BootmanLA

It's possible. It's also possible that you were exposed and remained asymptomatic, as do the majority of people who contract SARS-CoV-2.

Most medications retain *some* efficacy after their expiration dates. Be forewarned that the expiration date on a sealed bottle as received by the pharmacy (before they start dispensing from it) is one date. Even if that date is two years in the future, they're likely to put an expiration date on the dispensed container of less, because the dispensed pills are no longer in the sealed container from the manufacturer. If you're concerned, keep the pill bottle in a cool, dark, dry place (light, heat and moisture do more to break down medications than anything else) to help preserve its life. And of course, use the oldest supply first when you start using it again. If you have more questions, I'd ask your pharmacist, who's more likely to know the shelf life of the drug in a less controlled environment than anyone else.

Technically, in a very real sense, ANY question is an "ignorant" one, unless it's a leading question where you know the answer already but need to have someone else admit it (like when the FBI questions a suspect about something they already have on tape). "Ignorance" refers to "not knowing". Unfortunately, too many people use it to mean "dumb" or "stupid", when it's a neutral term at base that simply means "things I don't know".

Like the others who've voted thus far (early on), I think it depends on circumstances. Beyond the issues of reclamation, etc., though, I think it's important to remember that if you're addressing someone with the term, their preferences absolutely trump anything else. No matter how liberated YOU might feel by reclaiming the word, if you call someone a faggot who's offended by the term, and you don't apologize/retract/cease using the term with them, you're not liberated, you're an asshole.

On that topic: I realize there's almost certainly nothing you can do about this *now*, RawTop, but as you've mentioned you're working on broader upgrades to the site, with presumably some custom coding: One of the cardinal rules of interface design is to NOT use one symbol, icon, etc. to accomplish two different things depending on context (unless that context is very obvious). But the underlying forum software here breaks that guideline in one very big way. The little "speech balloons" next to a specific thread, if clicked, take you to the first unread post in the thread (and as DrScorpio nicely explained, the solid balloons mean a thread you've participated in, the hollow balloons mean a thread you haven't posted in. But those same balloons, if you click next to an entire forum or subforum marks the entire forum or subforum "read". So if you're clicking along, pulling up new material, and you hit a subforum, poof! all the responses now appear "read" and finding new stuff means going through each thread looking for the point where you left off - if you can remember. So, if you do rework the forum "base" yourself, I'd suggest something else. Perhaps the "mark as read" symbol for a forum could be the speech bubbles, but with a checkmark superimposed on it - or something similar, making it visually clear that this isn't "go to unread" the way it is within a forum?

Suggestion, then: I see many other members on here who are German and who seem to be more fluent in English (and that's not a criticism - I can't read more than a handful of words in German myself). Why not befriend a few of them to help you smooth out the translations? It's what I would do if I were writing and expecting to post on a primarily German-language site.

Thank you - again, that's very helpful with concrete examples. I've seen multiple stories in the last week that had elements essentially like "He gave me a black molly and told me that if I wanted to keep going with him, I had to take the pill, no questions asked, so I gulped it down" (leading to sex where the guy had basically no control over anything) that just struck me as pretty obvious examples of chem sex in stories outside that forum.

Apology accepted - we all have bad days/weeks, and you have particular reason to be (and my condolences to you). Maybe this will help explain why I find RawTop's explanation more helpful. We users are standing on a playing field, and we're told there are edges to the field. We can't see exactly where they are - maybe it's foggy - but we know they're there. RawTop's answer was akin to: "See those guys over there? They're on the field. Those guys over there? They're on the field. But that group out there? They're definitely out of bounds. Those guys over that direction? That's out of bounds too." It lets you see the line is somewhere between the two concrete, specific references. Yours (which again, I realize, can't necessarily match his, as the final arbiter, in precision) was more like "Those guys over there, they're on the field, but there's a line out there, and if you see someone cross it, let me know, because you can't cross that line". As for "orals" - I mean pills, tablets, etc. that are illegal to take without a prescription, certainly illegal to give to someone other than the prescribed person, or something that's not even legal to prescribe. The first group would include amphetamines and narcotics that may be "legal" if prescribed; the latter is stuff like GHB, Ecstasy, etc. that can't legally be prescribed period. Does that help?

To be fair, I think it was "anyTHING, anyTIME, anyWHERE". Which technically isn't true either; I doubt seriously whether most orange-hanky guys would have done fisting at 12 noon on the steps of the US Capitol, for instance. 🙂

Thanks, RawTop, for a much more helpful clarification. (As a general rule: clear statements of what is NOT acceptable are more useful because they establish a point that's "beyond the limits"; pointing out just things that are OK only tells you the line is somewhere farther out, but with not much guidance as to "how far" out it is.) One related question: For lack of a better term, are "orals" lumped in with drugs that are normally smoked or injected as "chem sex" things, assuming they otherwise fall into the usage depiction guidelines above? For instance, I've seen several stories recently that mention the protagonist taking a hit of DrugXYZ, almost always to lower his inhibitions. Like you, I consider pot legal (or at least, it is in enough states that it's not in the same category as meth/coke/crack), but that leaves a lot of addictive oral medications in the gap between. And DrScorpio - with respect, I didn't say I was unwilling to be part of the solution, and I didn't come here to bitch about a problem. I came here to get clear answers as to what's permitted, and I said I wasn't willing to start volunteering to report posts without better guidance than your original response, which was, boiled down, "passing references okay, but chem sex belongs in chem sex". RawTop's answer was a lot more helpful. I realize he's the one who sets the policy and is better equipped to expound on that, but it's rather churlish to blame me for not being willing to act - a voluntary act on my part - based on inadequate guidance.

Orange hanky, as I recall, meant "anything goes" - all the other colors merged into one. So unless a guy means to flag that he's interested in everything from oral to fisting and all in between, I think that might be a little advanced of a color to use.

DrS (and RawTop): If the guidelines were clearer, I'd be a lot happier about reporting posts. But having to guess, as an ordinary user, what's "too much" chem sex and what's not, is a minefield I don't want to enter - especially when it wouldn't be hard to draw a hard and fast line as RawTop has done on other topics. After all, *any* discussion of having sex with a minor is banned. *Any* elements of having sex with a woman puts the topic in the "Bi" section. A clear rule ("If characters in your story are using drugs that are illegal in all 50 US states, it belongs in chem sex") would be a lot easier to manage. And frankly, the impression I'm getting of late is people "pushing the limits" to see how far they can go. The problem there is that if you allow X, X+0.25 is hard to crack down on. And having allowed X+0.25, X+0.5 is really not much of a stretch. And before long, you're at 4X and the line is so hopelessly muddled nobody can find it.

Could I get a bit more clarification on what's considered "Chem Sex Fiction" and what isn't? I've noticed a number of posts in recent weeks (more in the Bug Chasing forum than the General Sex Stories one, but occasionally in either) where there are (what seem to me to be) clear references to things like meth and/or crack, and they aren't being moved. Here's the thing. I don't want to be "that guy" who reports every little infraction, and honestly, if those things enhance your enjoyment in a story, knock yourselves out. (Hell, if you enjoy using them in your personal life, I'm not going to be the one trying to get you in trouble for it. But there's a section on here for that, and unlike in real life, it's not some dangerous ghetto you risk your life or wallet over when you visit; and knowing that section exists, those of us who don't want to be around it can easily avoid it. Except when, as is now happening, it keeps creeping into the other areas. I know of at least one member here who deliberately avoids the Chem Sex & "Enhancements" forums precisely because he's in recovery and wants to avoid anything that might trigger a relapse. But when that element is allowed to leak into the other forums, it leaves the choice of run that risk, or stop using the site. Just how blatant does the drug usage in a post have to be before it gets moved to a more appropriate forum?

So in other words, you won't answer the question asked (Do you really believe the results would have been the same...) and instead pronounce yourself "above" the petty concerns of ordinary people who are so foolish as to think that there's a difference in degree between, say, stale bread and a shit sandwich covered in vomit, and that said difference matters. Forgive me for not recognizing that some people aren't affected by such trivial concerns as those which confront us, and our government. How short-sighted of me not to recognize that the solution is simply declaring oneself above such petty concerns and not giving a shit about anyone else.

And one of the primary reasons they're going broke is the tariffs he imposed on China, which caused them to retaliate and levy tariffs on lots of US products, primarily agricultural ones. Yet still many farmers don't grasp that Trump's rhetoric of being for the farmers is just like the hot air cows produce from either end, and just as smelly.

Really? Do you think that a hypothetical president Hillary Clinton would have appointed the same two right-wing Supreme Court justices that Trump did? Or the nearly quarter of all federal appeals court judges (where the vast majority, >99%, of all federal cases get a final ruling)? Just because Clinton (or Biden) wouldn't usher in a grand new era of peace and harmony and freedom and equality all on their lonesomes doesn't mean those elections don't have SEVERE consequences. Historical ignorance aside, the electoral college has nothing to do with "flyover country", which didn't exist when the EC was created. The Electoral College decides the president because the founding fathers, dominated by slaveholding interests, wanted to ensure that southern slave states would always have voting power that far exceeded the actual free population of the slave states. It's worth noting that no other republic in the world has even attempted to come up with a system like this - further proof it's tied up specifically in the key issues of the period it was created. "Flyover country" is a nicer way of saying "places where not as many people live". We're a country that broke away from our colonial overlords on the premise that all men are created equal, and we have a Supreme Court with the motto "Equal Justice Under Law" engraved over its entrance, and we have a constitution whose most far-reaching amendment, the Fourteenth, promises all persons the "equal protection of the law", and yet some people still think that flyover country people are more equal than others. How very Animal Farm of them.

No, just the authoritarian ones, like the kind he wants to run.

I've occasionally "thought" I noticed this before, but I'm sure of it today, so thought I'd mention it. Ordinarily the four forums under "The Backroom" are, in order, HIV Fetish, Bug Chasing & Gift Giving Fiction, Sex with "Enhancements," and Chem Sex Fiction. But occasionally, like just now, Sex with Enhancements is second, with Bug Chasing & Gift Giving appearing third. For those of us used to scrolling to a particular section and clicking on the first or second or third option, that can present a really odd experience wondering where you ended up. Any thoughts on why this is happening? Clearly it's not life-or-death, but still....

Not that I disagree with expressing likes/wants in the affirmative rather than the negative, but those "affirmative" statements can be almost as off-putting. For instance, someone saying "I'm ONLY attracted to VERY muscular men - if you have to ask if you qualify, you probably don't". I also don't see how "I'm ONLY interested in WHITE guys" is any less offensive than "No blacks/Asians". What really underlies this attitude, I think, is that these self-centered asswipes think they are somehow inconvenienced by having to politely turn someone down, as though "Sorry, but I'm not interested - but thanks!" is beneath their dignity to utter.

And your point? Nobody suggested Trump is virulently anti-gay the way, say, Pence is. The fact is that Grenell has been a shitty ambassador in Germany (very few ambassadors manage to fuck up on their FIRST DAY in their diplomatic post the way he did), and he has continued to do so throughout his tenure. DNI is a job scores of levels above his competence, and more importantly, being a political whore for Trump means that just as Barr has hopelessly compromised the impartial administration of justice at the DOJ, Grenell will do the same for intelligence. Do you really think that if the intelligence community again determines Russia (or China, or whomever) is interfering in our elections to benefit Trump that someone with Grenell's background would let that information get out? Do you think he'd even tell Trump for fear of setting him off? Incidentally, Grenell stuck by Mitt Romney after Romney promised he would veto ENDA if it reached his desk as president. And sadly, despite being gay himself, Grenell is something of a misogynist, having tweeted that Rachel Maddow needed to "take a breath and put on a necklace" and that Hillary Clinton was "starting to look like Madeleine Albright." Lest you think that's just anti-liberal bias showing through, he also went after Callista Gingrich, saying her hair looked like a snap-on. So please, spare me from your efforts of trying to make Hair Furor look like a decent guy. He's the worst president in my lifetime and I lived through Nixon.

It's one study, conducted by one man, who is a non-tenured lecturer at MIT, not a study done by either of the universities themselves. The Hill (which is a pretty crappy "news" source to start with) erred in describing where he works, since he hasn't worked at Yale since 2018, and even then it was only as a postdoctoral associate (which is a polite way of saying "didn't qualify for a tenure-track position but we paid him a little money to teach a few courses". He is not a demographer, nor in fact has he any experience in demography whatsoever. He has a master's degree in industrial engineering and a Ph.D. in "Operations Management" (whatever that is, but it's not demography). Interestingly, no other demographic study has been able to reproduce his results. So while that's not hard proof that there are only about 11,000,000 people here illegally, his paper suggesting otherwise is far from conclusive either.

Like the "landslide" they had in 2018? The one that, despite the worst gerrymandering in US history in favor of the incumbent party in power, saw them lose 40+ seats in the House? The one that, based on the number of seats the Democrats were defending, should have produced a filibuster-proof majority for the Republicans, and only netted them two seats? Like that landslide? Or do you mean like the "landslide" Hair Furor claims he got in 2016, which was actually in the bottom 25% of electoral college wins and a LOSS of the popular vote by nearly 3 million? (That popular vote loss, by the way, was the sixth out of the last seven for the Republican party, which has won the popular vote for president once since 1988.) The fact that you, like most troglodyte right-wingers, call it the "Democrat Party" tells one all one needs to know about you. No, they don't. But frankly, that's what it's going to come down to if Republicans keep opposing sensible gun registration and other common-sense reforms that are supported by 80% of the public or more. Don't say you weren't warned. There aren't that many people here illegally except in the fevered imaginations of Trumpanzees. Any woman who is seeking an abortion in the ninth month of pregnancy is not using it as a casual method of birth control and is almost certainly facing delivering a stillborn child or one that will die in short order after delivery. Why some idiots seem to think that decision will be made any easier by the hand of big government sticking itself into the situation, forcing her to go through a full delivery, etc. in such circumstances while simultaneously trumpeting their support for "small government" is a mystery, except that it's not, because it's really all about controlling other people. The Democrats were indeed the party of southern racists. However, those southern racists abandoned the party in droves for the Republican party once Barry Goldwater came out against the Civil Rights Act and Richard Nixon promised to crack down on the blacks. Jesse Helms, the patron saint of the racist white/right wing of the Republican party, was one of the first. Byrd repudiated his early KKK stances as early as the 1950's and called it the biggest mistake of his lifetime. How many Republicans can you name who've listed their own racist policies and support as a major mistake - hell, as a mistake of any sort? Abraham Lincoln couldn't get elected dogcatcher in the Republican party today. If he ran for president he wouldn't make it past the first primary. For that matter, Ronald Reagan wouldn't get the nomination. The GOP has been taken over by a coalition of mega-millionaires and billionaires who want no taxes, sham preachers who get rich off the "offerings" of the people they dupe, and a bunch of racists who are scared to live in a country where they're the minority, because they know from personal experience how minorities get treated.

I think "takingdeepanal"'s medical source hit on another key point: you not only have to have been ON PrEP for at least seven days before you're protected well against exposure; you have to stay on it for a while AFTER exposure, to prevent infection. So you can't stop taking it as soon as you stop having bareback sex, without the possibility that your last act or two might still infect you.

How it works is pretty simple. Being gay wasn't illegal; *having sex with someone of the same sex* was illegal. You're conflating orientation and activity. I'm gay. I *could* have sex with a woman, but that wouldn't make me straight (or bisexual). That doesn't make laws restricting sex between consenting adult partners acceptable. But those are not the same thing as making being gay illegal.

As that meme with the young Hispanic girl suggests, "Why not both?"