thaicurious

Illiberal propagandists' efforts to denigrate Democrats & democratic thinkers by demonizing the words "left" & "leftist" reminds of the decades they spent demonizing the word "liberal" which was especially bizarre when was done by the pre-MAGA, later so-called constitutional conservatives, considering that the oldest written government charter in continuous effect, the magnificent living US Constitution, is in fact and in founding a liberal document. https://www.acslaw.org/expertforum/our-liberal-constitution/ "The Constitution was designed by the Framers to be a radically progressive document ....Taken as a whole, the Constitution is anything but a conservative document. And while its words and principles don’t favor any political party, many of its core ideas support the policy goals of modern-day liberals." Despite all the--to be polite--misguided energy spent by the right, neither is liberal nor is left a bad word. This does not deny that there is a far left portion of the Democratic Party but here's the thing: that tail don't wag this dog. They certainly are a factor in considering policy as they should be, but they've absolute control of neither center left nor left of center. How do we know this? Because Democrats and Independents and Republicans who haven't yet lost their minds voted in a fair and free election Biden as legitimate President of the United States of America and Biden is by no means far left. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Joe_Biden#:~:text=Biden has been described as,or the Green New Deal. "Biden has generally been regarded as belonging to the mainstream of the Democratic Party. Biden has been described as center to center-left and has described himself as the latter." Whereas who do the great majority of Republicans (including moderate Republicans at the beckon call of their party's extremists) pick for their (far) right leader? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trumpism "Trumpism consists of the political ideologies, social emotions, style of governance, political movement, and set of mechanisms for autocratization and authoritarianism." As to demographics, percentages of population & characteristics of the coalitions that make up both US Republican and Democratic Parties, (counter some nonsense--I won't bother specifying but--posted in this thread) see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pew_Research_Center_political_typology As to US parties support of Israel vs Palestine see https://news.gallup.com/poll/472070/democrats-sympathies-middle-east-shift-palestinians.aspx To the current war started by Gaza's de facto governing body Hamas leading attacks to rape with their undistracted penises in the blood of their murder victims and take hundreds of hostages, any country so attacked by them would have declared war to defend from this ever happening again. What might have prevented this war from getting so sadly & horribly further bloodied besides Hamas having never initiated it? How about if the Palestinian Authority from the West Bank had in response to Hamas' attack upon Israel lead a coalition of Muslim states into Gaza to gently remove Hamas from their human shielded barricades and tunnels. There, problem solved and good luck with that. To the realities, the terrorism of Hamas plays by setting up what they like to think are no win situations or at least situations that bring even more damage even if self-inflected so they can cry their version of maga tears. They attack in such a way that must be answered and then they cry that they are being attacked. Not unlike illiberal bully posters who attack and then cry when their methods of attack are attacked. They don't just set up no win situations with regard to war but even with regard to peace, declaring in their very Charter of their being the destruction of Israel, forgoing what should otherwise be a two-state solution for their perverted preferred terrorism, not unlike how maga terrorizes the United States by lying & denying even when they legitimately lose, and that with their own leader calling for the "termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution." But the far right plays a no win terrorism situation with the rest of the Republican Party, threatening to not support any Republican but a MAGA candidate. It is very much like strapping babies onto your body and then walking through a shopping mall with an AR-15 shooting up everyone around you thinking that no one will take you out because they will have to shoot through the babies strapped onto you in order to stop you from killing a multitude of other innocents. But those babies were dead by the terrorist's hand the minute you strapped them on, the minute you embedded yourself and your missiles and your rapist murderers within them. Just as the far right holds its Republican Party hostage. Yet the far left does not. And as nutz is what I haven't found a poll on but suspect from my many interactions might be a very small minority of the LGBT population who supports someone who would behead them, what can I say: some people just really love giving head.

Bringing the casual viewer up to speed, previously on Fun with Antivaxxers, last we chatted you'd stomped off crying something about no more responding to me. To which I replied that's your prerogative, but also it was further evidence of your shifty methods about which you deemed being called out on a personal attack. Would only theatrics instead of facts win debates, someone might award you. The actual Mencken quote is: “…there is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.” Please correct your magic bag of bumper sticker mentalities for future reference. But how fitting of an antivaxxer to quote a known bigot. Let’s do our own research and see what Mencken had to say about vaccinations, just to stay on topic: “When we appropriate money from the public funds to pay for vaccinating a horde of negroes, we do not do it because we have any sympathy for them or because we crave their blessings, but simply because we don’t want them to be falling ill of smallpox in our kitchens and stables, to the peril of our own health and the neglect of our necessary drudgery. In so far as the negroes have any voice in the matter at all, they protest against vaccination, for they can’t understand its theory and so they see only its tyranny, but we vaccinate them nevertheless, and thus increase their mass efficiency in spite of them. It costs something to do the work, but we see a profit in it. Here we have a good example of self-sacrifice based frankly upon expediency…” ~~H.LOL. Mencken Meanwhile, you may mock layering protection, but also I told my friends decades ago about exercising and eating right and staying safe from virus and don't smoke and moderate your partying, oh, nooos, more layering. Today they have stents, and strokes, and heart attacks, and dementias and TAVR valves and those are just the ones still alive, yet silly me who swam a mile a day for most of life and ate properly and took my own advice has now, well into my 60s, a zero coronary artery calcium score and I still swim laps pretty much every day. Good luck to you.

Besides the horror of the simply now known 14% of a population afflicted with long covid, because, like chickenpox can lead to shingles decades later we don't know yet what else might be down the line given a coronavirus that can accumulate even in the skull-meninges-brain axis, what's a multiple of scary is all the people still risking long covid given such odds. Because if I'm reading this right and correct me if I have not, that 14% with long covid is "only" 14% of the *total* population. But 14% of the total population is not 14% of the 47% reported having caught covid. Just to round the numbers not even on the back of an envelop, isn't that more like a 30% risk of getting long covid if you get covid at all, though granted with the greater part of that coming from those with more severe (likely less vaccinated--or certainly by other factors) infections? Because if those were my odds of not crossing the street safely, I'd not cross the street without the metal of my own car surrounding me. Yet masking until we get better vaccines that have a good efficacy rate against transmission is hardly as inconvenient as that. Such a simple solution to what can otherwise have very good odds of leading to a lifetime of problems.

I've known no one personally who's had medical complications by the vaccine (I've read and heard of the AstraZeneca blood clot issues) but I do have beloved friends dead of covid itself from before vaccinations, a non-vaxxed friend obvious even to himself demented by repeated covid infection and I've a friend who worked as a nurse in a big city hospital throughout this mess, so I'm well aware of her first hand experience pre thru post vaxing. The level of vaccination misinformation especially in social media, as witnessed in this very forum, is concerning enough that recently I've taken to reading studies on the psychological profiles of we who are inclined to vaccinate vs the vaccine-hesitant which turns out to be a rather complex category vs anti-vaxxers about whom to no surprise there's lots of research being done (albeit, by those who are science-biased, haha) I find the increase in vaccination misinformation on safety dismaying but the decrease in faith in the efficacy pretty much in line with that the covid vaccines are indeed -- while still life saving -- not as effective as they were before omicron and based on early studies not as effective as hopefully will be the next gen vaccinations when maybe surveys will shift again to reflect that. This does not apply, however, to other vaccines which--I'd have to read all the studies but--have most likely improved, so that might then indicate effects of anti medical propaganda. Without re-researching it, but just from memory so I'm sure my numbers will be off so feel free to be as picky as you want, but I seem to recall that before omicron the vaccinations provided better than a 90% efficacy rate against getting covid, whereas today because of the evolution of the virus the boosters may increase odds of not catching covid by 30 to 40% (until even that depletes between shots) which is not totally great but it is better than 0%, though of course you have to factor in that there is small chance of side effects. But besides just that benefit, there's also reduction in--as well noted elsewhere--hospitalization & deaths but also long covid if it remains true that the greater an infection, the greater the risk of that. Once we get the next gen mucosal vaccines, that should increase efficacy against all the categories: transmission, hospitalization, deaths and even long covid including the breaking through of the blood brain barrier which ought be of particular concern to any person of age. That would certainly be a game changer in health and hopefully in stress levels and maybe even in surveys as well. To layer protections with current vaccinations plus masking indoors in public plus social distancing just until the next gen vax which might be in 2024, to delay gratification for a very small period of life, to help prevent whether it's a 10% or 30% chance of winding up with the ills of long covid does not seem like a terrible sacrifice for someone's overall health, like not eating that second scoop of ice cream to help maintain a healthy weight and to keep yourself from getting diabetes. This is just another exercise. Risking dementia or other artery or organ issues for the privilege of breathing in a virus? Yikes, no thank you. "We all seek happiness but turn our backs on it. We all wish to avoid misery but race to collect its causes."~~Shantideva

There's been nothing disingenuous about my posts. Perhaps you are misusing the word? Nor have I falsely alleged but simply called out what was evident. It is irrelevant into which post you first opined. I might have misspoke re: OP, as who remembers precisely each thing said everywhere from a page ago, but good luck diverting now with that. You can try to parse it but its all a parcel. If your motive wasn't clear on first post, you've certainly clarified it since. Countering your opinion even while critiquing methods obvious in your argumentations is not personal attack but merely counterargument while acknowledging those methods. That you decide to use that to stomp your feet and run off is your prerogative.

Nice try attempting to dissect an issue out of its context. But your having had omitted from your OP the good info provided soon thereafter by the TallGuyJohn poster which clarifies why the newest boosters are thought adequate for the even newer variant and then your mocking that science hardly seems solid basis for you to claim motive or method of mere observation sans interpretation.

When you proffered the subject not simply as info on a new variant with respect to boosters but inserted instead in the original post your personal--some might say political--interpretation about what science says of vaccinating against an evolving virus, you yourself made your thread subjectively also about you and your interpretations and also about your motives for so describing, rather than simply being about an objective scientific topic alone. So if then saying "this thread is not about me" wasn't meant generally but directed towards the post to which you replied, please try not to blame me for what you did from the get go. Thanx, as I've no control over your activity. Your apparent concern over my understanding of media is appreciated. Fear not, I'll manage. To the objective topic of the science of immunology, scientists can say what they've said about the latest booster with respect to the latest variant because these mutations, outside--so far--of the game changer omicron, have been enough alike that their "expecteds" are not simple guesswork, but based on knowns. To say a hurricane is expected to cause damage isn't just throwing a guess of expectedness out there, even though the weatherman can't know beforehand just what winds will hit what structures. But unless, like omicron, the hurricane hasn't mutated into a friendly volcano, that doesn't make it inaccurate or unhelpful to say damage is to be expected.

On the surface per your response you seem upset with me that perhaps you perceive what impression I report (what you seem to suggest I, what's the word, misinform) as if my observations of your behavior in dealing with medical efforts to keep up with mutations were not based in scientific observation, but upon, as you feebly put it, psychological projection, which is interesting. Do you know others who do such things as I did there? Perhaps it is not projection that should be your concern but reflection. And while you're looking in the mirror wondering if I did simply what you do, guess whose doings might cause others to risk contracting covid infection? While having a look beyond your crying foul, the casual observer might notice you either just totally snowflaked there or used the ruse of feigning offense in subterfuge to cover your failure to address the critique of your misrepresentations of facts about the process of vaccinating against a changing virus. You might not call that your fear or aversion or inability to handle truth, but at least it does not make you feel guilt about risking your own life and the lives of others.

It is not improper for a news article to report on what experts expect based on what is known about the vaccine and about the new mutation. The word "expected" is said based upon the science, indicating that given these sets of circumstances of what the new mutation is and how the vaccine was designed, even if the new mutation is not exactly addressed within the design specs, it's close enough that the vaccine should be near enough as effective as it would have been against the prior mutation for which it was designed such that it will similarly decrease hospitalizations and deaths. It is not said as a wild guess. So I hope that helps to allay your fears about that. That a large majority of population believes something wrong might not surprise me but you ought to show those statistics if they exist to prove your statement if you can. If there is such a misunderstanding, that might be by bad communication on the part of science. Though I just googled "do people think covid vaccine prevents getting covid?" and the entries I see don't say they prevent from getting covid. They properly mention reductions of hospitalization and death instead. Perhaps some people think vaccinations "protect you from catching covid" because people like you misinform that there's supposedly been 24/7 propaganda of a lie at some earlier point when the fact is that before the omicron mutation which evades immunity, the original vaccinations did indeed have a high efficacy rate against getting infected at all. That was not propaganda. It was true at the time for that situation. I get that you are put into a state of panic when things change. You go into a high level of fear and so you are unable to cope well. But here, the science that vax conferred a high efficacy against getting covid before omicron (it was in the 90s % if I remember right) was true then. And so that's what they told people, the truth as it was then known. Then--and here's the scary part so hold on to something--when omicron came around that statement was no longer true so they stopped saying it and said simply that the vax would help reduce hospitalization and death, which, Boo!, it does! Now I hate to frighten you further, you might want to take a seat, but it could be that the upcoming next gen mucosal vaccines might again be able to offer a high efficacy against transmission. So what was true before, then wasn't true anymore, but might be true again. I hope that does not cause you mutation nightmares.

Just as reminder that before vaccinations, without lockdowns, healthcare systems would have crashed (were crashing), not just for caring for victims of coronavirus, but for all healthcare needs. The more people vaccinated, the more hospitals could handle breakthrough cases of the vaxxed and the multiples of more cases of the nonvaxxed. 2020 https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/03/us/coronavirus-funerals-bodies/index.html "The grim struggle to keep up with death was highlighted on Wednesday, when four trucks with as many as 60 decomposing bodies were discovered on a busy street outside a Brooklyn funeral home. A passerby saw fluids dripping from the trucks." https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/24/europe/spain-ice-rink-morgue-coronavirus-intl/index.html "Spain turns ice rink into a morgue as coronavirus deaths pile up" https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/10/us/el-paso-covid-mobile-morgues/index.html "El Paso, Texas, is asking for 4 more mobile morgues as Covid-19 deaths spike" https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/28/health/us-coronavirus-monday/index.html "Increase in coronavirus admissions prompts a Los Angeles hospital to use chapel, gift shop for new patients" https://www.providencejournal.com/story/news/healthcare/2020/11/30/covid-field-hospital-cranston-begin-accepting-patients-monday/6461763002/ "Rhode Island hospitals are full. Covid field hospital opening today." 2021 https://www.npr.org/2021/07/16/1017012853/97-of-people-entering-hospitals-for-covid-19-are-unvaccinated "97% Of People Entering Hospitals For COVID-19 Are Unvaccinated" 2021 https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/24/cdc-study-shows-unvaccinated-people-are-29-times-more-likely-to-be-hospitalized-with-covid.html "CDC study shows unvaccinated people are 29 times more likely to be hospitalized with Covid" 2022 https://health.ucdavis.edu/news/headlines/some-80-of-patients-hospitalized-with-covid-are-unvaccinated/2022/10 "Some 80% of patients hospitalized with COVID are unvaccinated" 2023 "https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/study-75-infants-hospitalized-covid-19-born-unvaccinated-women-0 "Study: 75% of infants hospitalized with COVID-19 born to unvaccinated women" But but but but lockdowns!

No responsible person of science or medicine currently utters such nonsense as you seem to enjoy propagandizing. To my memory, feel free to check me, in this pandemic, only pre-Omicron was there science showing vaccine would prevent "catching covid". But that's been off the table since about 2022 with the advent of immunity evasive omicron and its subsequent offspring, with vax since then at best (but good enough to control the pandemic) reducing symptoms leading to hospitalization and death, both of which the vaccines have measurably accomplished so that the world's hospitals and morgues could handle the rest. Or don't you remember patients piling up in hallways, ventilator shortages, body fluids dripping out of tractor trailers awaiting processing by local morticians. Because pre-vaccinations this was getting real disgusting real fast. The current hope with vaccines is that the next gen mucosal (nasal or oral) vaccinations will have a better efficacy against transmission. But that is not, as you've just wrongly said so you can deceivingly counter, claimed about the current boosters.

Confidence comes from simply understanding without politicizing the nature of vaccinations that at worst play the odds to provide protection either, ideally, against transmission (which a next gen vax might hopefully accomplish) or at least to buffer potential harms characterized by hospitalization & death by following what evolves from its prior self upon which the vax was designed when we've not yet (might never have) the capacity to predict with greater accuracy into what the virus will become next. So a lack of confidence might speaks less of the ability of science to keep people as safe as current knowns allow, but rather more loudly of a person's own fears that this mutation is greater than the vax developed prior might continue to protect against, which is, albeit sadly because we actually have scientific data to the contrary, understandable. But the more a person misuses colorful photos of even scientific data in an attempt to convince that his fear is valid while ignoring the actual data interpretations of the science itself, the more we might suspect at play the art of politics, not the medical arts. Even vaxxed, without masking, especially since omicron, there is still risk of long covid given exposure to coronavirus. Just like there is risk of being burned, given exposure to fire. It is not an irrational fear to avoid placing your hand onto a hot stove. Nor is it an irrational fear to avoid unprotected breathing in of sparks. This virus is not the same as past ones by which the body developed antibodies well enough to protect them from further infections even if that endows some measure of protection. If you had measles or mumps in the past, most likely you are protected from ever getting it again. But even if you've had covid before, without further protection, most likely you'll get it again. And each time you further risk it breaking through the blood brain barrier whereby covid spike proteins accumulate in the skull-meninges-brain axis. We didn't have long mumps, nor long measles. This is a whole new fire. https://abcnews.go.com/Health/debunking-idea-viruses-evolve-virulent/story?id=82052581 "Debunking the idea viruses always evolve to become less virulent The concept can be traced back to a theory from the late 1800s... But over the past 100 years, virologists have learned that virus evolution is more chaotic. Virus evolution is a game of chance, and less about grand design.... it's nearly impossible to predict the future of the pandemic, because viruses don't always evolve in a predictable pattern... People who are vaccinated or recently infected will have milder symptoms if they experience a breakthrough infection or a reinfection, studies show. "This is not because the variant is less virulent, but because your immune system was primed from prior vaccination and infection," said Pekosz... Even if less deadly, the omicron variant is also significantly more transmissible, leading to more deaths overall...."

Also without a time machine, you can't say that someone who got across the street safely wouldn't have gotten hit hadn't he first looked both ways before stepping out into traffic. But we can review covid caused mortality rates of vaccinated vs not vaxxed and extrapolate probabilities of what might or might not happen with or without a time machine. This is not complicated. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/united-states-rates-of-covid-19-deaths-by-vaccination-status As to the topic Long Covid, this is why I'll continue to social distance and mask indoors in public until I see efficacy numbers of next gen mucosal vaccines. I lost two dear friends pre-vaccinations. Both in my life since I was a little kid. And a friend of ours was a nurse through all of this in a big city hospital. I'd work to make her laugh and then get off the phone and just cry. Her stories were heartbreaking, all the deaths, all the pain. I've got another friend from 4th or 5th grade who's refused to mask or vax and he's a mess. Last we spoke a few months back I absolutely noticed what I suspected was long covid brain fog, polite for dementia. I didn't say anything until he brought it up in conversation that he's noticed he's been having trouble thinking. I kind of knew the answer but asked anyway: "have you been vaxxing and masking?" So he acts dumb because he knows how much I love that. So I said covid, have you caught covid. He says "oh, that virus, yeah a few times." I begged him to mask and vax. He said "I'm not putting that in me". I said "but that's what's destroying your brain, the covid you're putting in you." But he just shrugged it off with a que sera sera. It's so sad.

Much belated condolence. I agree to not worry about putting "yourself into the feelings of the person" who harmed your family. There's no need to relate to that and relating to that can be harmful to your own psyche. Why put your head into that mindset? You've got enough to deal with in finding a modicum of peace with your loss. But while empathy is often used for compassion which is putting empathy into action, not putting yourself into that person's mindset doesn't mean you can't have compassion for another person's situation whether they'd lost control or if in stupidity by accident found themselves harming others, then living with that guilt if they are so capable, or being punished, or whatever their situation. We can have compassion within our own beings about those externals without empathizing someone else's motivations, without getting into the guy's head to make his thoughts that might have lead to his directed harms or to his carelessness as our own. Similarly, I've never felt it the burden of the offended to then come up with some magical formular of thought to manifest a so-called forgiveness for someone else's horrendous action, especially if theirs was entirely willful which in part makes it horrendous. That doesn't mean that you do yourself any favors by going through life bitter. It's probably healthier to let go of a grudge as best you can. The trick here is to realize the nature of things which seems to me less forced, more natural to accept. For instance. if a viper bites me, am I required to "find" forgive for the viper--who requires that of me, the viper? viper don't care. viper is viper--or is it for me to simply realize its nature is to bite. Some forgiveness has it's place. But sometimes forgiveness is a misplaced burden. And sometimes forgiveness is nothing more than giving permission to do it again. Realization might also be a burden but it is rarely if ever misplaced.

Still in study but empathy might be at least in part physical. Mirror neuron - Wikipedia "people who are more empathic according to self-report questionnaires have stronger activations both in the mirror system for hand actions[66] and the mirror system for emotions,[61] providing more direct support for the idea that the mirror system is linked to empathy. Some researchers observed that the human mirror system does not passively respond to the observation of actions but is influenced by the mindset of the observer.[67] Researchers observed the link of the mirror neurons during empathetic engagement in patient care.[68]"

Beauty to me is to a degree measurable: symmetry of face, health of skin, strength & stature of physique etc. But sexuality is in the eye of the beholder. And if you don't think that's true, then you've never gone home with a stunning guy only to wind up in bed with his micro penis. /swoon I tended earlier to be attracted to the cocky bad boys, but also to the funny and the intelligent. My two partners happened to have pretty much all the qualities that attract me even though the 2nd guy was Hollywood handsome just not my normal type. My first guy was lust on first sight, laughter at first words and best buds by end of day. But also I've been attracted to very smart guys who no one ever said were beautiful and I've turned down beautiful guys who either hadn't the humor or the smarts. One guy, I remember, he was stunning--every head turned--then he came on to me, but he had the intelligence of a five year old. Real nice guy. But I couldn't go near that. I couldn't even figure out how he managed to get through a day and I remember hoping he had some good people at home to take care of him. So I get how the OP is using the word swoon though it seems a tad 18th century. To me swoon, if I was forced to use the word, is who I'd fall for and looks alone have never accomplished that, sober.

I've got a US property that not just provides a roof over my head but also additional income. My medical costs & insurance premium increases are somewhat limited here by staying with Medicare plus supplemental. Matching that level & quality of coverage overseas (I've priced it) about doubles the cost. Never mind winding up too old for any coverage overseas or certainly more limited choices. So to stay put, I wind up with enough to live as I enjoy plus enough for five or six months away each year which is my plan now, well, after covid vaccinations improve (hoping for 2024), then I'll start to travel again. Were I to sell here and move to an area with a lower cost of living overseas, I'd actually wind up with less excess money each year. So it's not always as simple as lowering your cost of living for rent, food & entertainment, especially considering aging into medical & insurance costs. Never mind that the more I age, the less I spend on entertainment. Now for fun I buy ace bandages and ice packs instead.

Yeah, exercise doesn't have to be routine as long as a person stays active. And partying is okay as long as you moderate. I hit the gym mostly for the cruising (oops, did I say that out loud). And I do swim regularly but only because I love it. Also I loved biking, especially mountain biking. Boy that was fun! My grandparents were athletic, mom was a swimmer as was her mom, plus my folks were boaters (lived on one when I was a teen), so I've been in water since I was a babe, spent much of life in a bathing suit. Swimming laps for me is my meditation. The exercise aspect is just bonus. The trick is keeping moving as we age. When younger you feel pain and burn through it to get stronger. But try to burn through it now and something's gonna break. So this is a whole new ballgame. Exercising if not careful can lead to pain, but becoming sedentary pretty much guarantees even more pain and leads to early death. Youth was filled with tricks but it's aging that's so tricky.

Often I laugh in the many situations that show we don't have the control we'd like to think we have, so I probably laugh most at the egomaniacs and control freaks (if my brother was here I'd be looking at him). And that holds true especially in our own health which often reflects to some degree in our looks. Not that I laugh at someone's ill fortunes, but its the optional nonsense many put themselves through or inflict upon the world that makes me laugh or sigh. A lot of life we have no control over. I never felt that karma was what people somehow deserve. Rather I've a more practical view that stuff just happens and karma is what we do with what happens. Cause & effect. Not magical thinking. I was lucky in looks, unlucky in arthritis. Karma is not that I deserved either, but how I handle both. That's why its so important to effort to be healthy because otherwise you wind up compounding hardships of the inevitable. I have spinal degeneration now (exacerbated by arthritis -- and nothing I could have done about either initiating in me). An old friend from junior high has the same spinal condition now but he's done nothing about it since. I've continued with my swims as best I can. I've lost range of motion, some strokes gone (butterfly, backstroke, frog kick weak) but my crawl (free style) is still good, side is good (& I do a combat version, real fun) and partial breaststroke. Can't do the mile a day I did for most of life but can still do a half mile before I feel symptoms. Also I learned physical therapy manipulations to keep the nerves coming out from the collapsing spine from getting too badly mangled and affecting my limbs. I tried getting my friend to care for himself similarly but he's just shot himself up with steroids to somewhat manage pain and now has wound up with a dead foot. Needs a brace to keep his foot from dropping. Oh, that's a good look! So even when things are getting tough, you can work to keep things from getting even worse, or at least delay that part. The effort we put into our own lives makes a difference. Because of regular exercise and eating properly all these decades, I don't have half the problems many of my cohorts now deal with. No strokes, no heart attacks, no stents, no breathing problems. Brain still works. No HIV, no long covid. I purposely did not put my hand up for the extra suffering in life. I figured there was enough already. Same with just looks. I've known plenty of people who were never drop dead gorgeous but cared for themselves and were quite accomplished and distinguished in their own rights with their own obvious sexual attractiveness. Alternatively, I've known quite a few guys who were so handsome when younger that they intimidated even me (as cocky me never intimidated easily) but they didn't take care, smoked instead, too much drink, too many drugs and they aged very differently than their youth would have otherwise indicated. Some I'd be hard pressed to recognize today by their own doings. Even more of them are already dead which was so rude of them. First we learn to accumulate, then we learn to let go. Of all the things, of our friends, of our looks, of our lives.

Maybe they just wanted to be the pretty one. So often heads turned when I'd walk into a bar that it'd make me uncomfortable. Now? Not so much. And that's even worse, lol. Some vanities just can't be pleased. I actually did turn heads and guys would woof me in passing (woof, for you str8 people, is a good thing) but outside of responses that always surprised me I was never really aware of my own looks. Like I didn't know until much later in life that so many girls were after me when we were kids. I'm still friends with people from grade school who have since fessed up that they had the hots for me back then. Even if I wasn't gay, I wouldn't have had a clue. My two partners (RIP & RIP) were super hot though the second was not really my type but we just got along too well in pretty much every aspect of life. Great guys. I miss them both terribly. My first guy was the funnest. He always got us drunk before we'd head out so "everyone else would look better." Now I go out after everyone else is drunk so I look better (actually haven't gone out since covid and I won't until I see efficacy numbers of next gen nasal vax). Looks stayed intact from childhood through teens and well into my 50s. Most of it is luck of genes. Both sets of grandparents were stunning, mom was gorgeous and so youthful in thinking and looks that it was tough to come to terms with her aging because she never looked like any one of her cohorts. Part of my looks might be my Peter Pan syndrome, just kidding, but I do laugh a lot. And part was having kept myself healthy. I've swam a mile a day for most of life, hiked, biked (road and mtn), plant based most my life, no sodas etc. Well into my 60s I've got a zero coronary artery calcium score so pretty much the arteries of a 30something, thank you very much. But also with the arthritis of a 90 year old so exercise is getting problematic. People still look at me with surprise when I tell them how old I am. I'm getting real sick of hearing "you look good for your age". I much preferred when the guys went "WOOF!"

I get that you don't like it, but that's the fact. Any "ifs" you or anyone cares to insert, those are the speculations Your inability to delineate speculations from facts is not my wordsmithing. You have a nice day too.

What you earlier called projection is not the magical thinking or even a strategizing based on the possibilities of any various speculations; rather, it is the mathematics of known variables even if those might vary to some degree (future # of deaths, # of workers, GDP #s, caps on taxed income levels, etc). The current status report says as currently structured, there will be cuts, period. (and note that the last time there were changes was decades ago during Reagan. Those changes to fund further barely passed and only with taxing for the first time these very benefits). That there will be cuts based on current knowns is called a (verifiable) fact, not called a (best guess) speculation even as it projects into the future because it represents the current conditions. These current conditions existed yesterday, they exist today and they will exist tomorrow barring outside force to change them. The statement was not a speculation yesterday about today, rather it was just as true today as it was yesterday. Nor is it a speculation today about today. Nor even a speculation today about tomorrow because that projection is not speculating on possible future changed conditions. So that part of the statement is a fact even if such a fact might be later changed within the context of some future changed conditions about which you are free to speculate but your speculating into your future that does not make the facts today a speculation today. So when I say the current condition of SSI is something people ought consider in planning for their futures, my suggestion is based on a fact, not on a speculation. Speculating on what might be tomorrow based in part upon the facts of today does not transmute today's facts into speculations. That water now is water now is a fact That SSI now is set to be insolvent & thereby reduce payouts is a fact That water might evaporate to become gas or freeze to become ice in the future should conditions change is a speculation That SSI might continue into the extended future to provide the same benefits people count on today is gas, is ice, is a speculation

That something isn't locked into or out of changing tomorrow doesn't make it a speculation today. Water that is water today is water today. It is stating a fact to say the water today is indeed water; it is not pondering a speculation that the water is now water. Everyone today can try walking on the water that is water today and everyone will have the same experience of knowing the water is water in fact, not water in speculation. That water today might be ice tomorrow if the weather turns cold enough for long enough, that is speculation for it exhibits conjecture of what might be future changed conditions without current evidence of those such conditions coming to pass. It might wind up being a warmer winter than usual so the water might never freeze, for instance. But even though the water today might turn to ice (or remain water) tomorrow is a speculation, that doesn't change the none speculative fact that water today is water today. And if you think that saying water today is a speculation just because it can change to ice tomorrow, go ahead today and try walking on it. Just as acting on what is known now, people can plan based on what nonspeculative facts are known today and both can keep your head above water. Then should the pond of speculation freeze over, well, lucky us, we've got a whole new surface to skate upon.

As of this writing, benefits are indeed set to be reduced; that's not speculation. That's a fact known today. Speculation would be hoping the government fixes Social Security before then so that benefits are not reduced at all. Speculation might also be the possibility that if SS is not fixed, then maybe greater reduction would come from those getting larger payouts, with lesser or no reductions from lower payouts, or possibly reductions by other means testings. Here is the official 2023 report https://www.ssa.gov/oact/TRSUM/ which reduces the reduction slightly but advances the date by two years over my previous post. "The Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund will be able to pay 100 percent of total scheduled benefits until 2033, one year earlier than reported last year. At that time, the fund's reserves will become depleted and continuing program income will be sufficient to pay 77 percent of scheduled benefits." As to the Medicare info (being not transferable overseas), that's also fact, not speculation. I merely gave an example of how that fact might be navigated. What could be speculated there however would be hoping for a possibility of Medicare one day being transferable. I recall years back a Philippine American group lobbying that but I'm not aware of their success or of continuance of similar efforts.

love it, also be my daddy lol. My grandpa looked that good. When visiting friends wanted to play tennis, I'd send them out with grandpa. They'd come home & he'd still be out on the court. I've done pretty good but arthritis makes it tough. Well into my 60s I've still got a zero coronary calcium score, thank you very much. My brother? Not so much. Didn't take care of himself, now with heart attack and stroke and stents and dementia and yikes, what did you do to yourself! He had such good examples in life. Mom very health conscious, grandpa an athlete, I was always good with eating and swam about a mile a day (down to half that these days). And I knew to do this because I watched them age next to their cohorts and decided decades ago that I wanted to be like them, not like their decrepit friends. My brother made his choice too. Sad. If good health and longevity increases retirement age, what isn't a mixed blessing?