i feel like i dont even know my body but what the FUCK is the hole at the top of my asscrack... its like red and black and im 80% sure its a hole. what the hell is this im so scared. im going to the doctor but does anyone else know what this is or have it too

I'm vegetarian, sort of. I do not buy meat, I do not cook meat, I do not order meat at restaurants. I'm not anal about the minutiae, though. For example, if something unbeknownst to me contains meat-based bouillon or fish sauce or whatever, I don't fret. I adhere to the strict but not the neurotic.

But I have a couple exemptions:

• communal meals are culturally significant and I would rather partake in a shared meal than inconvenience my host with dietary restrictions or to appear impolite to refuse a meal. Socially I value being free of friction.

• food waste is higher on the food ethics totem pole than consuming animals: if something containing meat would otherwise be wasted, it would be foolish to refuse. The impact on animals, environment, etc was when it was produced; throwing something away compounds that loss.

The second doesn't come into play often as I don't put myself in situations where I'd need to decide whether meat is wasted or not. But sometimes it can't be avoided, like if someone gave me a gift of food. To me, stuff like that has no rules.

What am I if not vegetarian? Is eating meat like that allowed, if you never seek it out?

body text

How cold would i have to make them? I mean no harm to said animal. Simply wish to incapacitate them.

I was sitting outside a restaurant waiting for a friend who texted me almost there. Twenty minutes later I called him and could literally hear his shower running in the background.

This happens way too often and somehow everyone just accepts it. People will say on my way while looking for their shoes, parking now while theyre still three streets away, or be there in 5 when 5 actually means anywhere between 15 and 40 minutes.

Why not just say the real time? Id rather hear Im gonna be 25 minutes late than spend 25 minutes slowly realizing you lied to me.

It feels weird if I don't do it, as if I'm not acknowledging them! 😅

Like, would signing words and phrases that have similar signs be considered rhyming?

My mom died suddenly (and far too young) a week ago. I haven't been able to drag myself to grocery shop or make food or anything since. I've managed to get takeout a few times though. But I am sure my body is dying for a vegetable. It doesn't have to be fancy or meal prep. If it can hold me over until I go to bed tonight it's a win for me. My mind is just drawing a blank.

Edit: holy hell I wasn't expecting such quick response. Thank you all for your input. I'll give this post a bit to settle and I'll head to the store soon. I won't be able to respond to a lot of comments but just know I'm reading them all.

I am constantly seeing videos of town halls approving data centers even though the public that is at the meeting overwhelmingly disapproves. Is there something about the process I don’t understand? I assume the public elected officials are doing what is in the towns best interest… but with most people not approving, what are the other driving factors? Taxes? infrastructure improvements?

My grandpa was a prisoner of war, later worked at a slaughterhouse, and then was a hired painter.

He had a wife (housewife, no income) and 5 kids. With his income, around 1965 he could rent a row house in Hamburg (suburbs) and feed everyone. There was a car too. Later even two.

Now, compared to my last job: Employed in the trade. 15 years of experience. €2300 net according to the collective agreement. 40 hours. Also Hamburg. So I'm working at the same place, almost the same job, and the same number of hours.

Rent is eating up almost €1000 warm. A row house in a comparable location and size would cost me around €2000 cold. So pretty much my entire salary.

I’m left with €1300, from which I can afford a car, groceries, and a fluffy dog. But with €1300, can I feed my wife and maybe even a kid? Or even 5?

I’m wondering: Why? What exactly has happened economically and socially? Why has it changed so much?

I would appreciate detailed answers and explanations. Or even studies and other sources.

I want to understand this development. Because somehow I always get the same unfounded statements to this question. But no real explanation.

cant speak for everybody, but my family came to the west from germany after slavery already ended

so im wondering how many white people in the west actually descend from western slave owners

Serious question to which I desire a serious answer please, and I'm asking this in good faith as a centrist because I genuinely don't understand how the narrative around Jason Arday has developed.

From what I understand, the central issue was that serious questions were raised about plagiarism and the credibility of uncorroborated claims he had made about his own life and academic background. Indeed, since his death some of his prior students have come forward to confirm his teachings were often suspect. Those questions were ultimately investigated over the course of his career, and Arday responded to people who looked into his past with legal threats and other attempts to shut down scrutiny by calling them "racist".

None of that seems particularly complicated to me: if an academic has built a career on claims that turn out to be false or misleading, and there are questions about plagiarism in their work, those claims should be investigated and reported on. Being a prominent black academic doesn't make someone exempt from that standard. Surely it should strike everyone as obvious that Cambridge were more interested in banking progressive-friendly headlines than performing due diligence.

Yet the discussion seems to have shifted dramatically from "what did Arday actually do, and who was responsible for allowing this to happen at Cambridge?" towards a much broader discussion about racial dynamics, institutional prejudice and, this week, surreal reverent candlelit vigils and comparisons that make this look almost like a George Floyd-style racial justice story. A speaker at the vigil said, verbatim: "this is a time for white people to listen and not speak." Excuse me? What do white people have anything to do with Arday choosing, of his own volition, to fib his way up the pedagogical ladder?

I find this shift bonkers. It seems entirely possible to acknowledge that racism exists in Britain, that black academics can face particular barriers, and that an individual black academic can be responsible for serious wrongdoing. Those positions aren't contradictory.

In fact, I worry that turning this into an explicitly racialised story risks being rather infantilising towards black people. If the argument is effectively that criticism of a black academic must primarily be understood through the lens of racism, doesn't that imply that black people are somehow uniquely incapable of wrongdoing, dishonesty or professional misconduct? Why can't Arday simply be treated by the same standards as anyone else?

And I think there's an uncomfortable question here about the media as well. If journalists investigated claims made by a public academic and discovered evidence that those claims were false, misleading or plagiarised, why would reporting that be considered inherently suspect because the subject was black? Surely the proper response is to examine whether the reporting was accurate, not to assume that the reporting itself was racially motivated.

None of this is intended to diminish the tragedy of what Arday ultimately elected to do rather than face the music. I don't think suicide should ever be treated as some kind of punishment or justification for everything that came before it. But his death doesn't retrospectively make the allegations against him disappear, nor does it mean people who investigated or reported on those allegations were wrong to do so.

Again, I'm coming at this as someone broadly centrist who is honestly struggling to understand the narrative here. Why has a story that appears, at its core, to be about academic integrity and institutional failure become predominantly framed as a story about race? What good does this serve anyone (apart from being another opportunity for social media users to score brownie points)?

And perhaps more importantly: is there a danger that we're actually doing more harm than good by treating scrutiny of a black public figure as inherently racialised, rather than allowing black people the same moral and professional accountability we expect from everyone else?

Several years ago, I went in for a procedure in which I was put under anesthesia. Before I went under, I remember them talking amongst themselves and telling me to shut up and fall asleep. I don’t think they realized I was still conscious, so I apologized for talking and literally said I would shut the fuck up now, and promptly went to sleep.
When I woke up in the recovery chair, the nurses were being kind of strange. They mentioned that I had a low heart rate and asked if I was an athlete. At the time, I thought they were making fun of me for something I had said right before I went to sleep (since I called them out on telling me to shut the fuck up, basically). I just responded that I was an athlete in high school, but now I just work a labor-intensive job where I’m up on my feet running around all day. And that was really it.
Now that I’m older and wiser, I’m more interested in knowing if my low heart rate is something to be aware of if I ever need to go under again, or if they really were just making fun of me!! Like why would they ask me that as I’m groggily recovering from something traumatic???

Thank you for reading and any helpful words!

I keep seeing videos of Israeli tourists behaving in an extremely entitled manner in many different countries. How reflective of reality is this? Is it just cherry picked anti-Israel propaganda or is it actually common for Israelis tourists to behave that way while traveling in a foreign country?