I have interpreted it less as “the hobbits are less powerful”, and more as “what would a powerful hobbit even want?”.

If a hobbit had all the power in Middle Earth, they would have an amazingly cozy hobbit hole with the best food and their parties and garden would be the envy of every hobbit and probably some elves and men. Hobbits don’t really have much interest in conquest, and their definition of dominance includes being well-liked or admired by those they dominate.

That is an insult to Babish.

My great grandfather was an Italian immigrant. My father is looking into getting an Italian passport. Maybe being a soon-to-be physician will improve my chances of getting one too. (Maybe I’ll switch from learning French to learning Italian too)

The problem is how he got that $55 billion to donate.

Also check out www.pirateship.com

Unfortunately, the swing to the right and the rise of shit like “Blue Lives Matter” has changed this in some places. When I was in the western part of Virginia for school, there was a local car dealership called “Pinkerton” and I saw their dealership license plate frames and emblem on a LOT of cars in the area. Many of those cars also had the Gadsden vanity plates and a bunch of blue lives matter, trump, etc. stickers on them.

The way this really works in medicine is that they determine the solution that will result in the greatest number of quality person years. So if you have an older person with lots of health problems and a younger person who only has the current problem, obviously saving the younger, healthier one will have the greatest positive impact. This got used during COVID with the ventilators and is a consideration for eligibility for donor organs.

I thought the point was to be better than Hamas? Of course they mistreat detainees, but that doesn’t mean Israel gets a blank check to do the same. Also, many of the Palestinians currently being held by Israel without charges in indefinite detention are innocent civilians, including many from the West Bank. Israel has been illegally detaining and mistreating thousands upon thousands of Palestinians without any kind of due process or concern for human rights for decades. Pointing a finger at Hamas and saying “Look! They’re doing it too!! October 7th!!1!!” is not a valid argument for how Israel has been treating captive Palestinians for years.

The way that Hamas treats Palestinians is partially the responsibility of Netanyahu and the Likud given that they provided Hamas with material support to take power in the first place. Also, the fact that Israelis stormed an IDF base in protest of the punishment of IDF thugs that anally raped innocent Palestinians to death with rifles tells me a lot about what Israel thinks of all Palestinians, not just the ones that are actually part of Hamas.

Edit: Here’s an article describing the way the IDF treats doctors and paramedics. (Who are not members of Hamas) https://www.democracynow.org/2024/8/27/hrw_report

Not even a sip for me. I was offered small amounts of champagne or wine at special occasions, but I never drank any because I could smell the alcohol on it and didn’t want to.

I’ve just always been some variant of the “mom friend” and after I turned 21, I was still the DD most of the time.

Nope. The first time I drank any alcohol ever was on my 21st birthday. My Dad made me a gin and tonic with Bombay Sapphire, and that set the standard for the kind of alcohol I will drink. It’s a good thing I’m a lightweight because I only drink the expensive stuff. (The cheap crap burns too much.)

I’ve tried to drink coffee a couple times. I never was successful at it. My body just hates something in coffee and it just comes right back up before even hitting my stomach. So, I guess it’s gone down my esophagus, but never further than that.

I end up going to the ER way more than I want to. It’s really annoying; if you walk into an urgent care or a regular doctor’s office (besides my regular care providers, they’re used to me now) and say you think you have a kidney infection or other kidney problems and you just need antibiotics, they just go “NOPE” and yeet you out the door to go to the ER. So far, I have been successful in preventing them from calling an ambulance for me.

Never have I ever drank alcohol illegally or underage.

As an absurdly fervent Tolkien fan, people bringing up the Eagles spikes my blood pressure in a way that cannot be good in the long run.

I think the other part of it is that something like a full colonoscopy is a lot safer if the patient isn’t moving at all given that one of the biggest and most serious risks is poking a hole through the colon with the camera.

That sounds more like a waking sedation. Those will get used in American medicine if it’s just a sigmoidoscopy (the last bit of the rectum and colon), but for a full colonoscopy, they really prefer to conk you out a bit more than that.

The ones I observed with my attending physician were using twilight sedation with propofol, and I think they got small doses of fentanyl to manage discomfort/pain during and right after the procedure. The propofol lets them knock you out for a while without putting you under so much that they have to intubate. (That is anesthesia’s job though, so it might be recorded differently on your records)

The ones I observed with my attending physician were using twilight sedation with propofol, and I think they got small doses of fentanyl to manage discomfort/pain during and right after the procedure.