your stomach, and potassium “buffers” the salt in a way that reduces nausea risk. There are straight up condensed salt pills that work, but are more likely to make you sick.

I also didn’t eat a lot of salt in the past and had to train myself into it. In fact, when I first started seeing my cardiologist, I made a humorous list of all the conventional wisdom I learned wasn’t true for me.

PSAs: Salt is bad for you! Eat less! My cardiologist: Salt is good for you. Eat more. Like 7-10 GRAMS a day.

Popular media: Wearing a corset might make you faint! My cardiologist: Abdominal compression is good. Wear a corset, it’ll make you faint less.

Fitness guides: When you hit an energy wall, push through to build endurance! My cardiologist: When you hit a wall, STOP! You will pay for it if you keep going!

All health guides: The best drink for your health is water; always drink more! My cardiologist: Just water is BAD. Drink lots, yes, but be careful to balance it out with electrolytes.

Magazine headlines: Walking is the best exercise for health. My cardiologist: Walk if you can tolerate it, but that is not good exercise for you. Rowing, recumbent biking, and swimming are best for you.

Still makes me chuckle as I learn to listen to my body and not society.

Electrolyte drink mixes are my saving grace, and LMNT is my favorite brand by a long shot. I enjoy drinking LMNT while every other brand I’ve tried is a slog.

I try to have 2 a day in about 25oz of water each. Hot days with lots of activity, I may need 3.

I genuinely can’t imagine getting 5–10 liters of water a day, and I already drink so much more than most people I know!

My cardiologist called it “POTS or vasovagal syncope,” and said he could specify with a tilt test, but since he treats them the same he didn’t recommend the tilt test.

So I could just say “yes,” but instead I give a long-winded answer to say that it’s a technically undefined dysautonomia that I treat like POTS, lol.

I use electrolyte mixes, salt pills, and salt my food, with a goal of 7–10g of salt and 100 oz of water a day. It’s amazing how much better I feel when I hit both of those targets!

Oh? I’ve had this issue as long as I can remember. Teens for sure, probably before.

It’s actually gotten better as I’ve aged because I eat more consistently and now know I need to eat tons of salt.

Worth noting since “sugar-free” sometimes means “sugar substitute” in marketing parlance: some peanut butters use xylitol as a sweetener, and xylitol kills dogs.

So yeah, read the label. Some peanut butters have literally just peanuts as an ingredient and those are best!

This is the advice I was coming to give, with the addition of a specific possible group.

I know there’s a lot of the anti-religion sentiment on Lemmy (for many good reasons) but one community I’m familiar enough with to suggest are Quakers (AKA Friends). Quakerism is rooted in progressive values and even those who practice have a wide array of religious beliefs, many of whom lean agnostic or even atheist.

It’s one of the most LGBTQ+ friendly groups I’ve ever been a part of, and there is a Friends meeting in Columbus.

I hope OP is able to find a community that supports and loves him for who he is.

Lots of advice here but I haven’t seen anyone mention coding boot camps. There are free ones like FreeCodeCamp or lots of paid options. You can do these to learn or validate what you have been taught.

My company hires associate-level software engineers directly out of college programs and boot camps. They don’t expect people from these to know everything; you may not have ever even used the language that you will be expected to code in! But by completing a program you’re showing you understand the logic of programming and that is applicable knowledge.

Look for entry-level jobs and you’ll be fine. Even better, look for companies that intentionally hire from programs like yours. They’re more likely to have internal programs to help teach new-to-career folks.

I recently finished reading The Cult of Trump by Steven Hassan. It’s from 2019 and so depressing with how much has happened since then that’s not accounted for, but it was interesting insight into how people like that can accumulate a following. It might help answer your question.

My partner and I have discussed our wildly different willingness to try to survive in a post-apocalyptic world plenty of times over the years. He would work to survive and would probably thrive more than the average survivor. Me? I’ve always said I’ll likely head to the cough syrup section of the pharmacy.

This conversation came up earlier today, in fact. Well, I was recently diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. I’m still sorting out the right medication to get it under control and am dealing with a lot of pain, but way less than before starting treatment. I told him with this diagnosis, if society ever collapses in a way that causes me to be unable to get my medication? I’m out.

Thanks for links. As someone recently diagnosed with RA, I’m still trying to absorb as much information on it as possible.

What’s interesting about the study is it focused on RA patients without positive rheumatoid factor (RF) blood work. Now, in my skimming I didn’t see it mention anti-CCP, which is the more definitive test for RA. Despite the name, positive RF alone could be any number of things that aren’t RA. They didn’t mention if they were totally seronegative, though.

I have an unsubstantiated theory that seronegative and seropositive RA may be distinct diseases, but we don’t know enough yet and we treat them the same, so they get the same name. If the pts in this study were totally seronegative, that could correlate to my theory where maybe “seronegative RA” is actually more of a long-term infection triggered by measles. But these are just idle musings.

As a side note, the name rheumatoid arthritis is pretty silly from an etymological standpoint. The words basically break down as:

• rheumatism means inflammation
• -oid means like a thing
• arth- comes from joints
• -itis means inflammation

So put together, it’s “inflammatory-like joint inflammation.”

My older sister had a boyfriend move in with her shortly after she moved out of my parents’ house. From the first time I met him I had bad vibes.

Fast forward maybe a year or so they were renting a house and adopted a dog together. His “job” was motorcycle racing, so my sister basically just covered all costs. When they broke up, they aligned on who would get what with parents as mediators. He kept the dog, she kept the TV, etc.

He moved out while she was at work and took the TV, but he forgot all his motorcycle gear in one of the closets. So he had to come back with his tail between his legs to get that after stealing from her. She got the dog back at that point.

General scumbag. My intuition had no reason but was right!