I’ve studied nutrition science and we talked about what you described and yes, the blunt “truth” is that liposuction is the only reliable way to really get rid of “emptied fat cells”. There are a lot of things playing into the dreaded yo yo effect but the fact that it is much easier to refill emptied cells than to make new cells via division is definitely a big factor.

(“Truth” is in “” because I dislike this term in a scientific context but english is my third language and it’s pretty late over here so I am struggling to find a better suited word)

Good luck on your weight loss journey. It is an incredibly hard and brave one to take and I admire that you are trying.

Kudos to your friend going through with a reduction to pursue her passion!

In my case, I have a very small band width, so I cannot shop in regular stores. (In my city, there is exactly one shop that has my size.) As a teen and young woman, I simply didn’t have the money to even consider a 50€ sports bra, let alone a 100€+ one. And since the selection is super limited, I didn’t even find one in my size that would - no matter the money - give enough support for comfort.

Funnily enough, regular wired bras with cups still ended up giving better support than any sports bra I could find. But they still only work so well. (And I, by far, wasn’t as passionate about sports as to get a reduction, or spend my limited bra money on a semi working, ugly sports bra.)

breast movement varies from annoyance to uncomfortable

As a teenager and young woman, not being able to find a good super supportive sports bra for my weird size was one of the reasons I stopped trying to exercise.

I still hold my boobs automatically when taking the stairs or when I run somewhere. Otherwise it hurts and feels like my breasts are being torn away from my body.

Thanks for your comment, it made me realize I mixed two things together. What I referred to is not really propaganda. It is lived experience. If you have not seen one person who successfully changed something and everyone who tried had to bear immense consequences - not just them but their loved ones - your motivation to try approaches zero. You get taught it’s not worth it. You’re powerless, and to be fair, it is rather true.

And yes, life in Russia is, for the most part, decent. You have a job. You have access to education, movies, you can build a family, buy an apartment, start a business. You can have fun. It’s not a free life with endless possibilities, there are suppressions, no free elections, all that jazz. But your everyday life is pretty ok. Why give that up for the pursuit of some higher ideal like freedom, especially when you get told over and over again that it will bring nothing good and no change. Yeah it sucks that other people die but it’s not you, and if you would so much as go outside with a piece of paper saying “No War”, your life as you know it is fucked, and the people who suffer won’t be any better off either. Solidarity is not worth the price of your sacrificing yourself and your loved ones. Basically, the struggle and pain isn’t big enough, there is still something left to lose.

Maybe I would call it self made propaganda, but this is just a gut feeling, not a real term.

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In my opinion, watching TV was a better experience and healthier and better, including for - but not limited to - children.

(I’ll preface this by saying I am referring to German TV, where you would get one break of commercial ads of 5-8 minutes within a show of 30 minutes, and two such breaks within a show of 60 minutes. I know in the US you get more, shorter commercial breaks. I think that makes the argument a bit stronger; however, I think it still applies to US TV as well.)

First off, you needed discipline. You want to watch that one show that airs at 3:10? You better be at home at 3:10 then. You had to make plans and keep this scheduled like an appointment, or plan to record it and program a VHS recorder.

Second, you also had to focus. No rewinding. If you miss it, you’ll have missed it. Stay focused. No phone scrolling, no attention span shortening, no second screen. You better focus your attention.

Third, you don’t binge watch. I love binge watching as much as the next person. But is it good for you? Cliffhangers are there for a reason. Having this excitement and thrill be resolved within seconds by starting the next episode takes away from the experience. Already knowing that you could just click on “play” any time you want takes something away from having to wait, waiting to know, thinking about it, imagining scenarios how something will play out in your head.

You get your daily or weekly dose of dopamine from this show, and that’s it. You don’t go on a bender. You are also automatically limiting your screen time. Especially for kids I think that is an important point. You can watch peppa pig endlessly on youtube, until you’re absolutely sick of it, or until your parents put an end to it. But if there is just one episode of pokemon a day, that’s it. You gotta wait until tomorrow. There’s nothing you can do.

Let’s even say you watch multiple shows in a row. Pokemon, Sailor Moon, Art Attack, Galileo, The Simpsons. Every show gives you something else. Another plot, other emotions, other characters. You have to follow different storylines or have some non-fiction program points. That’s more diverse than watching 5 hours of handmaid’s tale or breaking bad in a row.

And even ads. Ads allow you to zap. Allow you to release this thrill that we now do with scrolling. But it, again, is self limited - you better be back in time before the commercials end. Who of us has not had days where they spent more time looking at trailers and thumbnails on Netflix etc than they spend watching an actual movie or show.

I have to add that I absolutely love your point about isolation and watching alone. I will absolutely add this the next time I am arguing that TV was better for our brains, kids, health, and sociality.

I even feel like when people from the same household are watching the same show, they now prefer to watch it alone in their rooms at their own comfort and pace. How sad is that? Is it more comfortable? Yeah sure, maybe. But TV was more social. Having to be quiet for the sake of the others. Waiting to ask “wait what did he say I didn’t get it” until there is a good time and waiting to reply until there is a good time again. This is effort. This is socializing. This is community. Using quotes from the show you watched as inside jokes.

Man I really miss TV.

Slip slap slop seek slide.

Just an umbrella won’t protect you from UV rays, let alone if you spend a lot of time outdoors and the umbrella doesn’t have a UPF. Even then, you’ll have rays reflecting from surfaces. Do you wear long clothes? Do they have a UPF? And where do you live? (Rhetorical question, I don’t need to know that of course)

If you are worried about chemicals, try mineral sunscreens. Non nano. They look and perform like shit but this is literally just zinc oxide sitting on top of your skin, reflecting the rays back like a mirror. Nothing is penetrating your skin, nothing is turning photons into heat. Zinc oxide is a compound you can get in a baby cream and a lot of pharmaceutical creams and it is reducing inflammation.

I like the umbrella, don’t get me wrong, but depending on what exactly you do it might just be not enough. I’m worried it provides you with a false sense of security. Trust me, Japanese people don’t rely on their umbrellas only.

That, my friend, was the shower thought that followed the original shower thought

Me being like “what does it mean to boot from a USB 👁️👄👁️”

Fr though, the account thing is not too far off. When I made my first account (when the Reddit thing happened, it was on lemm.ee) I absolutely didn’t understand jack shit and what I was doing. I was very ready to throw in the towel. I didn’t understand how to add communities, how to search for communities, anything. I still have problems grasping the whole server thing. (Or what a server is.)

So a lot of times I feel excluded here, or at least like an unallowed invader, or a feral maniac just running around, throwing stuff at a wall and looking for what sticks. But that’s ok. I’m happy I’m still here and one day I might even know what a command line is.