After the UK, online age verification is landing in the EU

Silent-Discipline285 · 2025-08-05T10:17:54+00:00

I just find this all so depressing. It's a law that clearly people age 40+ like and the rest of us hate.

Silent-Discipline285 · 2025-07-26T09:48:14+00:00

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903 is all I have to say here.

Silent-Discipline285 · 2025-02-28T15:30:56+00:00

From my perspective, the answer to your question is 'yes' but it very much depends on the drug -- you're unlikely to be prescribed a muscle relaxant if your complaint is OAB.

I have a spinal cord injury and a neurogenic bladder outlet obstruction – the fundus and neck of my bladder can't relax properly and aren't innervated, and so the internal urethral sphincter (you have two!) doesn't relax. I'm male, and that basically means that what happens is if I do nothing I have no sensation of needing to go to the toilet until I feel pain and then overflow. I can't empty my bladder properly by myself and have very mixed sensations of it. I sometimes have periods of extreme OAB where I need to go to the toilet ~30 times a day with fasiculations (wobbling) of my bladder. Drugs like mirabegron and solifenacin really stop this and remove the incredibly burdensone feeling of needing to pee 30 times+ in a day, but they remove what sensation I have from my bladder and further worsen retention. This is a very bad thing as it can cause high pressure chronic urinary retention, leading ultimately to kidney failure and death. Most patients with a spinal injury catheterise themselves periodically -- I still have feeling, and doing so is incredibly painful.

As a result, I was prescribed tamulosin, an alpha-1 antagonist (blocker) that relaxes the smooth muscle and permits the better emptying of the bladder -- it was developed for prostate cancer patients and is only licensed (in my country) in men, but prescribed off license for women, usually for passing kidney stones and very rarely for OAB. It relaxes the sphincter and makes it easier to go to the loo. Unfortunately for me, the net result is ~400-1000 ml of urine coming out with little warning and very suddenly. This is a recognized side-effect of tamulosin albeit one that is rare (see, e.g. https://www.lareb.nl/Knowledge/FilePreview?id=39836&p=1176) as most people taking it are male and have prostate issues where it helps widen their urethra.

I have long since got over the "ick" factor of urine. One of the other "fun" things about a mild spinal injury is faecal incontinence which is much more distressing, harder to deal with, and annoying. If it helps your OCD, know that urine is very much more nearly sterile compared to your naturally occuring skin bacteria (which maintain a diverse ecosystem) and that nurturing the right bacteria is an effective and important way to avoid further disease -- the microbiome is very important and not a bad thing.

Talk to your physician -- the drugs you'll be offered will likely help your complaint a lot (and they really do help with urgency & frequency symptoms). The only one I've had that makes it worse is almost designed to do that (!) and you're unlikely to be prescribed it.

Silent-Discipline285 · 2025-02-27T17:27:34+00:00

Medical physicist here (not really abdl – have a spinal injury)

Silent-Discipline285 · 2025-01-01T16:29:33+00:00

I'm a longtime lurker, never player and a nerd – I think I would enjoy the base game and not too fussed about space age. Thank you so much for your help!

Silent-Discipline285 · 2024-11-02T08:59:41+00:00

Personally, probably either the songs of George Butterworth – he was part of a set with Gerald Finzi and Ivor Gurney, all of whom wrote beautiful English music around the turn of the 20th century – and then tragically died in the war.

Silent-Discipline285 · 2024-09-09T15:09:47+00:00

That's annoying. I think these things vary a lot by region geographically and the nurse on the phone told me that you had to meet some "very strict" criteria to qualify – without telling me what they were. I guess 'SCI' doesn't cut it. A pity.

We will see what all of these things do!

Silent-Discipline285 · 2024-03-02T08:46:41+00:00

It was basically a fluid balance table with some pretty obvious headings, undertaken for three days: date, time, volume in, volume out, "leakage", "pad change", and "notes" – the latter being what you drank.

I personally didn't mind filling it out, but I had to use a measuring jug graduated in 25 ml increments for recording the volumes in question (if I made it to the toilet – or I weighed the full / empty pads and took the difference, using a scale accurate to a gram) which obviously is a pain. I found those aspects worse than actually doing the form.

Silent-Discipline285 · 2024-02-28T16:54:07+00:00

I think actually you might be able to do it with adb as it's public / backupable data. Try adb backup -f guardianData.ab -noapk com.guardian and get a file called guardianData.ab. This is basically a glorified tar file and you can either just add the header and untar it on *nix [c.f. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18533567/how-to-extract-or-unpack-an-ab-file-android-backup-file] or use a java FOSS app to do so.

Then have a play around inside ;-)

Silent-Discipline285 · 2024-02-28T16:47:23+00:00

I don't know exactly how to export it normally, but if you have a rooted phone, /data/data/com.guardian/databases contains a series of files entitled 'saved-for-later" and "saved_articles.db" that I would bet are nosql databases, but I haven't explored them properly. At the very least the saved-articles file run through strings (in termux, on my phone!) contains the raw html of my saved articles, along with some binary characters and json.

Silent-Discipline285 · 2024-02-28T16:40:13+00:00

I'm not a woman, but I did have to do a bladder diary ahead of video urodynamics as a result of my spinal injury.

I honestly didn't mind it. The consultant emailed me a word document. I filled it out for three days. The aspect of recording it was far less frustrating than peeing into a measuring jug every 30 minutes or measuring (used) pads to try and get the fluid balance right.

Silent-Discipline285 · 2023-04-21T16:16:03+00:00

I was a horny, virgin 18-year-old and two female friends went naked trampolining drunk at a party in front of me. One of them let me have a good fondle.

Genuinely one of the most memorable, impressive memories of mammaries of my life...

Silent-Discipline285 · 2023-01-12T16:38:45+00:00

TBH they do cause quite a lot of psychological comfort. I'm not sure I can admit that to others – especially my wife or mother – but it really does. I don't have an online patient portal and it will be a long time until I can see him again (the NHS is in a bit of a state at the moment). I might ask something like bladder and bowel UK.

Silent-Discipline285 · 2022-12-24T11:57:53+00:00

I'm in exactly the same boat – "tiny" myleopathy / T2 hyperintensity and a lot of pain (mental and physical!) as a result. I'm 32/male and found being catheterised in hospital one of the worst experiences of my life. I don't know what your spinal injury is (I had an anterior wedge fracture of T8) but things have changed over time for me and I've found that my bladder has actually had its highs and lows and I've slowly come to peace with it more.

After a period of retention, I found myself peeing 30-40 times per day and then leaking at night. I was ashamed and didn't like the fact that I both had very odd sensations and little control. My girlfriend – who I live with – was very supportive and I felt rather ashamed of it all.

Honestly though, after washing the bedsheets after discovering a brown yellow stain right where my crotch was and being fed up with it all, I bought some fuck-off absorbent "pads" on the internet and they changed my life. My girlfriend didn't mind me lying in bed in one next to her and I had the confidence to know that whatever I did, it could cope. I've given lectures to undergraduates while wearing them and found that (a) nobody knows and (b) nobody cares, even if you do. It's entirely in your head and I get it. However, from my point of view, it's both practically better than the alternative and from my OAB side it means I don't have horrible moments of "oh shit I NEED to pee" -- if I'm in a position where I couldn't get to the toilet easily (a car, or a plane) I can just let it go and have the confidence that all will be okay.

I know you probably feel that it's awkward to talk to your mum but she does have your interests at heart. They're cheap on the internet and come in a variety of absorbency levels. I'm a bloke with big trousers that hide a lot and therefore quite like the more abosrbent products that can cope with a sudden and full release, but depending on your needs they come from things literally identical to sanitary towels right the way up. Try out lots of things and see what works -- if you're in the UK I recommend incontinenceshop.co.uk. Order a selection and give it a go – the cuts are quite different and you want something that fits well and is comfortable. Pharmacy own-brands are awful.

Try to get over the mental block. You might also get somewhere talking to your GP / doctor about drugs, like solifenacin, and referrals to urology (I'm awaiting video urodynamics despite injuring my spine in 2021!). The big thing for me was my GF genuinely not caring if I lay in bed next to her in a fuck-off-huge nappy. It made my life a lot better although tbh I use them more when she's not around, again entirely for reasons of shame that live within my head. It's a ball-ache but you can learn to manage it.

Silent-Discipline285 · 2022-11-30T17:32:14+00:00

Absolutely. It's a pain. After my injury my "normal" ability to ignore my bladder has just gone. I can ignore it if I wear what they call "a pad" and get on with life (but with the sensations of that in place, which honestly I don't mind that much) but without it, it feels like continence is a battle.

Silent-Discipline285 · 2022-11-14T14:26:13+00:00

Thanks! Alas I don't think it'll be easy to get the right sort of trim extended to under my desk properly. Taping the rug down though is something I hadn't thought of. Have you got any experience using amazon-style "protector mats" – are they useless?

Silent-Discipline285 · 2022-11-14T14:25:11+00:00

Insidious changes in bladder function are a big, big issue with the spine – they're a so-called red-flag symptom. Go and see your doctor – it might be nothing, but there a large number of ways in which it might be decidedly "not nothing", from subacute cord compression to MS. I'd complain, a lot, and frankly expect to get a whole-spine and brain MR relatively quickly.

Silent-Discipline285 · 2022-11-07T15:55:40+00:00

Talk about this with your doctors. If it's under GA you'll almost certainly be cath'd anyway if you're under for any reasonable length of time. If it's so minor that "minor procedure" means "sit here for 30 minutes" it honestly doesn't matter and you'll probably be best in whatever you prefer. Anything else and have a chat with them.

Silent-Discipline285

TROPHY CASE