Honestly, at this point, the only reason to go with either ecosystem is that Android, for now, allows you to escape Google, to some degree depending on how much work you’re willing to put in. IOS/apple doesn’t allow that

But, Google is trying hard to get to the same place.

But, ignoring that, apple got there first. That’s what it amounts to. The first real smart phone was by Apple, and that gave them a leg up

Could be.

There are plenty of people that do masturbate in their sleep, and it’s more common during puberty.

However, most wet dreams are generated without manual stimulation. Typically, it’s a combination of the stimulation of the genitals against clothing, or bedding with the brain’s ability to process those signals into something else and match it up with whatever dreams are ongoing.

In some cases, it doesn’t even need any physical stimulation at all. The brain can do all the work, so just the bare minimum stimulation from the aroused genitals just being there is all it takes to generate orgasm.

The pumping of blood, minor muscle tension and movements are all it takes when the brain is doing its thing.

Matter of fact, it’s possible to have a hands free orgasm while awake for the same reason, though it takes practice.

You would contact long of the private security firms. Probably something like Northbridge.

Basically, those companies hire ex military and ex LEO, get them reoriented for security qork and farm them out.

A good deal? Depends too much on the threat profile, how big a team you need, how many areas they’ll need to cover, how much you travel, etc. But expect to be paying out the nose.

Back when I did super low end security, as in being an obvious bodyguard to deter idiots, my rate was per event, as in you’d pay me to stand there at a party and make sure you weren’t fucked with, then I left at the end of an agreed on span of time. A grand would be the norm for me back then.

Someone doing something under contract for someone like a singer, and doing essentially the same thing, you might bring in 50-60k a year, depending on where you are. Higher than that for high profile clients, or with a lot of travel involved. That pricing is pretty old though, so don’t try and go negotiating a contract with that info.

Someone that’s doing real security work? One person might have a base salary in the 100k range, depending. Someone with some serious credentials like having a background in government security, special forces and the like can go higher.

Generally, if your security detail is taking a bullet, they fucked up. They will, at least in theory. Individuals may or may not actually do so, but they hire people partially based on their willingness to take decisive action like taking a hit.

The few times I was in contact with people like that, they tended to be batshit fucking crazy enough to take a bullet for some rich asshole.

A CEO like that dickweed? Probably has a half dozen people in rotation at most, no ability to control everything, and may or may not be able to afford the hard core people that are out there in that field. That’s going to run a fucking big expense per year. Not something they’d be paying out of pocket, even with the kind of salaries they get. If they want the kind of team that can handle even the unrealistic threats, you’re looking at a million dollar contract, easy. That’s going to be handled through their company, unless the company has an internal security department.

The goal of a security team at that scale is to predict possible attacks, plan for them, and prevent them.

The attack Mr Mangione is accused of, the CEO didn’t have serious security, or the shooter couldn’t have gotten that close. The client would have had meat all around him, watching for anyone moving into their defined perimeter. They’d have seen someone moving the way the shooter was, and at least have fouled the shot.

The CEOs out there now have whined and moaned into better security. Folks that have kept an eye on such things aren’t seeing major activity from any of the big names in private security though. Frankly, they don’t need top end protection.

Seems to me that stagnant is good enough.

Chronic mental health issues really are like chronic physical issues. Once you find the spot that’s your normal, it’s maintenance rather than cures.

When part of that is caused by, or linked with, life situations that can’t be changed easily (or at all), you either decide to let go of life in general and do nothing but deal with the disability (and chronic, treatment resistant depression is a disability as much as my screwed up spine), or you find ways to live as best you can and treat that disability as a disability rather than an acute, curable problem.

You find ways to improve your life as much as it can be, and that includes developing relationships, finding meaningful work within your abilities, finding things that bring passion and joy when possible. Depression in specific is not a permanent, unscalable barrier to passion, joy, or love. There may be times when there’s not room for those things, and managing the depression has to be the main focus, but if you’re stagnate/stable, that’s not the case.

Being real here? I was only a few credits shy of my bachelor’s in psych. I never saw any evidence based data on dating with depression being a drawback. That’s been a very long time ago, so it’s possible something has come out since, but I’m skeptical.

What I’ve seen in group therapy, in support groups, it simply doesn’t point to there being a need or benefit to sidelining romance long term. It may need to be a few years, while someone is doing the work to find balance with a treatment resistant depression or other mental health issues. And, there’s some psychiatric issues where it may be a long term benefit to avoid dating, but that’s not the norm, and it would still cease to be a barrier if/when the issue is controlled via medication.

Now! This is the important caveat to that. We aren’t always able to tell when we’re stable. Nor are we all in a place where dating’s drawbacks won’t be a disturbance to stability. Rejection, failed partnerships, disagreements and drama, there’s a lot that can go wrong. If you can’t tell for absolute certain that your depression (in specific, but it applies to other issues) is stable and you can handle those bumps in the road, it may need to wait.

I’m not a shrink. Never completed my degree, much less any clinical requirements. The only reason I brought it up was to show that I did more than my due diligence on looking through published data. I’m not saying this as any kind of mental health pro at all, in any way. You always consult with your care providers before taking advice from randos.

Back to an anecdote. When I was at my lowest with depression, and the opportunity came up to enter into something serious, one of the things I had to look at was my resilience. Did bad things make my mental health worse? Did losing someone, or navigating existing relationships make me worse? Did it cause more than a temporary blip on the radar?

For me the answer was no. I had deaths in my family during that span, I had lost friends because of the array of mental health issues I was dealing with, and while they did cause a surge in my anxiety and depression in specific, that surge was temporary and in scale with the events.

I can not say if you’re in that place. All I can say is that if that’s where you are, where that bad stuff of life doesn’t sink you deeper and leave you there, then maybe it’s okay to go looking for the good stuff in life, and take the risk of temporary setbacks.

I will add that you need to be aware that these kind of problems make relationships harder, more prone to fall apart. It stacks the deck against you. Since you also have to be honest about health issues when things look like they’re getting serious, you have to be completely honest when that time comes. You can’t hide it, or lie about it because that’s dooming the incipient relationship before it starts. So there’s almost a guarantee that you’re going to face failures to start. If you aren’t ready for that, if the idea of it makes you more depressed, it may not be time to go for it yet.

Nah, the key is that you do need to reach a point of homeostasis. It doesn’t take forever, but it does take steady work.

It just needs to be where you’re stabilized with your depression.

It is true that dating and relationships aren’t a treatment. And it’s true that the less stable you are in your depression, the less capable you will be in handling the work that goes into dating and relationships.

But you don’t have to be happy. That saying is a pain in the ass tbh, because it exaggerates the actual goal. People with depression can be happy, and still be depressed.

Just focus on finding a balance, where the depression isn’t interfering with your ability to function in relationships you already have. Friends, family, that kind of thing. Once you get the depression managed that well, you’ll be able to realistically approach new relationships.

The people that repeat that old saw forget that you can forge friendships perfectly well when depressed, it’s just harder. Romantic relationships are really just a more intense version of the same process.

Chronic depression, you have to find your balance with. You find a way to make peace with it and live with it. Remission is certainly possible, but it can’t be the goal that puts everything else on hold, or it becomes impossible. You have to have the room to grow and change outside of therapy, or it’s going to fail.

Now, you also have to be honest and realistic. There is a limit to how solid a relationship you can build with depression that isn’t in remission. It’s a damn rocky foundation to build on. So the closer you get to remission, the better the chances of dating turning into something. The inverse is true as well; the further you are from remission, the worse your chances.

But nobody can tell you exactly when you are or aren’t ready, as long as you’re in an outpatient scenario. They can absolutely give you guidelines, give you strong suggestions that you aren’t ready, but that’s a different issue.

That being said, you gotta take it slow. Depression fucks up your emotional senses. Stay slow, take it easy at each step so you don’t set yourself back, or fuck with someone else.

Okay, I have to make a few assumptions to come at this.

First, that because you’re using English, you’re going to be most interested in an answer framed about the systems of the countries where English is a, or the, main language used.

Second, that you don’t want a shit ton of detail, because you otherwise would have looked possibilities up yourself, because there’s character limits.

Third, that because you asked here, that you don’t want a pile of links (which I’m rarely willing to do nowadays anyway).

So, here’s my general purpose answer within those assumptions, which means precision and accuracy aren’t 100% a factor. None of this applies everywhere.

So, we gotta start with trials. A trial assumes a state, as in a government of some kind. Could be as small scale as a clan or tribal council, could be as big as a nation.

If you don’t start there, it gets crazy trying to fill in.

A trial, by definition, is when the body of the populace (the state), regardless of the organization of that populace, accuses someone of having violated the rules of that body. It’s the “state” saying : you did this, and the individual or group saying “nuh-uh”.

That’s the gist of what criminal justice is.

By the nature of such a thing, you have to have a way of deciding what is and isn’t okay during the trial, and you have to decide who determines the outcome. In monarchies, or feudal systems, it would be whatever ruler is in charge, though they may delegate that decision (as in a crown prosecutor, and judges)

Point being that a trial is inherently adversarial. It’s an accusation against a person or persons, and them having to refute that.

In order to bypass that, you have to eschew any organization of people at all. It’s person vs person, no trials, they hash their shit out. Which is still adversarial, but we have to limit this.

So, there’s always sides when there’s a disagreement. It’s unavoidable. If the state says you did it, and you say you didn’t, and you’re allowed a defense at all, the only question is what sides do what, with what resources. A panel of judges is just as adversarial in practice.

When did that start? At least as far back as written history. It’s a dilemma that’s human. You ever have a sibling or other relative say you did something? If you didn’t do it, or you don’t want to admit you did, until that issue is resolved, shit is unpleasant.

If it’s your siblings, mom and/or dad make the decision, fairly or unfairly.

In a bigger group, it might be the elders, or whatever. Accusations of wrongdoing require resolution for a harmonious group.

When decisions are made by a single individual, like a king, you have to rely on that king being smart, fair, and even handed, as well as wise in handing out resolutions.

So, people all around the world have rules for that.

A lot of the kind of rules you’ll find in the US, Canada, Australia, and places that used to be owned by the British Crown, follow rules that originated as British law. Not every detail, see the initial assumptions and disclaimers already made. But, as a broad thing, the body of law built up in England heavily influenced law in places they owned or dominated.

A lot of that has origins in Rome and Greece, and other preceding cultures, but that’s outside the scope of this.

So, chances are that whatever legal system you’re asking about, came about because of the way the British Empire did things. But you can look to the Magna Carta for the more recognizable facets of it. That was a document setting out rules between the ruling people on how they would treat each other.

But the key to it is that people, in general, need protections from people in power. So those in power sometimes agree to have a system in place to minimize unfairness, at least on the surface (and that’s ignoring how successful that is or isn’t).

That’s how it came about, an attempt to spread out or blunt the power of the state against individuals.

Like you said, panels can work, as long as all the power isn’t vested in that panel. If your group of judges isn’t perfect, then it’s no better than a king making the decision arbitrarily.

In theory, having the state have to present a case, while the accused offers a defense, and a jury making the decision while a judge makes sure everyone follows the rules, should be the way least prone to corruption and even when it fails, it should still be a mitigation of abuses of power. Obviously, it doesn’t work perfectly. As long as the rules are applied evenly to all, and the base assumption is that the state has the onus of proof, that’s as good as it gets in terms of humans trying to make decisions about other humans.

To bring this to a close, let me apologize for things being disjointed. We have a rogue rooster to deal with, so I’ve been writing this in between handling stuff, which means my thoughts were not allowed to flow the way I’d prefer. So I know I missed stuff, and that it doesn’t all connect the way I’d prefer. But I gotta figure out what the hell to do with this little guy, and that means no editing.

Well, if your pussy is purring juices, you may have over stimulated it.

You forgot one bottleneck. The bottleneck.

puts on ban proof armor

To be fair, don’t we all like fucking a hairy pussy?

I know, I know, bald pussies exist, but it just feels wrong when you rub your dick on them.

However I draw the line at eating pussy. It just isn’t healthy, and you don’t know what you might catch from it. I mean, have you seen the mess they leave behind?

Death awaits us, a warm embrace after a cold life, giving surcease to the plague of human misery.

That is a very natural way to hold a rat

Like the other guy said, you missed a part, an important part

Damn, you see those worms? What did you do to the can?

Look, this is a very hot button subject. So I have to make a disclaimer.

Trans rights are human rights, full stop.

TERF: trans exclusionary radical feminist.

There’s two parts to that. The first one is “radical feminist”. That ideology is where the people that hold to it believe that society as a whole has to be restructured to eliminate patriarchy and male domination. Those two things are damn near identical, but there’s enough difference to matter for some things.

The other part is “trans exclusionary”. As should be obvious, the concept is a rejection of the principle that trans women are women.

Now, the term terf has expanded to include any woman that rejects the womanhood of trans women, even if they aren’t actually radical feminists.

So, no, not all terfs are actually feminists. But only because the terminology has shifted. At this point, I think it’s fair to say that it’s shorthand for transphobic women despite its origin.

That being said, yeah, radical feminism is an accepted aspect of feminism as a whole, so technically any terf that is a radical feminist isa feminist.

That’s the strict answer to your question

Here’s the problem with that.

Who decides what is and isn’t womanhood? Who decides what is and isn’t acceptable in defining feminism, or who is and isn’t a feminist?

Within the framework of radical feminism, and only within that framework (see my initial disclaimer for my belief), trans women being born with male anatomy can exclude them. There are inclusionary radical feminists that see trans women as a natural extension of the principles. Some of those, however, also lump trans men as enemies because they’ve abandoned their womanhood to submit to the patriarchy.

Radical anything tends to be about absolutism. It’s all or nothing.

And that’s where terfs fall. That’s where radical feminists fall, no matter who they do or don’t include/exclude. So, it’s actually difficult to peg them as transphobic, because the underlying belief system is not the same as other forms of transphobia. It does still fall under duck rule (they walk and quack like transphobes), but when it comes to deconstructing their arguments, you have to come at it from a different angle when combating their attempts at enforcing their beliefs. It’s like trying to fight a grease fire with water if you don’t come at it right.

I know that’s beyond the scope of your question, but I think it’s an extension that matters.

Right now, the war is about survival. And that war currently is one that needs minds changed. If you go at terfs as standard bigots, you run afoul of women that aren’t terfs, but can be influenced by them when they can claim to be targeted as women.

In their heads, it’s a battle to keep men out of women’s spaces, to keep the invasion of men into yet another aspect of women’s lives. Since the fallout of misogyny and patriarchy is actually a constant pressure to fall into line, any attacker becomes the enemy. You can’t sway the undecided when you are actually attacking the terfs as bigots, dismissing them yet again for being women, for not acquiescing to external controls.

You have to go specifically at their arguments, surgically. You aren’t going to sway the terfs. But you can sway others by deconstructing their arguments, in a way you can’t with a “normal” transphobe that’s using religion or arbitrary hate (woke haters mainly) as their driving cause.

I’m not saying that you can’t counter terfs. That you have to accept their belief as valid. Again, see my disclaimer. I’m only talking about how to frame the war of words to limit their effectiveness.

Part of that is accepting that they are a branch of feminism, or can be.

If you can get a copy of the apk, it still works fine. Might have to jump through some hoops on some Samsung devices though. They started bring dicks about old apps. But they work fine, it’s just getting it installed.

It was always a pointless and stupid thing to begin with. It’s schoolyard bullshit. There’s way better things to call him.

It happens

Well, if it helps, I have a friend that sings and plays lead guitar in his band. I’ve also been present both when they’re performing and recording. Dated a less professional singer as well, plus was forced into a chorus class as a teen.

Singing is not easy. You’re not only using your vocal cords, you’re using your whole body.

You’re breathing in fast, while sustaining long phrases with vibration. This makes the entire throat get dry, and draws blood into the throat tissues. Mucous production does increase, but it’s in response to the irritation and stresses, which means that everything from your lips all the way down to your lungs is working very hard.

Singers all have their own remedies for this. I don’t know any that use a spray, they tend to favor soothing beverages of some kind.

But even doing a single song, with warming up before singing, causes minor irritation. The process of recording a single track can be enough to need a decent length break, depending on exactly what you’re singing and how. Some notes (usually the ones in your highest resister) are more strain than others, and if you’re doing unusual techniques like growls, screams, overtone singing, etc, it can be more stressful to the anatomy.

I’ve recorded both a fairly mild metal growl, and some overtone singing with my friend. My throat felt like I had strep after maybe a half hour of work. Took me that night and the entire next day to feel better. But I’m an amateur, so most singers wouldn’t take that long to recover from a minor amount of work.

But doing an hour on stage, or recording all day? Your throat is going to feel rough no matter how well you treat it.

Afaik, atomizers with breath spray used to be pretty common. I used to take care of old folks, some of whom went through the great depression as adults. A lot of them had those.

Disposable ones have been a thing since at least the 50s, if my memory isn’t failing. Binaca used to have commercials back before cable was ubiquitous, and a lot of people carried some to freshen up breath.

So, somewhere along the way, the specific trope of a guy spraying once or twice before hitting on a woman crept into social awareness. I never dug too deep looking into it, but it allegedly apparently was a thing.

The culture of lots of coffee at work followed by a drink or three after at a bar wasn’t exactly great for oral hygiene overall, and definitely makes breath funky.

The singer part of the trope, where you see them spritz before hitting the stage is supposedly a different thing. That was from stage actors, but that’s as far as I’ve ever looked, that it was a thing. No idea what they used, what the reasoning was. Never piqued my curiosity enough to look deeper.

Well, of course! And isn’t that the way it should be?

For me, it was the cheek lol. I think I was 5 or 6, but yeah, I think that’s something a loooooot of kids do