I was experiencing some slight hearing loss because of a noisy environment at work. The audiologist looked in my ears and said she was worried that I might have done compacted earwax and asked if I used Q-tips. I sometimes did. She told me to stop and to clean them out by putting olive oil in each one, holding it for a while then letting it run out into tissue paper. I can’t remember how much or for how long, but it definitely did the trick.

I can relate to the picture, very much, even though I don’t use Q-tips any more.

I use drummer’s ear buds now and they’re great because my hearing recovered quite a lot, the tinnitus went away entirely and I can hear what people are saying when I’m wearing them.

Well, perhaps it might be possible to catch some tummy bug from someone else, I don’t know, but you inhale the fecal particles when you flush anyway I suppose.

The lid stays down all the time (well, in between use) at our house, with the idea that you minimise the amount of fecal particles floating around your room. I know it doesn’t eliminate it, but I want to flush as much as possible of the poo and not inhale it, so I insist on the lid being closed.

I’m not claiming danger, I just don’t like the thought.

I wouldn’t put toilet paper up my nose - I don’t trust other toilet users to not touch the toilet roll and I don’t trust the room to not have fecal particles from lidless flushing on things. I don’t want tu put someone else’s poo up my nose.

Well, spirit of something, but whatever it is it isn’t ‘holy’.

I’m happy to let mods carve out a bunch of niche communities with their own preferences. The fediverse is a big place. If you don’t like instances that are protective of LGBT+ folks you’re cutting it down a bit, but genuinely, you seem to be deliberately picking topics that troll the specific community you’re posting on, then you complained that they took it down. Post where your post will be welcome, stop complaining when you post where you already know it’s not. Reddit and twitter are pretty right wing and troll friendly. Maybe you’ll be happier there.

Fair enough, yeah, you don’t want to be reading anything more complicated than a sentence or two, otherwise the might be a risk of developing understanding or perspective. Best avoided.

Sorry to have overestimated your attention span.

Well, whilst I abhor the violent terrorism that Hamas have committed and abhor the overwhelming overreaction and horrific vengence that the state of Israel have, as usual, immediately begun, it’s just not accurate to call what preceded recent events “peace”.

The people I know who have separately and recently visited Israel and Palestine variously called it “viscious apartheid”, “appalling”, “military occupation” and phrases like that. No one called it peace.

I think you erroneously assumed that because it wasn’t in the news, violence was not occurring, whereas I think it’s more accurate to say that it wasn’t in the news because the violence was so everyday and constant that there was nothing new to say about it. A child getting run over by a car won’t make the national news either, for almost exactly the same reason.

OK, let me put it another way. I don’t think there’s a safe amount of incel writing to read and I think that the phrase “involuntary celibate” is loaded with resentment from the start.

I think it’s OK for any of us to be unhappy that we’re not in a sexual relationship, but I strongly believe that categorising onesself as having celibacy imposed is, at the outset, inventing a fictional collective will and conspiracy on the part of a large and nebulous group of people, who are individually and collectively not even slightly responsible for any individual’s or group’s happiness or sex life. As a self-label, it inexorably leads to blaming others.

It’s true that some teenaged girls can be powerfully cruel, dismissive, hurtful and nasty to boys who take an interest in them, and at those times, those girls are guilty of psychologically damaging the teenaged boys they have emotionally attacked, but they are still not in any way whatsoever responsible for anybody’s sex life nor in any way whatsoever for the lack thereof.

It’s also an oxymoron. The word celibate is only correctly used for someone who has chosen to abstain from sex for some reason (usually religious). It’s logically impossible to involuntarily abstain, because abstinence is a choice but definition. For example, if you are ineligible to vote or someone prevents you somehow from boring, you aren’t abstaining. You are only abstaining if you can vote but choose not to.

So, in summary, involuntary celibate is a phrase that deliberately twists meaning and twists morality, placing responsibility and blame on a group of people who are neither responsible or to blame.

You claim that involuntary celibate has a real, obvious and clear meaning, but I disagree with everything in that assertion. Involuntary abstinence is meaningless as a concept, lacks clarity of thought and obscures meaning. The actual real, but hidden and non-obvious meaning in the phrase is (erroneously and fictionally) that women are to blame for men’s lack of sex, so in fact the meaning of the phrase is far from obvious and real, as evidenced by your mistaken belief that it’s a neutral term. It’s a term born in hatred and designed to foster blame and hatred.

You might well believe that you’re using it innocently and I’m good faith, and if so, please realise that you’re very much at risk of being drawn into a hate group.

You are, I’m afraid, deluding yourself if you think that you’re one of the non-racist MAGA fans, just as you’re deluding yourself if you think you’re an incel who isn’t incorrectly blaming other people for your lack of sex or that you aren’t on the road to toxic misogyny with that way of thinking.

There are many things wrong with society, with gender relationships, and with dating expectations, but women and men’s absulote freedom to not have sex whenever, wherever and with whomever they feel isn’t one of them.

What’s your definition of MAGA, just make America great again, or also election denial?