BootmanLA

There may be times you can take it pre-exposure (as in fairly close to the sex act, I suppose). But if you try to google "DoxyPREP" you'll see that the suggested, auto-complete links are all PEP, not PREP. And it's as PEP that it's being approved, for now. I suspect the main reason is that you wouldn't want to be taking antibiotics like normal PrEP, daily, when you don't have an infection and there isn't going to be one (ie days you haven't just had sex). That's a good way to build up resistance to that antibiotic.

I think it's just plain old photoshop.

Here's the thing: DoxyPrEP is not a thing, because "PrEP" means pre-exposure prophylaxis - a treatment taken BEFORE exposure, to block the infectious agent from taking hold. DoxyPEP IS a thing, because "PEP" means 'Post-Exposure Prophylaxis" - medication taken AFTER exposure, to keep the infectious agent from taking hold. So someone who's on DoxyPEP is protecting himself - that is, the infections he might contract are unlikely to take hold IN HIM. But yeah, if someone's got syphilis or chlamydia or whatever, and has sex with a bottom, that bottom may well infect the next top that comes along, if he's doing pump & dump or cumdumping sessions and that next top arrives soon enough after the infected person unloads. So no, the bottom's medication isn't going to protect anyone but him. If you want to avoid STI's, you need to take it for yourself.

Well, it's for post-exposure prophylactic treatment; if you aren't taking anonymous, random loads daily, then you don't need the pills daily. If you are, well, maybe it's time to stay out of the sun more.

For the sunlight sensitivity issue: yes, you're at a higher risk if you're on it daily for a slutting vacation. That means use a lot of sunscreen, probably at a higher SPF than you might otherwise use, if you're going to be outside a lot. If you're going to be inside a hotel room or sex club most of the time, it's less of an issue. It's still better to deal with a bit of sun sensitivy/sunburn than STI treatment.

I agree he's going to probably lose and almost certainly will contest that loss. But unless the loss is down to a single state where there are potentially serious irregularities, I don't think even this Supreme Court would attempt to overturn certified electoral ballots. What I think is more of a worry is the race coming down to a single state where Trump has loyalists installed as elections officials, and those people refusing to certify a Harris win. THAT is a realistic possibility, which is why I hope she beats the hell out of him in all the swing states.

Duly noted! 🙂

Note: DoxyPEP is a health-related concern (naturally) and there's a robust discussion about it in the Health Forum here. I've suggested to the mods that this topic be moved/merged there, but you may want to check out the extensive discussion already on file there.

When I started this topic, what seems like a couple of years ago (but which, in reality, was just over a month ago), I stated that unless Biden withdrew, which I didn't support, the field was set. Well, to quote Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” In mid-July, when that post was made, Trump and Biden were statistically tied, but with Trump showing a narrow lead in virtually all seven of the states anticipated to be "swing" states this election, including North Carolina (which Trump won last time). It's now mid-August; Biden withdrew about a week after I started this topic, Harris quickly consolidated support from essentially all factions of the party, and chose a midwestern governor who was a veteran, school teacher, and high school coach. Despite some flailing attempts to swiftboat Walz, he seems to be resonating as the kind of everyman dad a lot of people can relate to. And at this point, Harris has a wider lead over Trump in the swing states than Trump had over Biden just a month back, and in some cases a much wider lead. We're still nearly 3 months out from the election, but right now, at least, the momentum has turned back Harris' way. Evidence for which, of course, can be found not only in the polls but in the increasingly deranged rants Trump has been voicing at his rallies and on "Truth" Social. He's starting to mix up where he is - talking to his Pennsylvania rally-goers about how much he loves visiting them in North Carolina - and despite pleas from his advisers to stay on topic, he can't help but drift off into tirades about whatever latest insult he thinks he's cooked up or what injury someone has done to him. For example, despite a complexion and body that resemble nothing so much as a Circus Peanut, those nasty orange marshmallow "treats" that nobody actually ever eats, he ranted today about how much more attractive a person he is - an obese, 79 year old dementia patient with a combover resembling a muskrat - than the current Vice President. And this despite a few days ago saying that the drawing of her that appeared as the cover of Time Magazine was of a beautiful woman that he thought looked a lot like his wife Melanoma. And there are cracks in the monolithic support he's had among the racist base he's so carefully cultivated. White nationalist Nick Fuentes (who's been Trump's dinner guest at Mar-a-Lago) has denounced Trump's campaign for not being more hard-right just as the campaigns are entering the final weeks. Lara "Looney Tunes" Loomer, another racist provocateur, is begging the Trump campaign to stop making this race all about the "stollen" election of 2020. And grifter par excellence Candace Owens, who's never missed a chance to turn a controversy to her benefit, is crying that the Trump campaign staff are hurting him by trying to moderate his grievance message in order to broaden his appeal. All of this is to say that I'm cautiously optimistic - but more so than at any point since early summer - that Trump will see another defeat this November. As I noted some time back, Harris doesn't even HAVE to win all the states Biden did to take the presidency; there are multiple combinations that would get her there. And North Carolina, which was seen as out of reach a year ago, is solidly in play as the idiot that Trump endorsed in the governor's race there is running ten or more points behind the Democrat - which may spill upwards on the ballots there. One last sign of how desperate (or delusional - pick one) the Trump supporters are, I saw a post yesterday saying that all Trump really needed to do was win California, and then he wouldn't need any of the swing states. While that's technically true - Harris keeping the 7 swing states Biden won, and adding NC, wouldn't offset losing California - Trump barely got 1/3 of the vote in California in 2020. Thinking he's got even a tiny chance of winning by flipping California is, as I noted, either desperate or delusional. Trump could still win, no question. But he's got a much harder race to win now, and it's not going to get easier.

There can be. The two active ingredients in oral PrEP are identical (or virtually identical) to some of the ingredients in HIV treatment, and in some cases, there have been negative effects on the kidneys and liver. That's why people on either PrEP or HIV treatment need regular bloodwork done to monitor for issues like that. That said, most people take PrEP with no known ill effects. And there are other versions (like a bimonthly injection) that for now appear to have even fewer side effects, so if oral PrEP proves problematic, there are very likely alternatives.

The point about enforcing federal law bears further discussion. Conservatives frequently bleat about how the federal government shouldn't interfere in state and local matters, the same way racists insisted that segregated schools were a local matter, segregated water fountains were a local matter, banning blacks from most hotels and restaurants was a local matter, etc. There were unending screams of "federalism! we're a republic, not a democracy! You can't tell us what to do!" and the Supreme Court basically said "If you're violating the Constitution, the fuck we can't". When conservatives decided to make immigration an issue - and that's a relatively recent phenomenon, because conservatives used to be overjoyed that their businesses could get cheap, paid-under-the-table labor - they suddenly switched tunes and wanted to force state and local government to cooperate with their "round 'em up" policies. It turns out that federalism that conservatives clung to like a cheap hooker also means that the feds can't commandeer local resources in their policy disputes. As @SFCumdog notes, the feds are still free to enforce immigration law anywhere in California, or elsewhere in the country. They just can't order the state of California, the city of San Francisco, or the people who live there to do their work for them. So, for instance, if the SF police arrest someone for jaywalking and he turns out to be here illegally, the feds have every right to post a federal agent at the jail there until the immigrant is released and arrest and deport him on the spot (assuming federal law allows for his deportation). But they can't tell SF that they have to hold him in their local jail, at their own expense, until the feds bother to show up and take him away. And that's a huge part of the problem. Regardless of what you or I or anyone else thinks about immigration policy, it's a federal responsibility, and it's up to the feds to pay for it. But conservatives in Congress are also loath to spend one penny more on anything except tax cuts for the rich, so they won't appropriate enough money for border security to actually DO border security. And on top of that, the Republicans don't actually WANT to solve the border problem - they want it to be an ongoing political issue, so they can fundraise and make their base angry at the Democrats and hopefully keep Republicans in power. You know the way that Republicans falsely accuse Democrats of wanting to keep poverty going as an issue because it's good for Democrats, even though it's actually Republicans blocking efforts to do something about poverty? It's also Republicans blocking immigration progress - one of the most hard-line right-wing conservative Republicans in the Senate negotiated a border deal that gave Republicans pretty much everything they had been demanding (along with some Democratic priorities), and it died for lack of Republican support. Why? Because the standard-bearer of the party, that lardass former liar-in-chief golf cheat rapist fraudster Trump, told the Senate Republicans to kill the bill because he needed immigration as a live election issue. So let's not EVER pretend again that the Republicans have a serious interest in immigration control. They do not. They just want more and more red meat for their idiot base.

Do men's rectums vary? Of course they do. It's possible you have a much shorter-than-average rectum. Fully stretched, the "average" adult male rectum is between 10 and 15 centimeters long, or roughly 4 to 6 inches, with most on the longer side of that range. Remember, though, that the "second hole" is merely the junction between the end of your large intestine and the start of your rectum. It's not an additional "hole"; it's simply a connection point, and there's usually a bend at that juncture as well. Anything entering the rectum from the anus and heading toward the back end is going to feel like it's hitting a wall - unless, as you note, you are relaxed enough for your colon to shift position enough to accommodate the additional length of insertion. And there's a lot of other stuff going on in there - for instance, your colon goes up, over, and back down, surrounding your small intestine. If things are shifted around in there a bit (for example, due to a hernia), it may be that your rectum is of average length but it's compressed slightly because of the small intestine. Or there could be other factors at play. The important thing is to treat taking dick the way you take your dildo - slowly, relaxing. Once it's gone deep enough at a slow pace, you may be able to take rougher, deeper poundings because your innards have shifted and adjusted enough to handle it. If a guy just tries to push balls deep from the start before you relax, your system may be fighting it (and tensing up in a way that prevents any progress from being made). You might even find it helpful to be opened up by a toy first, slowly and relaxed, until you're really open, then let the top replace the toy with his cock. Worth a try, at least. Here's an image explaining the "standard" layout of everything, which may help you visualize how things being shifted around a bit inside could make it harder to go deep.

This, 100%.

Generally, however, as far as I know, the prison system is not run by the attorney general, but by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, which is headed by an official appointed by the governor. Things like this matter, because it's one thing to blame Harris for allegedly over-prosecuting criminals. But once they're prosecuted, the courts determine the sentence, and an office headed by a gubernatorial appointee oversees the prison term. The AG has nothing to do with that.

I used to delude myself, too, into thinking there was a place for LGBTQ+ people in the Republican Party. There never has been. The "Log Cabin Republicans" and similar groups have always been shunted to the side, denied any role in political conventions, delegate selection, and the like, and only tolerated because they were ripe for plucking campaign donations with the promises of tax breaks for the rich (or near-rich) among them. Most Republican members of Congress who were outed or came out while in office were defeated for re-election or retired that same term. There were a couple of exceptions, but none lasted more than a term or two after going public. And in fact, only ONE openly gay person has ever been initially elected to Congress (that is, openly gay at the time of his first election) - George Santos, who, as we all know, is almost certainly a serial fraudster. No openly gay person has ever been elected to statewide state (that is, non-US Senate) office in any state from the Republican Party. Nor has any closeted gay Republican been elected to statewide state office and then come out. Every openly LGBTQ+ statewide elected official, at the state level, has been a Democrat, as have roughly 97% of members of Congress who are LGBTQ+. Small wonder considering that the national GOP platform still uses code words like "Sanctity of Marriage" and expressly denounces anything to do with transgender individuals.

Hope that if Trump wins, they pick up the cumdump when they pick you up, so you can keep indulging your needs while they're herding us into detention. Wouldn't want you to have to "go without".

I think it's very fair. Yes, there are White racists in the LGBTQ+ community, and there are anti-LGBTQ+ people in the Black community. The point is that none of us are going to get anything we want unless we agree to help each other out, as much as possible. And it shouldn't be a battle between the two communities, but the Trump race is a seminal moment for the LGBTQ+ community, given the open hostility many of Trump's advisers (who have his ear on policy) have for LGBTQ+ people. We're going to be a major target if he gets back into office, and his Supreme Court nominees are going to lead the charge. So yeah, if a significant number of Black voters tell me they're not going to vote to block his return to office because his opponent isn't doing enough for them, why should I, when the time comes, support a candidate who is supportive of Black issues if they're not promising to do enough for the LGBTQ+ community? After all, you said that Black people were only getting rights they SHOULD have had all along recognized (in the civil rights era). The same is true for LGBT rights - we SHOULD have been able to get married, should have been protected from job discrimination, and so forth. We got those rights not just because we demanded them, but because enough non-LGBTQ+ people joined our fight to make the numbers too large to ignore. That's one perspective. It's a good thing that liberal white people (including a lot of closeted LGBT people) didn't feel that way about your demands in the 1950's and 1960's, and insist on getting something for themselves in exchange for supporting your legitimate demands. You're free to demand things. But if you're not willing to help coalitions of others with their causes, don't expect them to support yours, no matter how righteous you think your cause is. And without that support, you're not going to get what you want, just saying. None of us have enough numbers on our own to convince the right, when it has the power, to do what it should do. Decriminalizing sodomy required the US to give up nothing. Allowing same-sex marriage required the US to give up nothing. Prohibiting firing on the basis of sexual orientation required the U S to give up nothing. But a fuckton of Black people, especially in Black churches, fought same sex marriage and repealing bans on sodomy. Sometimes groups who had to fight to get the right thing are exactly the people blocking the "right thing" for others. You say you don't owe us in perpetuity. I say given the Black opposition to same-sex marriage - which was substantial and still is higher than white opposition - maybe we don't owe YOU anything at all, much less in perpetuity. But that's a pretty reductionist way to look at things. I prefer to think we should always strive for what's right whether or not there's anything we individually, or as a group to which we belong, gain directly. That's how White people who supported Black civil rights approached it.

True, but irrelevant. She was up against a different field then, and how a person does in one election does not say anything about her skills or her ability to get things done; it says she didn't do well in THAT election. False. "Defund the police" does not mean "take away all their funding" nor does it mean "get rid of cops". It means take some of the funding we use for cops, especially when they're used to respond to non-criminal matters like psychiatric emergencies, and put that money to use helping the people the cops aren't equipped to handle. Nothing in cop training makes them the best first responder for people having mental problems, and it's why so many of those people end up shot dead. Proof? Where is that in her campaign literature? That sounds more like some GOP mischaracterization of her position on something, which is par for the course with the lying grifters who run that party these days. Again, proof? You seem to think the VP is in the office next door to the president and sees him all day long. That's not how it works. And modern day presidents don't do everything themselves; they surround themselves with (hopefully competent) aides, cabinet members, and the like who can see to the tens of thousands of little things that have to be done every day. Biden has a magnificent staff, and it enables him to continue to be effective even if he's slowing down. If you want "risk", look at the idiot he replaced, who tweeted out major policy changes while sitting on the toilet in the middle of the night, with no input from any staff with knowledge of the issue, just whoever managed to capture his limited attention earlier. THAT is "risk." Again, proof? And you might recall that the reason there was violence was legitimate anger over the MURDER of an unarmed man in police custody by a police officer who knelt on his neck until he was dead - on video. She didn't have a policy. Vice Presidents don't set policy. You probably need a refresher course in basic American government, but the VP presides over the Senate and otherwise does what the president directs. "Border Czar" was a title given by the right-wing media so they could hang any problems around her neck. Millions of people illegally crossed under Trump, too, and many of those who committed murders came across under Trump's watch. Does he have blood on his hands? You do not speak for all Jews in the United States. Nobody chose you to do that and there are quite a lot of Jews who have long been appalled by Netanyahu's blatant violation of civil rights in the West Bank and in Gaza. That does not mean the October 7 attacks were justified, but the disproportionate response, including about 40,000 Palestinian civilians. In comparative terms, that would be like an attack on the US that killed nearly 7 MILLION people. It is not unreasonable to say we support Israel's right to exist and defend itself while also decrying this indiscriminate slaughter. Bullshit. Just absolute bullshit. No one says "universal health care" has to eliminate choice. We have universal health care for everyone over 65 (Medicare), and yet Medicare patients choose their doctors every day. All UHC means is that the FUNDING source would be taxes instead of premiums filtered through for-profit insurance. UHC is actually CHEAPER. If you add up what individuals pay in premiums, what employers pay for their share, what private pay patients pay, what government pays in Medicare/Medicaid/military health care, and so forth - the total the US spends on health care - we spend DOUBLE what any other country spends, but we still don't cover everyone and our health results put us well below the top of the pack. Because so much gets wasted in duplicated overhead, insurance sucking billions out for itself, and so forth. The only reason to oppose UHC is if you think some people deserve to get sick and die because they can't afford care. Spread over several years, yes. Much of that is due to pent-up demand caused by the pandemic fuckup Donald Trump managed; when people could finally start getting things again as supply problems eased, the demand allowed companies to jack up their prices because people would pay more to get the things they desperately wanted. It was GREED that pushed much of that inflation, which is why companies had record profits; if it were ordinary inflation, their costs would be soaring too and they'd be less profitable. Incidentally, inflation ran about 2.2% a year under Trump. So over four years, prices rose nearly 9%. Yes, it was higher under Biden, but again, mostly due to carryover from Trump. Interest rates are high because the government raises interest rates on its T-bills when inflation gets high. It's a necessary means of attacking inflation. I thought you just said you wanted inflation to come down. Are you instead saying you want it to go up? Make up your mind. Plenty of people are doing better. And the country as a whole is experiencing economic growth at a faster pace than under any recent president. Unemployment is much, much lower than it was when Trump left office. In fact, Trump's the only president in modern times to leave office with fewer jobs in the economy than when he started. Huge failure. A lot of people ARE stupid, as proven by "man in the street" interviews on a constant basis. Perhaps she was impolitic to point it out, but a lot of Trump supporters, especially, seem pretty dense. You seem to think the VP has control over the economy. Now I'm starting to see what she meant by "stupid", although I don't know how old you are. Actually, no manufacturer is required to make EVs. They ARE required to meet fuel economy standards in their fleet. Some have chosen EVs as a way to do that. Maybe you're unaware that most businesses going into a new line of production lose money at first, because there are a lot of up-front costs before the first item rolls off the production line. Did you think an automobile plant is paid for the moment it starts producing cars? And as for the auto workforce, they're actually enjoying record pay and benefits. Really, I think you ought to leave the compilation efforts for those who actually understand what's going on. You might embarrass yourself less.

I would note (AGAIN) that rules for an open relationship are not the same as "rules when cheating". If the relationship is open and you're following the rules, you aren't cheating. Cheating is, literally, breaking the rules. That doesn't mean breaking the rules is a permanent violation on your record; sometimes people break the rules and then realize the rule was silly to have in the first place. It's also fine to renegotiate the rules periodically if things aren't working under the rules. Sometimes that means loosening the rules (it's okay to start playing locally) and sometimes that means tightening the rules because something you were allowed to do, initially, is proving to be a problem. But again, those are open relationship rules. I'm still of the opinion the OP meant "rules to help you not get caught" or "rules to make yourself feel better about cheating".

I think you can distill all this down to: 1. Men lie. Not "all men", but still. They lie about being negative (last test: six years ago), they lie about being on PrEP (they are, but they miss doses), they lie about being undetectable (they were last testing, but they're forgetful about taking their meds every day). It only takes a guy being ONE of this kind of liar to put you at risk. 2. So get on PrEP yourself - and take it according to the directions. That way, it doesn't matter if the other guy is faithfully taking PrEP, tests regularly, or whatever: you are taking the responsibility for protecting YOURSELF, which is where the responsibility SHOULD be. 3. PrEP only protects against HIV. As noted, you still might contract something else. But most "something elses" are curable (syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia), and even the ones that aren't (herpes, HPV) are treatable, and in some cases you can get vaccinated for them to prevent them in the first place. All of this requires you to be up front with a medical provider (even if it's a local STI clinic), where someone can test you as needed and get you the prevention and/or treatment you need. You won't find that on the internet.

THIS. The people Trump brings with him - the Stephen Millers of the world - will be so much worse for everyone, but ESPECIALLY Black men and women, that I can't understand why keeping Trump out of power isn't the number one priority, EVEN IF Black issues are the voter's primary concern. Look at the relatively tiny handful of Black people in Trump's inner circle. Herman Cain - a multimillionaire businessman and former presidential candidate (Mr. 9-9-9) whose ONLY interest with the Trump administration was how much he could get in millionaire tax breaks. Trump ended up killing Cain by giving him Covid-19 at a White House function. Ben Carson - acclaimed neurosurgeon famed for being the first to separate conjoined twins who shared cognitive function. Nobody mentions that although both survived, both were brain-damaged, one ended up in a vegetative state, and both ended up as wards of the state. He performed the surgery four more times. In two cases, both twins died. In the third, one twin died with the other left permanently blind. In the fourth, the twins apparently survived with little neurological impairment, but not much has been followed up on with them. Yet he's hailed as a genius and was put in charge of HUD. Were his priorities making sure housing was less of a problem for Black people? Making sure housing was more readily available to people caring for others with profound disabilities? Don't be ridiculous. What he actually did was leave most of the top positions unfilled, so there was no direction given from the top; he scaled back enforcement of housing discrimination laws to benefit landlords; he actually removed "free from discrimination" from the HUD mission statement. He supported massive cuts to his agency's budget, he called poverty "a state of mind", and publicly demonstrated he didn't know what "REO" (real estate owned) meant in the housing finance world, thinking the speaker said "OREO" as in mixed-race families. Oh, and he spent $31,000 for a dining room table and set of chairs for his office. Who else? Diamond and Silk, those grifters par excellence from a grifter family who never actually did anything of consequence, much like the various Kardashians. Say what you will about Democrats, but Black people (and now, LGBT people, and women, and other ethnic groups) always have a seat at the table.

So a bill that helps all minorities, including Blacks, doesn't count if other minorities (LGBT, Hispanic, whatever) also benefit? JFC. Yes. Because the major, heavy lifting for Black people was done DECADES before ANYTHING was done for LGBT people. In fact, while Black people were specifically being protected by civil rights laws, LGBT people were still facing laws that locked them up as felons for simply having sex in private. While Black people were gaining housing protections (under the law; granted, not always enforced adequately), LGBT people were being tossed out on the street if their landlords even suspected they might be gay. It's true that Black people were at the forefront of the civil rights movement on race issues. But there were a lot of white people helping them, and your either refusal to recognize that or inability to understand history doesn't change the facts. The 10% of the US population that was Black in 1950 did NOT do it entirely on their own, and in fact probably WOULDN'T have been able to do it entirely on their own. It was a coalition of Black people and liberally minded White people that brought about change. For the famous March on Washington in 1963, for instance, about a quarter of the total were White people. Whites were involved in the planning (including Walter Reuther, the UAW president), although yes, it was primarily organized by Black leaders. But most importantly: White people in Congress also took up the cause. In 1964, the year the Civil Rights Act passed, there were five Black people in Congress out of 535. In 1965, when the Voting Rights Act passed, there were six. Bills do not pass when only supported by five or six members. Granted. But the laws that later passed outlawing discrimination in banking, etc.? Also passed because of White support. There have never been enough Black people in power anywhere beyond some local city/county governments to effect ANY change without the support of like-minded White people. Then think about it this way: Black people will never have the numbers in this country to be able to get everything they deserve without support from other groups. You want our support? We want yours. And we gave you ours first, decades ago and FOR decades, when Black leadership was perfectly content to force gay people (including their own Black gay and lesbian brothers and sisters) into the closet or into prison. Well, for starters, Jews are far more inclined to support other liberal causes in addition to fighting antisemitism. I'd point out that Reform Judaism (by far the largest portion of Jews in this country, compared with Orthodox and Conservative groups) were almost uniformly supportive of LGBT rights, while Black ministers were some of the loudest opponents of decriminalizing gay sex and legalizing same-sex marriage - and their congregations voted heavily against both. And nobody's saying groups can't ask for things for their vote. What's problematic is saying you won't vote for the candidate likely to be even marginally better for you (and MARKEDLY better for the country as a whole) if you don't get exactly what you want in return. In his first administration he was surrounded by people that the traditional, ACTUALLY conservative Republicans forced on him, keeping his worst instincts in check and barring some of the nutcases from serving in his administration. And they blocked his gutting of civil service, which would have let him install tens of thousands of Trump-thinking people in formerly career positions. P2025 is partly a reaction to that, with a plan to bulldoze through those protections. A second Trump term is going to be a thousand times worse than the first, especially now that he has a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court that has sharply increased the powers of the presidency. If you think P2025 is just about another four years of what we had before, you're delusional. A. Nobody's saying you should be guilted into anything for eternity. I'm asking that you think strategically, and vote for the person who has a shot at keeping the much, much worse person away. Consider discrimination: Rarely, anymore, do businesses say "No Blacks hired" because that's illegal, and nobody has a policy that bars Blacks from management roles. But places do discriminate nonetheless, and it's frequently caught by considering "disparate impact" - this place has never had a Black employee in 20 years of operation and having had 600 people, over time, filling 60 roles within the company. Or a company has Black employees but no Black has ever been hired as a supervisor or manager, even though 80% of the rank-and-file line workers are Black. This Supreme Court is one step away from ruling that this kind of "disparate impact" judgment doesn't suffice to prove discrimination - only direct evidence in the form of someone's statement or written policy counts. And not just for employment, but for business discrimination (including lending), housing, redistricting voters, etc. They're also one step away from saying you can't consider race AT ALL in any government or business decision, the way they've already ruled you can't consider race in higher education admissions. Meanwhile, given that race is (mostly) readily apparent from a visual persual, people will be empowered to discriminate against Blacks with zero pushback because you won't be able to prove anything amiss: disparate impact won't be enough. B. Of course civil rights and voting rights were rights that you had from the beginning. But they weren't recognized or enforced until those laws were passed (and again, with the help of a fucking LOT of White people). A right that's not recognized or enforced is a right not worth the breath it takes to mention it.

@BlackDude I think I understand where you're coming from. That said: for decades, Democratic politicians quietly solicited the votes of gay people, telling us "someday" things would be better for us, while Republican politicians actively sought to drive us back into the closet. At that same time, Democratic politicians were openly supportive of all sorts of "demands" (for lack of a better word) from the African-American community. We voted Democratic because we believed that even if Bill Clinton said he was against same-sex marriage, he was still better than George HW Bush. Even if he ended up supporting Don't Ask, Don't Tell, it was better than the Republicans' wish to dishonorably discharge anyone they found out was gay (and actively snooping to try to find out who was). And we voted for Carter and Mondale and Dukakis and Gore and Kerry because even if they weren't particularly strong on LGBT rights, they were (a) infinitely better than their GOP counterparts and (b) they were on the right side on racial issues, on women's issues, and so forth. And I'd point out that what WAS achieved for Black Americans, from the 1950's forward, was due not only to Black people organizing and demanding, but to a significant portion of White Americans raising their voices, too, and telling their representatives that they, too, wouldn't stand for discrimination any more. Quite a few White people gave their lives, alongside their Black brothers and sisters, for the cause of civil rights on the basis of race, NOT because they stood to gain from the Civil Rights Act or the Voting Rights Act, but because it was the right thing to do. So forgive me if I seem somewhat dismayed that when all of us, Black and White alike, are facing a shitstorm of bad things if Trump is returned to office, some of us are saying "But SHE isn't saying the right things to MEEEEEEEEEE to earn my vote as a Black man." If all White people had done that back in the 50's and 60's, you might still be facing Jim Crow laws blocking your ability to even register to vote.

Unless you've confirmed the account by responding to the email that's sent out when one is established, your account is not "established". And unfortunately, as another thread is discussing, there's some sort of problem at the host level with automated email not being sent properly, so it's likely your account is not "established" yet - your online handle is reserved, but you're still considered a guest (as you can see with how your name displays) until that problem is solved.

But that's for its IPv6 address only, which is (broadly speaking) still used mostly WITHIN a particular local network. One you leave that for the broader internet, only about 1/3 of total traffic is IPv6; the remainder is IPv4 (because if either end of the connection is IPv4 only, then the entire transmission is going to be IPv4). It's very possible that your AT&T phone has an IPv6 server giving out addresses in Chicago (because there are so many, ISPs can deploy more stations with large blocks), but it still gets its IPv4 address from a legacy server over in Indiana. For that matter, the physical location named may simply be AT&T's name for all of its server farm in that region, even if the IPv4 addresses are registered to a facility in Indiana. Bottom line is, something in the AT&T system is telling the hosting software at BZ that your IP address is coming from a state that's blocked.