BootmanLA

Site policy (articulated in the :Tips, Tricks, Rules & Help" forum) is that you should report your post - use the three dots in the upper right corner of your post) and explain you're reporting it asking that the entire topic (ie your story and its replies if any) be deleted. You can add (if you want) other info like the guy whose story you built on didn't like you extending his story in this fashion, but that's not required.

I'm old enough that "arcade" still conjures images of pre-video game spaces, as in skee ball and air rifles shooting down ducks on a conveyer belt, so keeping that in mind: I suspect today people use "arcade" as a generic term meaning "a line or row of amusement devices" (be they porno booths with/without glory holes, PacMan and Galaga machines, or whatever.

So much to unpack here. I'm going to assume that language translation difficulties are responsible for a lot of this. 1. You say you've been "together" for eight years, but that his company "just sent him here" - suggesting you were living apart most of your relationship. 2. Things are different in every country - sometimes better, sometimes worse, and sometimes a mix of both. The only way to know what it would be like is to visit there more often and see what it's like. That may mean taking a break from school, or seeing if you can study a semester over there. 3. I do not want to stereotype cultures, but I would have a hard time believing that the social pressure to remain closeted is as strong in Ireland as it is in Greece. 4. Greece and Ireland are not the only options for your future. Greece and Ireland are both in the EU, meaning you have options across the EU. Yes, relocation has costs, and going somewhere you do not speak the local language is hard to do. But it's possible to go somewhere that is much more gay-welcoming. 5. As for telling people in Greece and dumping the friends who are not supportive? That's certainly doable, as well, but only you can tell whether this would put your personal safety at risk. Bottom Line: this is a decision no one else can make for you and very few people can give you specific "Do this" or "Do that" advice because they don't know the entirety of your situation. In America, we have a saying: "Time to put on your big-boy pants" - meaning that sometimes, you have to make an adult decision, do what's right for you, and resolve to live with the consequences. But only you can decide what's right for you.

I can't speak to your friend's experience. But I do know that for life insurance applications (particularly for whole life, and for large coverage amounts), many companies require a physical exam, which may include an HIV test. As part of getting that test, invariably you sign a waiver agreeing to release the results to the potential insurer. Your friend may (or may not) have had such an exam. He may have, and not realized that (a) the exam included an HIV test and (b) he had given permission for those results to be shared with the insurance company. Maybe he figured he could bluff his way through, thinking his health info was secure under HIPAA, not realizing he'd waived that protection for this specific exam. It's hard to say without additional information.

Except - drum roll - that would mean the person is NOT undetectable. No one who stops taking his meds for any measurable length of time (say, a week or two, more) and who has not already begun taking them again cannot honestly say he's undetectable, because there's a good chance his viral load is already rising into detectable territory. Now, detectable does not necessarily mean "likely to infect" - HIV doesn't always infect after sex, as we know - but words have meaning. Someone claiming to be undetectable but who is off meds is either grossly misinformed or lying.

Leaving aside "irregardless", which is a double negative and thus essentially meaningless, I would point out that "intensive" is just flat wrong in this context. It renders the sentence jumbled garbage. The correct phrase is "For all intents and purposes..." or, in other words, "Essentially...".

Generally speaking, alcohol doesn't interfere with the *effectiveness* of most antibiotics. That said: 1. Alcohol can exacerbate the side effects of some antibiotics, sometimes dramatically so. Perhaps most commonly alcohol with an antibiotic will ramp up feelings of nausea, diarrhea, and other gastrointestinal issues. 2. Alcohol raises your blood sugar level, and a heightened blood sugar level makes healing (in general) more difficult. That's why diabetics often have trouble with sores that won't heal. Depending on how deeply entrenched your "latent" syphilis is, whatever healing (beyond actually getting rid of the syphilis bacteria) is needed could be delayed. As in: if the infection has quietly been doing damage in your system - brain, heart, liver, wherever - even if the penicillin eradicates the syphilis fairly quickly (not a guarantee), your overall recovery could still be delayed by alcohol. Doctors give this advice for a good reason. Are you guaranteed problems if you violate this guidance? No. Are there chances of complications, some of them serious? Absolutely.

One thing I'll note: I suspect none, or at the most very few, such places rent tents to people. Most campgrounds have some mix of RV spots, cabins, and "primitive" (ie tent) spaces. The problem with renting tents is that inexpensive ones are unlikely to last more than a few rentals (because people don't/won't take care with setting them up and in using them) and expensive, quality ones won't earn back their cost before they wear out from general use. Since you'll almost certainly either be renting a vehicle when you fly over, or joining up with friends who've agreed to transport you, if you want "cheap" make plans to stop by a discount store with a sporting goods department after arrival, and grab the cheapest tent you can find. Gift it to someone or throw it away on your return. The same with any gear (sleeping bag, bedroll, etc.) that you may need that isn't easily transportable on a trans-Atlantic flight. Renting a cabin at such places is usually a good bit more, but you end up with at least a basic bed (you may have to bring your own pillow, but an inflatable in your suitcase (or again, a cheap one bought on arrival) will suffice, I'm sure. Check their policies on bedlinens, etc. - sometimes they're included, sometimes not. The more expensive units almost always include them. Cabins have the additional advantage of more room to play. Many campgrounds have a clothing-optional area (typically around the pool) but officially, clothes must be worn elsewhere - at the snack bar/restaurant, to/from the shower houses, and so forth. There's frequently a "wilderness" area with trails, etc. (some with equipment set up along the way) where play goes on (technically in public, but you kind of have to go looking for it, which is the point). When you have a tent, they're not generally super-keen on sexual activity outside where other people are also tent camping, which limits you to inside your tent or off on the trails. When you have a cabin, you and a friend (or friends) can go at it all you want. Mind you, on some weekends campgrounds are also booked for events and you have to buy into the event to camp there. The tradeoff is that in many such cases, rules about public play are considerably more relaxed because everyone who enters has signed a waiver regarding the event in question. That's not universal, so asking question is always a good idea.

In a practical sense i don't think there is a difference. As I understand it, both add on reputation point to the reputation score of the person who made the post that you are liking or updating. In other words, I think it's a matter of personal preference as to which better describes how you feel about the post.

As did I. I suspect that the topic was indeed removed, and the software for the forum does not distinguish between "this topic does. Not exist any longer" and "you are blocked from this topic". Actually, I'm not sure that individual topics can be blocked from selected members at all.

For some people on this site - me not included, no judgment involved - every day is a potential exposure for an STI. Since the point of PEP is treatment for a potential infection, rather than a diagnosed one, a person with an active sex life with strangers might well be on Doxy as PEP more often than not. Granted, such men aren't abundant, this site's appearances notwithstanding. But it's still a potential source of antibiotic resistance.

It's unlikely that eight naked men on a video call (weekend or otherwise) would pass the legal test for obscenity, given that porn containing similar groups of men exists freely. However, it *could* be considered indecent, vulgar, repulsive, or offensive, which are terms that have no general legal definition and thus rely on generally accepted definitions. That said, the company undoubtedly has the right to refuse to carry traffic on its network of which it disapproves. It could, in theory, decide eight (or six, or one) naked men/man was offensive and consider that a violation of its terms of service. Whether it would, in fact, do so - absent a complaint from someone on such a transmission - is unclear, but I rather doubt they're going to be monitoring random calls looking for naked men.

This is a seriously dangerous oversimplification of how HIV infection works. HIV infects cells of many, many different types, and it's not necessary for the "load" (ie semen) to enter your bloodstream. Rather, what's needed for an infection to take place is for the VIRUS to enter a susceptible cell and begin replicating. It's perhaps *easier* for HIV to do this through the bloodstream because the circulatory system circulates cells throughout the body, thus spreading the virus particles and giving them multiple opportunities to replicate via the types of cells that can be utilized for spreading the virus. But that's not anything near the same as "the toxic load has to get into your blood" and given that the transmission almost certainly takes place inside a person's body - typically the rectum or vagina - there's no "skin" (thick or otherwise) to prevent infection.

I'm not sure where you keep getting these bizarro, alternate-universe ideas, but there was no such case in 2000 when Texas's Supreme Court "overthrew" (courts don't overthrow, they overturn, but I digress) the last laws criminalizing homsexuality. For one thing, in Texas, the Texas Supreme Court does not rule on criminal cases, period. The Texas Supreme Court hears ONLY appeals in civil cases - where one person is suing another. The final place for criminal cases to be considered, under Texas law, is the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. That court, in 2000, DECLINED to hear a challenge to the state's law prohibiting homosexual sex acts. That refusal to hear the case left intact a lower, appellate court decision UPHOLDING the state's criminalization of gay sex. That case - Lawrence v. Texas - was the basis, IN 2003, for the US Supreme Court's decision (hint: when "Texas" is the defendant in a case involving gay sex laws, you can pretty much assume it still had laws on the books about that) - which decision ACTUALLY overturned all state laws, including Texas's, regarding private, consensual gay sex. I get your passion and your zeal for improving our world - and yay for that! - but you do no favors to yourself, the community at large, or the progressive movement when you invent court cases that don't exist and mis-cite what existing cases actually said and do.

I wouldn't say that the justices are ignoring the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. Rather, they are holding that "due process" in this case means "procedural due process" - which is how the phrase was interpreted for the first hundred and fifty or so years of the country - and not also "substantive due process" - which is a legal concept that did not arise until the 20th century. This shouldn't be a surprise considering that Thomas, Alito, and some of the rest claim to be "originalists" and believe that words in the constitution have to be given the meaning that they had when they were written. And again: no, you can't say that a decision rests "partly" on A and "partly" on B - at least, not Loving. That decision makes it perfectly clear that even if the words "due process" had never appeared in the Fourteenth Amendment, bans on interracial marriage *independently* fail (not "partly" fail) because of Equal Protection issues. Full stop. That fact is *precisely* the basis for Thomas's view that substantive (as opposed to procedural) due process is a myth created by the Court in the 20th century that needs to be eradicated - as he made clear.

But that's the point. Saying "the former references the latter" is diametrically opposed to "the latter references the former". That's how time works. And as I pointed out. the primary basis for the Court's decision in Loving was Equal Protection. Substantive due process was an afterthought insofar as that decision was concerned, and the entire decision would stand even if the justices had never referenced substantive due process at all in Loving. By contrast, Roe was based entirely on substantive due process - because it held there was a right to privacy (this opinion first gave that name to this right) and that right emanated from substantive due process - that there are certain areas of life that government simply can't regulate. In Roe, they cited multiple cases in this area, and Loving was only mentioned briefly (by name only) twice and was not discussed in any detail at all. By contrast, Griswold (the contraception case) was referenced no fewer than five times, including the basis for its holding. So regardless of what Thomas et al. think about substantive due process - and we know he and some of the others reject it from the beginning - that would NOT affect Loving, because Loving was decided on Equal Protection. It's right there in the opinion. So saying, as you claim, that Thomas is being a hypocrite by gutting Roe's reliance on substantive due process while ignoring what it means for interracial marriage is simply false, and saying that Roe cited Loving is, while technically true, rather misleading.

Facebook is roughly akin to an open sewer in which people can and do dump anything and everything. That suits some people, I'm sure. Another key difference: as I remember it (it's been years since I was active on Facebook), you can either "like" something, or you leave it alone. Here, you have the ability to like, dislike, or give several other reactions to a posting, and some of them affect the internal reputation points of the member who made the post. So imagine these two scenarios: A) a person who likes to be disruptive signs up and either creates a bunch of other "sock puppet" accounts or enlists the help of a bunch of friends. The disrupter signs on, makes a controversial post, and all his sock puppet minions "like" the post, boosting its value and the reputation of the poster. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Before long, you have a member who's got a high reputational score inflated strictly by essentially fake accounts. Kind of like the way the Russian military's disinformation team uses Twitter. B) a person who has a grudge against another member for something he imagines that member said or did does the same thing, except now he and his minions are "disliking" everything that member has ever posted. Before long, that member's reputational score is in the toilet. Unfortunately, both sorts of problems can and will exist unless people prove themselves on here.

That's actually exactly what you should NOT do with respect to PrEP. It's not just "wise" to get a full STD screen; you need to have a conclusive HIV test before starting PrEP, because if you're already infected with HIV and you're not on meds, taking PrEP (which isn't capable of fighting an already-active HIV infection) can end up producing HIV that is resistant to the two meds that make up PrEP - and those two meds are (with a third or fourth component) the basis of standard HIV treatment. If a patient ends up resistant to those two meds, any HIV treatment based around those two will be ineffective. Seeking out and taking PrEP without the afore-mentioned screenings is a bad course of action.

I'm not sure that's entirely true (though I am absolutely, positively in favor of legal requirements for equal protection/treatment, regardless). It was certainly true for the Civil Rights movement in the 1950's and 1960's - integration came, where it did, at the barrel of a gun held by U.S. marshals and in the form of court orders that dared local officials to defy federal courts at the pain of imprisonment for contempt. But public opinion on gay people shifted in spite of lacking legal requirements to do so. Certainly not for everyone; there are, of course, still bigots out there enraged that gay people can get married (or even that they can legally have sex without being arrested), just as there are bigots who are enraged that Black people don't have to defer to White people across society. But the overall view of gay people has changed faster, and without as much legal pressure, such that by the time sodomy laws were struck down, they were only in effect in about 13 states (out of 50) and were increasingly rarely enforced. When the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government had to recognize same-sex marriages (US v. Windsor, in 2013), only twelve states had legal same-sex marriage. By the time Obergefell was decided, two years later, thirty-eight states did. Granted, much of that change came about because lower courts began to require states to recognize same-sex marriage, but still: public opinion was shifting rapidly, and when Obergefell was decided, the Court (for once) was behind public opinion, which was already at 60% when the decision was handed down. In 1997, only 27% of Americans supported same-sex marriage. 25 years later, in 2022, that approval rate is now 70%. Contrast that with, say, interracial marriage; in 1958, just 4% of people supported mixed-race marriage rights. In 1967, when Loving v Virginia struck down state bans on the practice, approval was still well below 20%. It took until 1995 for approval to reach just 50%. It didn't reach the 70% mark - the current approval rate for same-sex marriage - until the early 2000's, 35+ years after Loving. All of this is to say: sometimes legal action pushes society, and sometimes legal action follows society.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume you didn't understand the point made: Loving v. Virginia could NOT possibly have referenced Roe v. Wade, because Loving was decided in 1967, and Roe was decided in 1973, six years later. Linear time, what a concept. I would quote your comment about "facts that exist counter to your beliefs" but I think that would be unsportsmanlike. Moreover, Loving was (as I noted above, in a post you must not have read) based its decision primarily on the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and only partly on the Due Process portion of that amendment. Roe was not - absolutely NOT - predicated on the Equal Protection Clause at all. Here's the "money quote" from the Roe decision: "A state criminal abortion statute of the current Texas type, that excepts from criminality only a life-saving procedure on behalf of the mother, without regard to pregnancy stage and without recognition of the other interests involved, is violative of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment." THAT is the holding of Roe - and that is the holding that was specifically overturned in June in the Dobbs case.

Hard-core fetish discussion seems perfectly appropriate to me. I see no reason to post them in the Health area because they never accompany a genuine health question. Anyone who photographs a prolapse knows what it is; anyone who doesn't know is much more likely to have freaked out and gone to the ER instead of calmly finding a way to get that pic.

I recognize that prolapse pics aren't against the rules, but there certainly ought to be a rule of some sort that pictures, if added to a post, need to be relevant to the topic and post. If there isn't such a rule, I hope @rawTOPwould consider adding one. Otherwise, once people see they can post extreme pics anywhere regardless of topic, we're going to be overrun with them. Mark my words.

To add to @NEDenver's excellent response: HIV testing is complex; there are tests which are fast, and cheap, but not 100% accurate, and there are tests which are not quite as fast, and are more expensive, but which are much more accurate. The first kind of test includes home testing kits and what's known as the ELISA Test (which stands for enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay). The ELISA test looks for antibodies in your blood that indicate your body is trying to fight off a specific infection (like HIV). Because antibodies are not produced immediately after infection, an ELISA test may report a false negative for a while after infection occurs, and it may report a false positive if something else has triggered an immune response in your system. (If you get a negative ELISA test but you think you still may have been exposed to HIV, you should get another test a month or more later.) The second kind of test includes what's called the Western Blot test, which is far more sensitive than ELISA. Generally, health care providers order a Western Blot test IF you get a positive ELISA test. This helps rule out false positive ELISA results. Those are the binary, yes/no tests that look for signs of HIV infection. Viral load testing, on the other hand, is not binary but quantitative - it counts the number of HIV virus particles in a given volume of blood, once it's confirmed that the person is in fact infected with HIV. There are several different tests that can be used for this, but all are similar in technique and produce similar results, although the exact numbers can vary. When viral load testing produces a number below a given threshold, the patient is said to have an "undetectable" viral load. The official designation for "undetectable" has gone down over the years; it used to be that anything under 200 copies per milliliter of blood was considered undetectable, but more sensitive testing nowadays can detect levels as low as 20 copies per ml. Still, a person can be considered "undetectable" at levels above 20/ml, and anything below 200 copies/ml is considered "virally suppressed" - basically, that HIV is prevented from replicating at a rate capable of infecting someone else. It does NOT mean there's no HIV present - it's just that it's not enough to cause an infection in someone else through sex. But - as @NEDenver noted, the viral load only stays that low when the person stays on medication that keeps the viral load suppressed. It's like taking blood pressure medication - if you stay on it, it helps keep your blood pressure from rising to dangerous levels, but if you stop taking it, high blood pressure can and probably will return. The difference is that with HIV, there's no "probably" about it - a person with HIV who goes off medications WILL see his viral load increase back to detectable and then infectious levels. So an HIV+ person who wants to stay undetectable has to stay on his medication.

I would suggest reporting posts that have irrelevant pictures in the post - the moderators have the capability to remove the picture, if it's truly irrelevant and if, in their judgment, it doesn't belong in that particular forum. I for one second the notion that prolapsed rectums and the like don't belong in general discussion forums at all.

You probably have nothing to worry about. If this guy is taking one pill a day, where he was once taking 38, that's a reflection of the advancement of medicine, not that he's slacking off on his medication. Virtually all HIV treatment today consists of a single pill taken daily; those pills contain 3 or 4 separate medications that, together, do what it used to take a mass of medicines to do. Moreover, in most cases, those single-dose-per-day medications typically render the patient "undetectable", meaning that while he still has HIV, the level is so low in his system that it's not possible under any normal circumstances to transmit HIV to a partner. I can't advise you as to where you could find PEP in Berlin, but it honestly shouldn't be necessary, unless he was lying to you about being undetectable, or about being on medication, or he somehow managed to ejaculate in you in those five strokes. Incidentally, being a virgin does not make your rectum "a weak sucker for diseases".