I'm more than pleasantly buzzed right now so apologies ahead of time, but y'all need to know that my husband is a delight. It's been over 10 years, and we're still together, still happy, and still very much in love. He's awesome.
What do you love?
I'll start this post off by summarizing my hair loss experience.
When I was 18, a few months shy of 19, I went to the barber and there was a miscommunication and the barber ended up buzzing my hair off. This is the first time that I was able to see my hairline in a while and I saw that it was higher than I remembered. I was scared at first, I couldn't believe that my hairline was receding. But then I read a few things figures maybe it was just maturing, and then I eventually forgot. Actually a few months later I was back thinking to whether I was losing my hair or not. I talked to a cousin of mine and he said something about a pill that he was taking but that it had a possible side effect of erectile dysfunction. I wasn't going to take a chance on that when I wasn't even sure if I was actually balding.
The next year and a half, I stop thinking about hair loss. It's like I had my memory wiped of that moment, probably due to stress from school. The only thing that happened is that I thought to myself was "man my hair is kind of weird right now." And also I had developed a scalp issue, which I later found out was psoriasis also due to stress.
So, right before the pandemic hits in February 2020, me and my dad go have lunch at this restaurant. I take a shower and go out. My hair is still wet by the time we go to the restaurant. My dad looks up at my hair and asks "are you losing your hair?" And that's when I realized that I was indeed going bald. For the next three months, I was going through all the stages of grief. I was wildly depressed and anxious. I did some research into possible treatments. It took me a while to learn (or re-learn) about the pill known as finasteride. I then find out about a website where you can buy prescription meds without a prescription shipped over from India so I buy finasteride from there and I started treatment on May 1st 2020. I was 20 years old. I then go to the dermatologist two months later and they prescribe me Dutasteride which I have been on ever since.
My initial side effect on the drug was watery semen, which cleared up a few weeks after starting the drug. My hair has re-grown a lot. It's back to it's original thickness, and my hairline has made a rather substantial comeback. It's not all back, but enough to the point where the average person wouldn't know I'm balding anymore.
Let me know if you have any questions. I would love to post pictures, but I rather not if that's okay with everyone.
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
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As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
What food and drinks have you been enjoying (or not enjoying) recently? Have you cooked or created anything interesting? Tell us about it!
This thread is posted weekly, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!
"Lesser known" can be relative to whatever you want, it doesn't need to be super obscure or unknown. Anxious to learn about the great IPs you love!
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?
Two nights ago I decided on a whim to watch Jojo Rabbit on Disney+, since I love Taiki Waititi, and I remember hearing good things about it when it was first released a few years ago. But, weirdly, I didn't actually know much about it other than him having directed it.
So imagine my shock, horror, and surprise when I finally started watching it and learned it was a comedy-drama about a Hitler youth!!! I thought it was just about boy scouts or something, similar to Moonrise Kingdom. And I was even more surprised when I almost immediately got over my shock and started enjoying it despite how dark and touchy the subject matter was. It had just the right amount of irreverence for the subject to get me past my initial hesitance, and had enough deeply human, incredibly touching, and painfully poignant moments to get me completely engrossed in it. And by the end I was crying like a baby when he noticed the shoes, and again in the final scenes. (keeping it vague in case others haven't seen it yet)
Several days later and I'm still thinking about it. That's how deeply it affected me. So, needless to say, I highly highly highly recommend watching it, if you haven't seen it yet... especially in light of recent events in Russia and Ukraine, which a lot of the things shown in the movie sadly remind me of.
Has anyone else here seen it? If so, what did you think about it?
p.s. Taika Waititi as Hitler was insanely, darkly hilarious, and the final scene with him was incredibly satisfying. "Fuck off, Hitler!"
This thread is posted Monday/Wednesday/Friday - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate topic, but most should be posted here.
If you'd like to help support Ukraine, please visit the official site at https://help.gov.ua/ - an official portal for those who want to provide humanitarian or financial assistance to people of Ukraine, businesses or the government at the times of resistance against the Russian aggression.
The title says it all, really.
Today there was a story about the Flordia Department of Education rejecting a record number of books for containing Critical Race Theory. But when I read the article it said that it was rejecting these books for other things - for Common Core and for a thing called Social-Emotional Learning, or SEL.
SEL is not a term I'm familiar with, so I looked it up. There's an organization that advocates for it called CASEL who has a more in-depth writeup, but to put things as simply as possible, it's the idea that lesson plans should include material to improve a person's social and emotional growth and is largely concerned with students' mental health. I couldn't understand why anyone would have a problem with this kind of thing; kids today are put through a lot of stressful situations and it looks like mental health for children has been an issue that has exploded over the past few years. So I found and read an article about why it's controversial and I'm practically in tears over here.
Right now we are living in a world where children are tortured so much that they attempt to kill themselves and there are grown adults - legitimate parents of their own children - who are fighting against the people who are trying to help them. And all of the answers to why they are doing this are just absolutely insane to me. Some of them don't want their children to realize they were racist. Some of them don't want to ever discover the concept of sexuality or gender identity for fear that their child might not be straight cis baby factories. But overall, it seems like they oppose it because it threatens their control over their children, as if they were puppets to command.
I already knew how fucked up they were when they were trying to pass that Don't Say Gay bill, but this is just absolutely next level insanity. I'm sure they don't realize that the concept of SEL exists largely because there are so many children in the world who have had to deal with parents who think and act like these people do.
Utah Parents Unite, an activist group that says it’s fighting indoctrination and mask mandates in schools, urged its members to lobby against a bill to expand suicide prevention programs to elementary schools, where, the group said, “suicides are not happening.” (National data obtained by NBC News show that the number of children ages 6-12 who visited children’s hospitals for suicidal thoughts or self-harm has more than doubled since 2016.)
ARGH!
This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.
This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.
This thread is posted Monday/Wednesday/Friday - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate topic, but most should be posted here.
If you'd like to help support Ukraine, please visit the official site at https://help.gov.ua/ - an official portal for those who want to provide humanitarian or financial assistance to people of Ukraine, businesses or the government at the times of resistance against the Russian aggression.
What are things like in your corner of the world? Previous threads: February 2020 March 2020 September 2020 May 2021 September 2021 January 2022
What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)
Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.
You can make a chart if you use last.fm:
http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/
Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.
This thread is posted weekly, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
This thread is posted Monday/Wednesday/Friday - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate topic, but most should be posted here.
If you'd like to help support Ukraine, please visit the official site at https://help.gov.ua/ - an official portal for those who want to provide humanitarian or financial assistance to people of Ukraine, businesses or the government at the times of resistance against the Russian aggression.
Choose one album
that you love
that you think deserves more love
Tell us what it is, and why.
It's a new post series I'm trying out! Each month people can use the AlbumLove thread to post an album they love and explore those posted by others.
I'm planning to put up a new AlbumLove thread on the first of each month for a few months to see how these go as a trial run. If people like it we can keep it going — if they don’t it’ll fizzle out and I’ll stop.
In this day and age, algorithmic recommendations for music are easy to come by, and it's trivial to seek out new music that interests you by searching online. AlbumLove offers an opportunity to sift through music loved by others, including those who might have divergent tastes from you. Think of this as an opportunity to listen outside of your comfort zone, with music that you know someone else adores, from a small pool of thoughtful hand-selected options.
Any album that you love and that you feel deserves more appreciation. There are no restrictions on genre, year, or anything else, and nothing is “too popular” or “too niche”. If you think it needs more love — for whatever reason — then it’s welcome in AlbumLove.
Name the artist and the album, and then, most importantly, share what you love about the album. It could be the music itself, but it could also be your associations with it -- maybe the album reminds you of someone you love, or you saw the band live and got a new appreciation for the studio songs.
Also, commenting on others' recommendations is encouraged! If you love something that someone else shared, let them know!
Nope. You don't have to listen to anything if you don't want to. This is about creating a menu of options that people can explore as they wish.
Nope. Limit one! This helps us be more selective about what we choose, as well as preventing the threads from getting flooded with too many contributions to keep track of.
I like albums. :)
Seriously though, I feel like it's a very different thing to like an album as a whole versus a few songs or just an artist's general vibe. I like the idea of quantizing music for appreciation in the same way we might do with books or movies.
Fair game!