Random Questions

I know that the stock market is a made up collective delusion and that if anyone could predict IPOs it would immediately crash to a halt but… is there anything you can probably say about what an IPO will be given how much the series B and C raised?

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That’s the thing, I don’t need anything special other than, do what I ask and use common sense. The last catsitter didn’t do some things that I asked.

Like, I said “please leave everything as it was, if something is closed and you open it, please close it again or there will be a cat in it.” I guess I should’ve specifically said “if you use my toilet, please put the lid back down so that there does not end up with a cat in it.” She actually sent me photos of Boy Kitty trying to get into the open toilet! At least this time he did not fall in, I’ve no idea whether he drank out of it. I ended up texting my then-landlord, who was at my building shoveling snow anyway, from the beach in Hawaii to please come up to our unit and put the lid down.

How do I vet for “do you actually follow directions” without seeming high maintenance or rude? Other than checking references, which didn’t work last time?

They’d be doing morning and evening visits, not house sitting.

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Write a really specific ad and see if they follow the directions in it? (Contact me via X at such and such time and tell me these 3 things etc…?)

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Huh, I didn’t consider writing an ad myself, have just been contacting local services. Interesting!

I’m in a similar headspace trying to find a nanny, and I joined a local group and am writing a FB ad. They send references and I’m going to do a background check etc. There might be something similar for pet sitters id imagine?

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I moved my backyard question to its own thread, with pictures. I’d appreciate any input! Please help my patio/backyard be nicer

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Does anyone here subscribe to the premium version of Scott’s Cheap Flights? How do you like it? I subscribe to the free version but have never booked any of the deals.

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How do people feel about this?

IMO

I feel like this has to do with the idea that sex = estrogen and testosterone levels. But like, there is a lot of variation within the sexes when it comes to hormones and some of it is racially correlated. Also, sex advantages are so much more complex than just estrogen/testosterone, and I feel like you could easily argue that naturally higher testosterone in a woman conflates way less advantage than other physical differences in the sexes like male’s higher bone density, faster speed, larger skeleton size, increased muscle recovery/build speed, larger lung size, larger heart size, lower injury rate, etc, which can all exist without high (current) testosterone levels.

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I wish I had it bookmarked for the sources, but I’ve seen several threads about this on FB in my trans groups. Did you know that male and female ranges for testosterone completely overlap? The male range goes much higher than female, but there are men whose T is just as low as the lowest female T. Also, there’s no correlation between T levels and athletic performance, and there are elite male athletes whose T is at the low end of the range.

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I did know there was overlap, especially if you include people with endocrine issues like pcos or adrenal hyperplasia. I also think it’s interesting that some people are now including those disorders in “intersex” (when you hear 6% of people are intersex they are including things like pcos) even though most of the people in that group are objectively not intersex and don’t consider themselves intersex.

I’m also not aware of testosterone testing for men’s sports, but maybe it’s a thing? AFAIK if a man is competing against men and he has naturally higher than average testosterone (or higher/lower estrogen)…I don’t think anything happens. He’s allowed to compete because he is still a man. This just feels like another complete misunderstanding of female biology and it’s nuts that it’s getting so little coverage (compared to, say, the weed suspension).

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This was studies done on male athletes, not testing done by the sports bodies themselves.

Also, why are hormone levels different than all the other physical advantages athletes possess?

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I don’t know! It’s super arbitrary to just go by hormones. My guess is that they are using hormone levels because it’s just…an easy thing to test to declare fairness or unfairness within sex segregated sports? IDK, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

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I want to projectile vomit on it. That’s how I feel about it.

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Biological sex is a ridiculously complicated biological topic, and gender even more so though. An arbitrary threshold of a single hormone is inherently oversimplified and unfair.

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I uh… citation? This is pure misinformation. If this were even remotely true, anabolic androgenic steroids wouldn’t be used in every sport to gain an advantage. Along with hGH, IGF-1, HCG, LH, FSH, A-dex, Clomid, etc. People use this stuff for a reason. And women who take exogenous testosterone experience a thing called virilization. It’s… kind of how you transition F-> M.

Men with sub 300 ng/dl often experience pretty extreme symptoms, including depression, lethargy, and low libido. The “normal” range for men includes men in the 80s & 90s. 200 is normal, but not for a healthy 25 year old male.

The male range for “normal” keeps getting lowered too. Used to be 1400ish. Then 1100. Now under 1000.

Men aren’t tested for testosterone levels per se, but they are tested for evidence of raising them through exogenous supplementation. This is how people get suspensions for using steroids. Steroids are just… well, testosterone or derivatives. Testosterone causes increased nitrogen retention, increased muscle mass, increased metabolism, increased oxygen efficiency… literally everything an athlete would want. Hell, dianabol was specifically made to enhance our olympic athletes.

We have to stop denying science because we don’t like how it feels. Steroid hormones have functions in the body. You change those, the body changes. What a person does with them should be up to the person IMO.

Ugh. Saying that it’s normal for a male to have 200 ng/dl because someone had it naturally is akin to saying that not producing insulin should be considered normal because it happens. It’s not good. It’s not healthy. If the nation didn’t have this weird obsession with how many times some guy in tight pants hit a ball with a stick, this would be a whole different conversation, but the fear of steroids has ruined all reasonable talk about hormones.

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I can’t find the source unfortunately (did try to look).

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It’s really manufactured to me to qualify this because the human body produces 50 different hormones and people think it’s only estrogen and testosterone? It’s soooooooo appalling Freudian that our culture is so obsessed with E vs T. Like an Olympic female sprinter has a WHOLE heck of a lot more going on with her hormones than a couch potato who’s also XX.

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Yeah I agree with @brute on this. There is definitely an advantage to higher testosterone in sports, which is why it’s tested as the threshold for competing in women’s sports. I just think it’s absurd to only use that number when it’s entirely possible for a woman to have naturally occurring high levels of testosterone. Those higher levels will increase her performance, but I don’t think that makes her unfair competition for other women since it is natural variation.

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Also I just read that lowered estrogen causes an increase in inflammation (hence you’re more likely to get UTIs on your period). So as a total layperson theorizing: doesn’t a female athlete with naturally low levels of E face an uphill battle to recover and improve performance if her inflammation is much higher? Does the naturally very high E female athlete have an unfair advantage because of extremely low inflammation and rapid recovery? I mean …I would think of course not. There’s 50 hormones and the human body doesn’t live or die on E vs T. Of course high T can result in a person having increased muscle mass. But … Not every XX person with naturally high T is going to become an Olympic athlete. These athletes dedicate their lives to this. If their body is suited for it god bless them. Michael Phelps is an incredible athlete because his body produces very little lactic acid. Is it “fair?” No but who cares

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I remember this being a really interesting piece when I watched it last year. https://youtu.be/MiCftTLUzCI

(No time currently to rewatch, but I recall it being a good primer on the whole thing )

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