BootmanLA

Bear in mind this is not an official medical opinion, but reading reports about the study, they said "Participants in the intervention arm were told to take a single dose of doxycycline as soon as possible and no more than 72 hours after condomless sex." By "as soon as possible" I would imagine they mean within a few hours, if not right after. Bear in mind that if you're infected during a sex act, that infection begins to spread almost immediately - as soon as the bacteria can make a beachhead. When you take medication, unless it's a time-release form, it enters your system pretty quickly as well, and starts distributing itself through your body. One of the reasons Doxycycline was chosen as an STI-PEP medication is that it has a long half-life - that is, it takes longer for your body to eradicate it from your system, so it remains efficacious for longer than some other antibiotics. That means it'll keep knocking down the nascent STI for a longer period than an antibiotic with a short half-life. So I would say the sooner the better. Certainly there's no evident reason to wait a full day to start the treatment; the infection, if there is one, is going to be getting established before that (although the dose may, in fact, knock it out).

The poster to whom you're responding has a profile indicating he lives in Greece. I can't verify what he's saying, but it's quite possible that in some other countries, particularly ones in Europe, there is in fact not only taxpayer-funded health care but living stipends (aka "welfare") paid by the government. That is not to dispute your general point that HIV is still something people should be avoiding if possible. But we Americans tend to forget, at times, that not every place on this planet treats health care as a profit-based system designed to enrich insurance companies (and some providers), or that not every place on this planet treats assisting citizens financially as a sign of moral failure on the part of the recipient.

There is a difference between "giving someone the benefit of the doubt" and "being fair to". The former is something you do when you're not sure, exactly, how they feel or believe or would act in a given situation. The latter is for where the person's position is well established and well known, but may be mischaracterized by some. That's the case for Thomas. It's easy to point a finger at Thomas and yell "Hypocrite!" because of his opposition to the legal foundation for same-sex marriage, while he himself is in an interracial marriage, given that both were outlawed at one time. But the fact remains that the legal reasons for striking down one are unrelated to the legal reasons for striking down the other. Racial discrimination is expressly prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment. Sexual orientation discrimination, including in marriage, is not. I might wish, as you might, and many of us might, that it were protected expressly, but that isn't the case.

Still waiting, more than three weeks later, for a citation to these "provisions of this law" you claim exist. Oddly, I've read the entire thing seven times now and I can't find any such reference to this, almost as though it doesn't exist and you made it up out of thin air.

Worse: those people think that being of a different ethnicity than "caucasian" is what makes those "other" people inferior. That's the reason they want to abolish birthright citizenship; they believe (against all evidence) that hordes of pregnant women are pouring across our southern border to give birth to children on U.S. soil (which makes those children citizens). They don't seem nearly as upset about college-age European women coming here for higher education and getting pregnant and giving birth to new U.S. citizens, because those kids are white.

To be fair to Thomas, the decision that got rid of bans on interracial marriage (Loving v. Virginia) rests on several legal underpinnings. The first is that by using race as a means of distinguishing what government permitted you to do, it was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, which specifically prohibits race-based discrimination. This provision is explicit in the text of the Constitution, and Thomas does not quarrel with that decision because it is derived directly from the text of the 14th amendment. That stands independent of the issue of substantive due process that Thomas addressed in the abortion decision last year (Dobbs v. Jackson), which also underpin the decision striking down bans on same-sex marriage. (Loving also cited substantive due process, but as a separate reason to strike down the interracial marriage ban; so as noted, even if substantive due process were rejected as a no-longer-valid interpretation of the Constitution, bans on interracial marriage wouldn't be affected.) I've mentioned this before, but there are two types of due process currently recognized under Supreme Court precedent. The first - procedural due process - is the guarantee that when the government denies a person his life, liberty, or property, it can only do so with due process - there must be hearings, there must be a public decision, there must be means to appeal the decision to higher authorities, and so forth. That's the original, and primary, form of due process. It's why if the government wants to take your property to expand the road on which it sits, it has to go through a process to take the property and pay you fair compensation for it. It's why fines levied by administrative agencies of government can be appealed to higher levels and, depending on the circumstances, challenged in court. And so forth. This doesn't affect marriage rights, generally speaking. But the Supreme Court also recognizes (at least for now) substantive due process, by which it means that certain types of laws are unconstitutional because they violate a (typically) unenumerated right under the constitution, meaning attempts to regulate such conduct are outside the legitimate functions of government. Substantive due process is what protects (among other things) the right of parents to control the education of their children, the right to marry (in general, as well as the right to marry someone of the opposite sex, but not necessarily the right to marry someone of any age), the right to engage in private, consensual, noncommercial sex acts, the right to use contraception, and so forth. It's these rights, and the general doctrine of substantive due process,

Curious about your source for the poz guy living to be 100 years old. I'm not saying it's impossible, but...

In practical terms, there probably isn't much difference in more than 95% of cases. But speaking for how things actually work out, bisexual typically means "cisgendered" people - you are a man who likes men who have identified as male since birth, and women who have identified as female since birth. Pansexual would include transgendered individuals - accepting partners who are male but who were born with a vagina, or female but born with a penis and testicles. Pansexual people also tend to be more open and accepting of individuals like demisexuals, who need emotional attachment in order to feel physical/sexual interest (many people, both straight and LGBT, don't have the patience for demisexuals). Pansexual people, in my experience, are more open to ideas about gender and sexuality that are less mainstream. That's not a definitional difference; just a practical one that I've observed.

This right here renders most of your opinion moot and pointless, not because non-Americans can't have opinions about our government, but because you're unlikely actually reading any significant amount of real, factual news about our elections. Where to start with this ignorance? First, it's not just "a vote" in both houses of Congress. It requires a majority vote in the House to begin the proceeding and a 2/3 vote in the Senate to actually remove the official. Second, neither party has held 2/3 of the seats in the Senate since 1966, so anything likely to be decided on a party-line vote (as most impeachments now would be) is doomed to failure no matter which party has a (slim) majority in the Senate. Third, no Supreme Court justice has ever been removed for "political bias"" at all. Never happened. In fact, the only justice ever impeached by the House was Samuel Chase in 1805, and the Senate voted NOT to remove him. So your education is apparently as faulty as your logic and reasoning, such as they are. "People" didn't elect Trump, because he didn't get even a plurality of the people's vote. The Electoral College of the U.S. - a body of 538 individuals - selected Trump as President because we have a stupid, antiquated, ignorant system for choosing a President that is used virtually nowhere else in the world, and it's politically impossible to change it. As for your phobia about a religion, well, maybe that's what's scary to you. It's not scary to most people. And if anything, it was Trump's attacks on Hispanics, south of our border, and not his nutty idea to shut down Muslim immigration, that got him the bigot vote, of which you seem to be so proud. What's going on is the corruption of our political system, where states that are sometimes just barely Republican majority in terms of voters rig their voting districts so that their congressional delegations are 3/4 Republican or more. What's going on is the afore-mentioned insane Electoral College system we have, which keeps selecting Republican presidents despite the Republican candidate getting hundreds of thousands or millions fewer votes than his Democratic opponent. What we have, in other words, is a political system that does not actually recognize the will of the people in choosing its representatives - and that's without considering the antiquated, malapportioned, disgracefully un-democratic Senate.

Rape isn't about sex. It's a crime of violence. Calling rape a "sex crime" is like calling someone who assaults you with a shovel a "yard tool crime" - the point is the violence, not the means chosen. Now, the sex part is relevant, in that it's designed to humiliate, and to control a very intimate aspect of the victim's life. But again, it's not about "sex" or "sexual orientation" (gay vs straight). Straight people can be raped; gay people can be raped; bi people can be raped; asexual people can be raped; pansexual people can be raped. It's completely off-track to wonder about the orientation of the victim or the perpetrators (with the sole exception of when and if the victim was chosen specifically because of his/her orientation). And idiots wondering whether he was gay or not doesn't do anything to help him.

To clarify: I don't think there's anything wrong with messaging people who send a wink/oink/nod/woof/growl. The problem comes when one expects a response to the message and when one gets outraged when no reply is received.

I repeat my comment from earlier in the thread: sometimes a wink/oink/nod/growl/woof is just a general compliment, nothing more, and expecting/demanding it to mean more is a fool's errand.

Here's the thing, though: most representatives in government assume that they'll never get caught up in the laws they pass. They're generally happy to pass restrictions on behavior (by wide margins) and then proceed to break those restrictions themselves because they don't think they'll ever get caught.

I know plenty of high schoolers who could easily save up $100 from a single paycheck. $1,000 would take a few weeks, perhaps a few months, but it's still not out of range. Secondly, a LOT of porn consumers are not about to go down to their post office with ID and demonstrate to the government that they're purchasing porn. Aside from the general privacy issues involved, who's to say the government wouldn't keep a record of all such transactions, and if later these flash sticks are de-legalized, going after those who have them? Add in that many modern internet devices, including most tablets and phones, can't use flash drives. Most importantly, this is a solution to a problem that doesn't really exist.

I get the sentiment, but things move from the "free" to "paid" categories all the time. Air for your tires at gas stations used to be free, until they realized people would pay 50 cents or more for the ability to top up a tire's pressure. Pay toilets used to be a big thing but have largely moved to a free (if restricted access) model for most businesses. There's a cost to delivering porn on the internet, in terms of servers, bandwidth, and the like, even before we calculate whether performers get paid or not. Those costs get covered somehow - frequently by advertising, although the "fans" model is gaining traction. Still, one way or the other, "free" comes at a cost, to someone, somewhere.

No more condescending than your declaration that this is "unnecessary". It's not your, or my, place to determine what the site owner thinks is necessary, especially on an issue that has been extensively discussed with him in multiple threads in this forum. New members have limited privileges, for a reason, and while the details of those privileges may change periodically, the overall concept isn't going away. As for the second statement I made: I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you. The site's owner has determined that it's a good thing - and very much intended - that relatively new members have limited ability to interact with the site except by posting, which is a substantive way of proving one's bona fides for membership. I can't imagine why you think that this is "unintended" or that deterring potentially malicious behavior is a bad thing.

I think it's the prerogative of the site's owner, not random relatively new members, to decide what is "necessary" and what is "unnecessary". And I suspect the site's owner has also determined what sorts of deterrents are intended or not.

The problem isn't where the data is housed. Most attempts to ban porn (of whatever type) online aim to restrict the residents of X from accessing such content regardless of where it's housed, and because the website is "sending" the material into that jurisdiction, it's theoretically subject to local laws (to the extent such laws are constitutional, that is).

Honestly, these are medical training questions that should be addressed with your professors. Nobody here is likely to have a relevant, informed opinion about whether patient #1 might or might not hurt his mother, and nobody here is likely to have a relevant, informed opinion about the experiences of patient #2.

Here's the thing. There are apps like Grindr and BBRTS (and Scruff and Growlr and Adam4Adam and Recon and half a dozen or more others) that are heavily oriented towards personal connections between members (aka "hookup" apps). There's no way to say X is better than Y in this group of apps, because each has its own group of members, and for person A, the choices on X are better but for person B, the choices on Y are better. These things vary by region within a country as well as from country to country or continent to continent. But you almost always have to start with something like this - even if it's something popular only in the area/region you're headed - because this kind of app does the sorting and finding for you - typically by having profiles that are searchable. Something like Twitter, which is a general purpose communications app that is being used (by some) for sex-related stuff, is likely to have a much lower "success rate" because it's simply not designed for, say, finding profiles of versatile gay guys between 30 and 45 in X city. It's just not built for that. In addition, a huge portion of the sex-related content on Twitter is just promotions for OnlyFans and JustForFans sites and the like; but even the people who are simply somewhat exhibitionistic with no fan site to push are (in my experience) seldom looking just for a hookup - they want the attention that comes from a popular account, but they don't actually (for the most part) do much of anything with their fans, unless it's someone willing to do "content creation" with them. As you note, a lot of these apps are general purpose communications apps - Telegram, WhatsApp, Line - that may be useful for communicating once a connection has been made elsewhere. But they're essentially useless for finding potential partners for play or otherwise. They just are not designed - and have no useful features - for finding people to connect with unless you already have established the connection elsewhere. Think of them as like a private cell phone number you can share with anyone you meet elsewhere.

I think, for what it's worth, that most online users consider "oinks" (and, depending on the site, growls, woofs, taps, etc.) as not conversation, but more akin to catching someone's eye across the bar and smiling/nodding/otherwise acknowledging them. Sometimes, that can be the start of an actual conversation (whether online or in real life). Sometimes, it's nothing more than a casual flirting acknowledgment. Like so many things, context is usually lacking online that one might otherwise get in the real world. If the guy kept stealing glances at you, for instance, or otherwise catching your attention and signaling an intent to engage (in whatever), that's different from someone who smiles at you across the room but then focuses on other people and things. It's not the only, or first, way in which online contacts lack something compared with their offline counterparts. I'll also note that I sometimes woof/oink/growl at guys who are in a city or region I'm planning to visit, even if I'm not there at the moment. I may do the same for someone local even if there's no way I can meet up with him soon. (I do try to avoid doing that with anyone whose profile suggests that when they're online, they're looking for "NOW" - so as not to be accused of leading someone on.) So - accept it for what it is (presumably, a compliment). And recognize that having complimented you isn't an obligation on his part to do more.

Sadly, in this country, the only "right" that the right-wing considers absolute, unequivocal, and not subject to any limitations is the right to own and carry guns. Anything else is a right that is subject to restrictions, like free speech, free press, free association, and so forth (in the view of so-called "conservatives").

The fundamental problem is that (some of) those who want to protect children see no problem with erring on the side of blocking legal content for adults - in other words, if it comes down to a system that blocks everything potentially harmful to children from them, even if that system also blocks legitimate, legal content for adults, they're perfectly okay with that system. The problem, of course, is that such a system raises huge first amendment problems. When such systems are proposed, it's hard to rally opposition because the right wing has no problem labeling all such opposition as "pedophiles" and "groomers". It becomes a battle very few people are willing to fight. And even politicians who know better, who know it can't work the way they're proposing, will vote for it because there's literally no value in voting against it. If you oppose it, even for good reasons, you're targeted as anti-children, anti-family, and so forth. Especially this is a problem for prosecutor-types, many of whom know that these laws won't do much to solve the problem at hand but which cannot, politically, be opposed.

I don't think anyone but you could give an authoritative answer as to what the best "anything" is for you. Certainly, there are specific features which may be desirable to most people, but even then, if a particular feature means little or nothing to you, then it's irrelevant. My car has a sunroof. It's not something I ever use, so for me, it's meaningless. But for someone else, it might be essential. It could be, if you plan to use this in conjunction with a partner. Do you? If not, it's not a relevant feature. If you do, it might well be worth the dollars. The whole point of interchangeable dildos is so that you can use one that suits you. If you have an idea of what size cock you enjoy getting fucked by, start with that. It may be that if you use the machine regularly, you find that a steady fucking by that size is too much to handle - or conversely, you may get so accustomed to it that you want something larger eventually. You can always up or down size. Mine was custom-built by a friend, so I can't speak to particular brands. I would approach this the way I would approach buying an appliance with which I had little experience: compare a number of options, avoid both the low and high ends of the spectrum, and then hope for the best. Both are legitimate concerns. Sometimes machines will have noise ratings (in dB). But bear in mind that as long as you don't have it running for, say, hours on end, there's nothing stopping you from throwing a thick quilt over the motor section to help muffle the sound. As for "walking", get a silicone rubber mat to set it on. That should stick to a hard surface floor (wood, tile) or at least slow down any movement on carpet. And it may dampen any vibration sounds from the motor as well.

As an observer of the process, I would at least note the following: 1. "Reacting" to a post does not simply affect you (as the person reacting). It also affects the person who posted the information to which you are reacting. So, for instance, if you make a post, and I react with an "upvote" or a "like" to your post, that (internally to BZ) affects your status in certain respects, boosting your reputational score. 2. If the ability to react were unlimited, once a member gains that ability, he could go on to dramatically change the reputational score of anyone else, for better or worse. 3. And that, in turn, could open the floodgates for spammer-type activity across the site. Imagine these scenarios: 1. A determined malcontent reaches the ability to react to members. If his ability to react is unlimited, he could target a member (or members) with whom he has a beef, and use that person's profile to pull up every post he's ever made - and then downvote each post. If he creates two or three separate accounts with different handles, and repeats this process, the targeted user could go from a solid (and well-earned) reputational score to a much lower one in a heartbeat. That could, in turn, limit his own ability to interact on the system, and unless he knows to look, he may not even notice; if he does notice, he may have no idea why he suddenly can't do as much as he once did. 2. A determined disrupter creates an account (or two or three or more) and nurses each to the point that they can "react" in unlimited fashion. In turn, each one "likes" or "upvotes" every post by the other accounts involved, and very quickly the disrupter's accounts rise in ability to the point where the limits, if any, are meaningless. And then, when he's ready to cause whatever disruption he's got planned, he has multiple accounts with extensive posting privileges at his disposal. The essence of the current system is: prove yourself, before you're given much power. That's not an unreasonable approach given the sensitive nature of this site.