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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 19th, 2023

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  • Well, the key word is usually

    Late term vanishing twin syndrome is a thing. It comes with its own set of issues as well. Since its also extremely rare, you’d have to be some kind of nerd to know it exists unless you’re an obgyn or at least a maternity nurse. I am neither an obgyn or a maternity nurse.

    When it happens late term, and 7 months is very late term for it, you get an increased rush of complications, some of which can negatively impact the development of the remaining fetus. Hell, from what I remember, late term absorption tends to happen because there’s something going wrong already. Iirc (and don’t try to cite me on a test or anything), just being a little too cramped can trigger it, though it would be a very rare trigger for an already absurdly rare thing.

    So, my best guess as a non doctor with zero access to the records of the pregnancy in question is that something happened to put the pregnancy at risk, and either your mom’s body or yours set off the cascade leading to the failure of the other fetus. It isn’t something that happens that late without some triggering event that’s outside of a normal pregnancy. When it happens early on, it’s a different story, it can happen for no detectable reason at all. But late term? Something went wrong that made it happen.

    I’d have to go digging, and I’m currently brain fried, but one of the more common triggers worldwide is/was malnutrition. When the mother isn’t getting resources to grow both critters, either her body shifts to support one exclusively, or one of the two essentially cannibalizes the other. That one (again, I’m old and tired, so the iirc factor is iffy here) is most likely to happen when the twins share a placenta, or something like that (see, old man brain missing details).

    Since you’ve said in comments that you were placed in an unusual orientation and/or location, that would point to some kind of issue with the uterus not having enough room for both fetuses (fetii? I think I like that better despite it not being duet correct lol). I seem to recall a case in India where a woman prone to twins had a pregnancy where this happened because her uterus had lost the ability to stretch the way they normally do. Something about scar tissue maybe? Been ages since I read about this stuff.

    Anyway, late term vanishing twin syndrome is the terminology I know of. If there’s another, more formal terminology, iam not aware of it.




  • Which wave?

    Or are you just talking in the general sense?

    I ask because I’ve heard the term applied specifically to the Chinese workers on the railroads in the late 1800s, here in the US, plus another that came between the end of the first World war and some time after the end of the second.

    In the specific senses, it’s too far in the past for me to think of it much at all. The more modern wave has essentially integrated and their descendants are just plain old americans for the most part; meaning they hang onto the parts of their ancestral culture to the degree they want, and otherwise may not have any connection in that regard. So it’s more a point of historical interest than something influential on current events. That seems to be the prevailing take I’ve run into with others as well.

    More recent immigrants, I don’t have enough experience to have formed an overall take. My area doesn’t run high to Chinese immigrants. We get more folks from the Americas and African nations. But I haven’t had any standout bad encounters, nor have I seen any patterns that would make it seem like a bad thing.

    Can’t lie, racism against asian folks in general is present here. It isn’t as prevalent as that against Latinos, Africans or African-Americans, but it’s there. Afaik, nobody thinks of it as an overarching “thing” at all. Folks here tend to look at immigration on a smaller scale than a diaspora. If there isn’t a significant inrush of a given group, nobody really notices.


  • I dunno if crazy is the right word, but you do run into people no longer giving a fuck the older they get. However, you also get them settling down and chilling out more as well.

    The key to the kind of thing you used as an example is that if you can retire with a decent nest egg, you now have both time and funding to fuck around and find out in ways you can’t before that era of life. Mind you, you also have to get there in good enough shape to fuck around at all, but that’s tangential to this matter.

    In my years doing end of life care, my patients were obviously past they point of getting up to serious shenanigans, but they would sometimes have family that were quite fond of finding fuckery to get up to.

    One thing I noticed about old dudes was a proclivity to cars that were well beyond the horsepower needed for daily tasks. Anything from standard sports cars to serious machinery like one guy that had a pro street 55 bel air. Which, since I got to drive the thing, was bitchin!

    Now that I’m in my fifties, I get it even more than I did back then. Life is fucking short. None of us get out alive, so there’s a tipping point where one’s give-a-shitter takes a flying leap. Since life is also often brutal, it makes sense that once you’ve done the expected bullshit, spending what time is left rotting in a chair by a window ain’t exactly enticing.

    Only thing keeping my crippled ass from souping up my little 4 banger and seeing how tight I can get it to corner at speed is budget. I’m in that window where my reflexes are still solid, and my experience is deep, so taking opportunities to push the envelope like that makes sense.

    I reckon that once I get even older, I’ll have less to lose as well, so I might end up doing something batshit like strapping rockets to a car just for the lolz. I’ve seen the destruction curve of the human body as it ages, so I’m not exactly enamored of longevity what with the shitty quality of life that’s nigh inevitable.

    But for real, the majority of old folks are just tired and want a fucking nap.



  • I dunno, but the majority of interactions I’ve had with visiting, or immigrated, latin Americans has been great. I know that doesn’t necessarily indicate anything other than me maybe having good luck, but it has left me with a default stance of friendliness and welcome for folks from the rest of the continent/s.

    In terms of exposure, yeah, most of my interactions have been with Mexicans. We have a really big Mexican population in the area.

    But we also have sizable contingents of Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, Guatemalans, and a smattering of Brazilians, with a few from most of the other south American countries. Never met a Peruvian though. One of my best friends is a second generation Nicaraguan immigrant, and you’ll never meet a better guy.

    Now, in terms of deep exposure to the cultures of central and south Americas, it’s mainly Nicaraguan for me, plus Mexican for the North American contingent. I really love the experiences I’ve had with my friend’s family, so definitely a fan of Nicaraguan food and at least their iteration of the traditions.

    I also really appreciate how community driven the Mexicans in my neighborhood are. There’s almost always a gathering of some kind in a given week, and they’re all really open to neighbors dropping in and chilling. Great food, great music, and they don’t make fun of badly mangled Spanish. My neighbors next door were having a small get together today, so there was music going while I was in the yard working, and it was really nice. A mix of tejano, norteño, and mariachi. I dunno what they were cooking, but it smelled amazing at least.

    Are there some friction points? Yeah, of course. A lot of the machismo stuff can get old fast. There’s also a fairly conservative religious skew that can be difficult to navigate, what with me being a pretty damn staunch lgbtq+ rights proponent. But even there, I’ve not run into hatred often, more the kind of cultural prejudice that’s also present in us culture to begin with.

    But I can say this much for sure. If the cultures and people that still live south of the us match what I’ve experienced here, then I consider those folks good neighbors too.





  • Allow me to come at this from the other side.

    I can’t work. My body gave out, and even though the shit show that is disability income keeps me below the poverty line, I’m essentially useless at any job that requires me being upright. So, I’m stuck there.

    But if I could go back to work, I would.

    I’d want to be picky at this point, but there’s a lot to be said about having structure and an external purpose (as opposed to finding one within yourself, which is still possible while working, just not necessary).

    Since my job was at least emotionally and mentally fulfilling, I do miss the actual work ad well. I mean, fuck the industry and the actual available employers, but doing direct patient care was fucking awesome, even when it was stressful or painful (be it physical or mental pain).

    The pay sucked. Bad enough that even working full time, I technically have a higher income now than when my hourly rate was at its highest back then. But going in, helping someone, that was the shit right there.

    I could have gladly done the hands on work for forty years. Even though most days I was exhausted at the end of the day. If you’re lucky enough to have a job that fulfills you, the only problem is when you can’t take breaks from it, or when the broken system means you can’t make a real living doing it.

    I recently had a loved one have a major medical event. During the aftermath, I had plenty of chances to use my old skills, and it was one of the few bright points that got me through the fear and stress of it. There was still that old joy at really, truly helping someone get better, to have a less bad day at the very least.

    But, legit, there’s other things I could gladly make a job of if I were both physically capable and could make enough for it the be worthwhile.

    What sucks for what you’re asking is having to work just for survival ata job that isn’t fulfilling.

    That being said, I’ve known a ton of people that were quite happy being a cog in the machine as long as the pay was enough to let them live how they wanted.

    Besides, you don’t have to plug away at the same blah job the entire time. It’s entirely possible to not only switch jobs, but move into different industries. Like, one of my uncles over his almost sixty years of working was a prison guard, a foundry worker, a school custodian, a woodworking instructor at a high school, and a mill worker. When he’d get tired of something, he’d just start looking for something with similar pay (or better) and jump ship. He bitches about being bored now that he’s retired.







  • It’s a social more, nothing more ;)

    In other words, it doesn’t matter what you swear by, it’s the open swearing that matters in terms of legality. See, the oath is what makes perjury prosecution “acceptable”. When a witness is sworn in, the process isn’t so much about them actually promising to tell the truth as it is a warning to them that truth is expected and will be enforced.

    Yeah, historically, there’s more to it than that, but it boils down to everyone involved knowing that truth is expected, and lying comes with consequences (well, if you get caught at it, and can’t avoid those consequences in some way. The system ain’t perfect at its best, and is rarely at its best).

    Swearing on a bible is just tradition based on centuries of christians and christianity being in power. You can opt to “affirm” instead, giving an non religious oath that is just a binding.

    But, in any real terms, an oath isn’t necessary to begin with. When the system/state/government/people have the power to punish you for lying, they don’t even really have to notify you that lying will come with consequences. Doing so is a nicety that at least prevents anyone from being able to say they didn’t know they couldn’t lie. Not that trying it in the absence of an oath would be worth spit, but it saves time.

    But having an expectation of truth under duress is a cultural thing. And it can be a form of duress. You can be compelled to appear and give testimony, with consequences got refusing. In other situations, being under duress can be a defense against a charge, though the standard for what degree of threat serves to meet that criteria is pretty steep. But it’s an understood thing that you aren’t supposed to lie during legal proceedings. It doesn’t have to be that way, but it certainly does make it easier to have a degree of conformity to the truth among people that might otherwise lie.