Yes and no, if you scambait hard enough your number can eventually be added to a blacklist for larger scam organisations that bought your data for use in multiple scam attempts.

In my experience that has really cut down on the calls.

In 2020 the department of human services accidentally posted my personal phone number on a list of support services for people experiencing housing or food insecurity. This number was then circulated by every major news source in my state. I couldn’t change my number at the time because I had no legal ID (still don’t… Can’t figure out how to get ID without ID, but I have a new number now at least) at first I didn’t really notice the ratio of spam calls to genuine calls for the wrong number (ie, people calling my number because they needed housing/food) . I just remember getting 40+ calls a day at many stages.

But as the actual number for the food relief service was circulated, I eventually stopped getting genuine calls and I was getting 3-5 scam calls every single day.

After a year of scam baiting, I was getting 2 a week.

Now, I’ll do something online that requires sharing my current number, within a few hours I get a scam call because my data has been sold, but I bait the heck out of that first call and I usually don’t receive any further calls which suggest my number was blacklisted by a larger scam organisation, and I won’t be hassled until my data is sold again as a new item.

It’s hard to avoid getting your number on scam lists when the largest health insurance company, and the second largest telecommunications company in my country both had major data breaches where millions of customers identifying information was accessed and sold to scammers…

Nah, I’m just a person with leaky tits.

You do anyway without piercings.

The nipple isn’t technically one hole, it’s kind of like a porous sponge. After all, mammary glands are just mutated sweat glands, it’s a series of holes connected to a series of ducts.

So a lot of people find when lactating that it can spurt in crazy directions from unexpected parts of the nipple.

The number of times I find myself plugging the iron in behind the TV and then holding an old Amazon box against the wall and juggling my pants while I iron because I’m in a rush and that’s the available outlet plug and space.

The first pride was pretty wrathful.

The female condom has two rigid rings, one in the sealed end that sits under the cervix, and one at the open end.

The ring at the open end is designed to hold the condom open and give the penetrating partner a nice big safe target to make sure the penis/toy/whatever goes inside the condom and not accidentally between the condom and the vaginal wall. This ring also provides some minor protection to parts of the vulva due to its size.

The internal ring is much smaller by comparison, and is not that much larger than a diva cup. The internal ring of a female condom is a similar size to a “soft cup” menstrual cup, it’s a little bit smaller than a contraceptive diaphragm.

Yeah, nah, Tamworth. We have our own branches of country music down here mate.

Blak Country is a seriously cool branch to explore if you’re curious about how Australia has interpreted US country music into a localised sub-genre. Swap your mouth organs for a gum leaf and add some yidaki riffs for extra bass.

Okay, you do you.

Buy physical media from independent production companies. Pirate whatever Disney, Netflix and Amazon are cranking out.

In Australia we call this “skimpflation” because they aren’t shrinking the final product, they’re skimping on ingredients to lower production costs.

It’s the bane of my existence because brands I know and love will change their ingredients without warning and without changing anything on the packaging (sometimes not even changing the ingredients list! If the ingredients list has always just said “starch” they don’t have to change anything going from arrowroot starch to cheaper potato starch)

I have allergies and I’ve bought two boxes of the same product at the same time, and had an allergic reaction to one, but not the other.

I used to always blame it on my housemates not washing the cooking utensils properly, but I now use separate cooking equipment and I clean down the kitchen before I start and cook at odd times so I’m the only one using the kitchen.

I’ve started emailing companies after my allergic reactions to determine if they have changed an ingredient, and 90% of the time they confirm they have changed the ingredients. Usually they put some PR spin on it about the new ingredient being more allergy friendly or sustainable (they don’t clarify “environmentally” so I assume they mean “financially sustainable for the profits of our company”)

Yeah, as a kinky asexual myself, it seems like she hasn’t been very open in communicating her relationship to kink. Especially when your partner is allosexual, it’s so important to explain why you like to participate in kinky activities as an asexual and where your boundaries begin and end.

For allosexual people, sex and kinks have a venn diagram that’s basically a circle, and failing to communicate the extent of your interest in kinks as an asexual is just setting the entire relationship up to fail because you’re inevitably going to have mismatching expectations from kink play unless you make sure you’re both on the same page before you start.

His confusion is completely understandable, as is her identity as a kinky asexual. They just need to talk to each other.

On the point of driving whilst stoned. Confidence comes with experience

I can definitely understand what you mean by this, but I think a certain level of confidence also comes from tolerance.

I don’t drive at all, so can’t weigh in on that, but I cycle everywhere, and in my youth I would have never considered cycling while stoned, too risky, too dangerous, not fair or safe to others using the paths.

When I started smoking, I stuck by that statement, I’d give it a full 12+ hours between my last smoke and getting on the bike.

But just like your example, 12 hours became 8 hours, became 4 hours, and so on, where now I might have an smoke and 40 minutes later get on my bike to go somewhere.

But then I take a T break, and I pick up a new bag, and I have my first hit in a month or two, and I sit with that high for a while and think to myself “fuck no, I absolutely will not be getting on the bike any time soon, this tiny toke is too much to cycle on”

Then I’ll smoke heavily for the next month, and by the end of the month, my tolerance has increased, and I’m back to riding my bike while stoned (or rather, buzzed, because I’m just not capable of getting as high)

Do I feel guilty for these decisions because I know it’s a big risk? Yes. Do I keep doing it? Also yes.

But now that I’m in discussions with my doctor about medical dosing, it has raised a very important question - if I use medical marijuana to manage my chronic illness (the one that renders me medically unfit to drive) is the ethical and legal obligation of that treatment plan that I can never ride my bike again? I must always walk or take the bus? The same does not apply for people who use opiate based pain relief or therapeutic ketamine. They are warned not to drive if the meds make them impaired, but ultimately it’s their judgement to decide what is “impaired”. It will only be externally questioned if there is an accident or a near miss. If I am assessing my level of impairment before I ride stoned, how can I best ensure my capacity to ride in those moments?

Also answering OPs question, I think this applies to a lot of hobbies, but I notice it a lot as someone who likes to sew my own clothes - the pressure from others to constantly get better, try harder, and keep building those skills.

I do my hobby because it’s fun, sometimes it’s fun to learn new things about it, but sometimes I just want to stick with what I know and play in my comfort zone.

My dad will often look at things I’ve made this year and say “you made something almost identical 5 years ago, and your stitches are still skew wiff, haven’t you learned to blah blah yet?” because his expectation is that I will get better and better with every passing moment as I practice my hobby.

Similarly, people will tell me that I have “clearly got the skills to make xyz” and I should “challenge” myself. And sometimes I will, but most of the time I retreat to my hobbies because I don’t have to challenge myself if I don’t want to. I like my hobbies to be no pressure (I go to the gym to push myself, I go to my craft corner to relax)

You are allowed to dabble, fool around, play, and have fun with a hobby. You are allowed to decide that “getting better” isn’t the goal.

But it seems others will always question this, or suggest you somehow aren’t doing the hobby right, or enthusiastic enough about it if you’re only ever doing it on a surface level.

Just today, I managed to get hold of a second hand overlocker, I’m really excited to make things with it, and my co-worker who also sews said “oh that’s awesome, the quality of clothes you’re going to pull off now that you can surge! I can’t wait for the fashion show”. She meant that in the most positive way, and I know what she was trying to say so I thanked her and promised her to show her what I was making, but part of me definitely heard “if the quality of your final product doesn’t improve as a result of this, you’re bad at this hobby, now you have no excuse not to be better than you were before” even though she meant nothing of the sort, and a lot of that was internalised shame because of previous discussions with people who were genuinely questioning my lack of improvement.

I would already be living in a vehicle, but I can’t drive (low vision) so it’s never going to be an option for me.

About 10 years ago I was looking into bike towed campers as a security plan for an unstable housing situation, only to learn they are illegal to tow in my country. You can own one, sleep in one, and tow it on private property, but to move it from one property to another legally I’d need to pay someone with a car to put it in a car trailer, then unload my camper at the destination.

Again, it depends on the purpose of the group you’re creating, does this person in question face discrimination for their perceived race? Then a support group for people who have faced discrimination for their race may be the right place for them, assuming the intersection of having “chosen” to present as a race they’re not doesn’t create an unsafe space for the other group participants.

However if your group is for people who have grown up POC or been raised in a non-dominant cultural group to discuss shared experiences, then obviously someone who identifies as POC later in life would not be served by that group, so would not be eligibile to join that group.

There are circumstances when even if you fit the criteria of the group, you may still be excluded due to the way various identities and experiences intersect, or because your personal actions are not serving the group.

It’s not discrimination to be told you can’t use a private service because the service can’t serve your specific needs, and your personal circumstances reduce the groups ability to serve its other members.

I’m not trying to be rude, I’m trying to understand.

As far as the language is concerned, I’m just trying to understand how a trans woman could be a cis lesbian, when my understanding is that being cis and being trans are mutually exclusive.

Am I missing something?

If you’re a private entity and there is a specific reason that having non-black people in the group would be detrimental to the purpose of the group, yes, in Australia you can make a black only space.

For example, if you want to create a support group for POC to discuss trauma around being subjected to racism, to ensure you create a safe space, making the space POC only is not only legal, but often the more ethical choice for this group.

Want to create a social and dating app for queer women to meet other queer women? What purpose would it serve to let straight people into that group?

There is difference between public spaces, that must allow access and entry to all, and a private organisation that caters to specific demographics, and being freely open would completely defeat the purpose of the private organisations goals.

I’m not an alcoholic, I don’t personally know anyone who has struggled with alcoholism. Why can’t I go to an AA meeting to talk about my feelings on alcoholism? Obviously, Because that’s not helpful, it has the potential to be harmful to the people who attend because they have lived experiences with alcoholism. I could argue I’m being discriminated against because of my medical history, but I’m not being discriminated against, I’m just not being catered to, because I don’t have an unmet need in this specific situation.

How does that even work?

I mean, to be a cis lesbian also implies being a cis woman…

I mean, given what’s happening with the women’s only art exhibit at the MONA right now, this woman definitely has a legal leg to stand on even with this being a private company.

Even if it’s just a matter of false advertising (if the app means cis women they should say cis women, not say “women” and then go out of their to exclude an entire group of women) or compensation for being given access then having access removed.

The sauce packet is usually kecap manis, it’s an Indonesian sweet soy, so your guess was pretty accurate.

I also hate cooking, but I’m broke and vegetarian.

1lbs of dried chick peas goes in my housemates pressure cooker on Sunday, and 12 servings of chickpeas gets scooped into ziplock bags and thrown in the fridge and freezer for the rest of the week.

On top of rice with a bag of microwave steam veg, stirred into a premade curry, blended and served on top of pasta like a weird hummus alfredo, thrown into a Quesadilla (side note, what’s a Quesadilla without cheese called?), smashed on top of toast and covered in whatever condiment I have. Or more realistically, I toss some salt in the zip lock bag and just eat out of the bag with a spoon while staring into the fridge wondering what I’m going to make for dinner, before grabbing a slightly limp carrot and an almost empty jar of peanut butter I left out instead of throwing away and telling myself “this is a balanced choice, protein, carbs, fats, a vegetable…”

Rice gets a similar treatment to the chickpeas, a big batch in the rice cooker on Sunday, divvied up and frozen for quick and cheap rice during the week without having to cook it from scratch after work. We don’t have “minute rice” or parboiled rice in my country, and the “microwave pouch” rice doesn’t fit in my budget.