I’ve been buying more frozen vegetables than fresh lately. It lasts longer.

Though a small, personal thing I’m more concerned about is the fact that my work is still planning a potluck next week. Every trip to the grocery store is more stressful than they ever were before, as I’ve had to downsize my shopping list every month. The idea of spending money so I can be seen as a “team player” at the place that I go to make money in the first place is concerning. Most of my meals these days are simple sandwiches, because buying what I really want to buy has become too expensive. Although I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade when they’re trying to plan something fun, I might end up talking to a manager about it. I just can’t justify spending extra money right now. (I am open to advice on how to handle this.)

Joke’s on you, the only people at parties that I want to talk to are fellow nerds who spout random facts.

Nah, this post’s phrasing is misleading. Chimerism comes from a fusion of two separate embryos, not from two fully-formed babies merging together. A chimera is less one dominant embryo that “absorbs a twin,” and more a regular person that just happens to be made up of two separate sets of genetic material. Imagine having two different puzzles with pieces that are cut in an identical pattern. You could use pieces from either puzzle to fit into each other. If you randomly draw pieces from either set and merge them into one picture, you end up with a puzzle that’s a bit of both, but still only one. That’s how it works with chimeras - the DNA from two individuals are mixed and matched to create a patchwork of both in one body. A key difference is, a puzzle would have leftover pieces - but the body would not.

It’s often not apparent in any way. However, if the two sets of DNA call for different skin colors or something, a chimera might show both colors in different areas.

In the post’s case, the cells that went on to make the man’s testicles were made with different DNA than whatever part the first sample was taken from. There may be more parts of his body that use that same DNA, but unless they test a sample from every part of him, we’ll never know exactly.

Are you thinking of Lydia Fairchild? In her case she wasn’t sent to prison. However, her two children were taken from her and placed in foster care. Lawyers had refused to represent her at first, due to the belief that DNA evidence is too strong to fight. On the plus side, she became pregnant again. So a court officer was present during her third child’s birth.

Despite being at the birth and witnessing blood draws from both mother and child, the court still claimed she was being untruthful somehow. Thankfully, that birth and its evidence were peculiar enough to attract a lawyer to finally represent her. Only after that did the investigation into potential chimerism arise.

More info here - https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/case-lydia-fairchild-and-her-chimerism-2002

Yep, my schools didn’t teach art history. I only learned of French impressionalists in school, and that’s just because I took French class. Even art classes didn’t touch the classics, so I’m learning through my own studies now as an adult. This is what a typical American education system gives us. :(

God, that scene fucked with me as a child.

In my usual Wikipedia rabbit hole journey, I came across some lovely paintings the other day. I ended up going through the page of Johannes Vermeer, admiring a bunch of his works. Consider my surprise when I scrolled by a familiar painting, The Girl with the Pearl Earring. Although the artist’s name didn’t ring a bell at first, that painting is famous enough that it stopped me in my tracks. Go figure, he’s got all these detailed slice-of-life paintings that give a strong sense of what life was like for an average, middle class, Dutch person in the mid-1600s, and yet the only work of his I’d seen before was that one.

I guess it’s kinda like how some musicians can put out multiple albums, yet be forever known as a “one hit wonder” because only one of their songs “made it big.”

You mean even my Steam games are actual steam? Neat.

If we’re lucky it’s furry porn. I’m more worried about the non-consensual porn of real people, including simulated CSAM.

Some aircraft engines, too. The old single-engine Cessnas I trained on were air-cooled. Though that’s pretty easy when you’re pushing cool, atmospheric air over the engine at 100 knots.

Found a strange, single, long hair growing off my chin the other day. I’m a woman in my mid-30s with no tendencies toward facial hair whatsoever.

It reminded me of when I was working in a nursing home, and such hairs would just appear, already over an inch long, on patients’ faces. It was as if they sprouted overnight.

It was a disturbing moment to find one on myself. But hey, it was still my natural color and the length made it easy to pluck. So, can’t complain. Yet.

We can’t discount the classic dick-measuring contest that’s bound to happen when rich people compare their net worths to each other. I’d be shocked if some people weren’t at least partly motivated by having a bigger “number” than their friends do.

I can’t help but wonder what exactly is going on here. Are the good contractors scared of ICE taking them away, leaving talentless MAGA hacks as the only ones participating in this project?

Or maybe they’re aware Trump never pays others for their work, and this is an example of “you get what you pay for”?

Or it could be an example of top-down incompetence, where the workers are faithfully following a boss’s orders, but the boss is such an inept loser that this is what following their words gets?

Or maybe the workers hate Trump and this is their small way of protesting/sabotaging his plans?

So many possibilities!

Plot twist: the ice cream quirk is a trick. “Nope, no body in this freezer. Just lots of uneaten ice cream. That’s all that’s in those tubs, yes sir.”

To the extent that a pet is dependent on their human, it makes sense. Domesticated animals need someone to look out for them, much as a baby does. In this light, seeing a pet as one’s “baby” doesn’t seem too bizarre.

Yes, it does work differently for different people. I usually struggle to tell people apart, but these pictures look different to me, especially the girl in the top right - she’s got different eyes and lips compared to the other two. The other two have different noses.

Now, if I were in a room with all three of them, I might have trouble telling them apart. But that’s more because I wouldn’t be able to stare at their faces the way I can at their pictures. If they were all in the same film I might struggle too, because they wouldn’t be static pictures, but dynamic video that moves along at a fast pace and I’d probably confuse one character for another.

Anyway, brains are weird.

Right? The fact that a good guy can make it to 100 gives me a little more faith in humanity. It’d be a shot to the heart if something nasty came out about him. We need at least one good human lasting this long to keep our hopes going. Please universe, we need this.

This isn’t mildly interesting. It’s interesting as fuck. It looks like waves in water or something.

Damn, I’m sorry about your friend.

Not everywhere does, unfortunately. My city has a food bank, yes, but if you need housing there are hoops to go through to even get a shelter bed. When I went there, they said I needed a referral (no idea from whom) or proof of eviction. I wasn’t evicted, my boyfriend just decided to move and drop me, so that was out of the question. Then the low income housing situation is literally a lottery, one that takes months if not years for a place to open up.

Then social programs vary from place to place. Some states may say I’m eligible for food stamps, while others tell me that I’d only be eligible if I had a kid. When I tried to sign up in Florida, I was straight up told that if I wanted benefits, I had to have a baby. Yeah, I’m struggling to feed and house myself, lemme bring a child into this situation, great idea.

The US truly hates the poor.