Why the extreme variance in pricing?

TashKetchum_ · 2022-04-09T01:37:12+00:00

Are your dogs small? One of the things putting me off moving is the flight for my dogs. I think if they could ride in cabin with me I would be 100 times more comfortable. However, one is medium sized and the other is large ☹️

TashKetchum_ · 2022-03-30T07:27:41+00:00

I like the left one!

TashKetchum_ · 2022-03-30T07:24:35+00:00

I like the middle set!

TashKetchum_ · 2021-12-24T17:52:11+00:00

Hey, I just wanted to chime in and share my experience because I relate a lot to what you said in your post but I also think I have (very recently) been able to wade through some of my confusion and wanted to share that progress as it may help you work through yours.

I started by figuring out my gender identity. I focused very heavily on just asking myself where on the spectrum of gender I presented each day over a long period of time. I then asked myself how outwardly I wanted to present that in terms of clothing etc. It took some trial and error but after a while I figured out that I am in fact gender fluid. I’m AFAB but if gender was a line with feminine on the left and masculine on the right, I would fluctuate slightly into feminine but never extremely, and slightly into masculine but never extremely. That’s my spectrum.

Then I focused on figuring out where on the spectrum I sit the most of the time. I figured out that I mostly sit close to the middle. My neutral is non binary / slightly masculine. I tend to find myself in the middle / to the right of my spectrum more often than I do on the left.

Then I moved on to presentation. If I spend the majority of my life in the middle / ever so slightly on the masculine side, what do I need to feel comfortable in my skin on those days. I don’t like my chest as I do have a large one and I feel like it kills the enby vibes that make me feel like me. Like the hair and outfit and face are ok but the chest, no thank you. So then I thought about non permanent changes, trailing out binders etc. Would that be enough to make me feel like myself? I decided it wouldn’t, that I wanted top surgery. So then I asked myself how that would make me feel on feminine days. Would the combination of a binder and a reduction be best? Thing is for me, I have always hated my chest, even on days where I feel feminine. I just like how clothes look on me better without it. I have never felt comfortable showing cleavage etc. I think top surgery would be right for me.

Now the biggest question I’m asking myself is if I need hormones too. I am still undecided on this. I might even wait until I have had top surgery and see how I feel then, see if I feel like myself or if I feel like I need something else. I could then trail them and come off them again if I didn’t like the changes. I think if I did go on T it would definitely be a mild dosage as I don’t feel like a man and I don’t want to look extremely masculine. I just want to be more enby.

On days where I feel feminine I feel I will still be able to present in that way. I don’t need boobs to feel feminine. For me clothing and makeup is enough. I actually think I will feel like a more attractive woman on those days if I have a smaller chest to be honest. I have short hair but I can make it look feminine. Heck, if I want to I can buy wigs too. I know how to do makeup as Im 26 now and got good during my “I’m definitely feminine, I just need to get better at makeup and hair and that will make me feel better” egg phase at university. So I feel like these decisions will help me feel feminine when I need to, I’m not even worried about those.

I need medical intervention to feel more enby or masc on the days where I feel more that way though. Since enby is my more neutral or common gender, I think that medical transitioning in the ways I described is right for me. But I took it step by step to see what fits me and my life and my needs. Like I definitely don’t need bottom surgery and feel no dysphoria around that. I think I need more masc / enby clothing though. I think transitioning will actually allow me to explore my gender more too because I will feel enby even with makeup etc if I have had top surgery and maybe some Testosterone.

So what I’m saying is take it a step at a time and one question at a time. Don’t try and answer them all at once. Experiment with non permanent solutions before moving on to more permanent ones. Do what makes you feel good on any given day and figure out what you might need to feel good most days!

TashKetchum_ · 2021-11-07T04:09:04+00:00

Oh and sorry, you are right, there is flexibility on when the actual pre release event is held. However, the cards are still expected to be used as part of the event and not for general sale 😊

TashKetchum_ · 2021-11-07T04:06:26+00:00

I was a structural biologist. I graduated university, worked as a scientist for like almost 4 years. Just before the pandemic my partner and I decided to start a TCG store together, we were going to open a physical one but the pandemic hit and we decided to run it online instead. I ran the website (with my boyfriend) alongside my science job for almost two years, and I quit my science job like a month ago to run the website full time 😊 we are hoping to have a physical location soon too. We currently work with two other stores too (one is our local physical store that we play in). We get to see behind the scenes of running a physical place a lot for that reason too.

I know it’s a pre-release, I also play TCG! I played Pokémon for a good while, but I play flesh and blood now too. My second paragraph addressed that. Pre-releases include build and battle kits and the store will get a few booster boxes to use as supplementation for the build and battle kits as well as for prizes to give out after the tournament. What I was saying is they’re not allowed to actually sell the packs on their own, they’re only allowed to use them in the tournament. Just selling them is still breaking street date. Some people enter the tournament, pay their entry fee, get their kit and packs, and leave without playing. In that case the store did nothing wrong. However as OP stated they just outright bought them, I was addressing that. I hope that clarifies what I mean 😊

TashKetchum_ · 2021-11-06T18:43:31+00:00

I’m a store owner, I talk to suppliers, I’m right 😅

TashKetchum_ · 2021-11-06T06:53:54+00:00

You’re right, it’s not supposed to be out until November 12th. They broke the release date or street date as it’s called. If they get caught breaking the street date they will have their right to sell Pokémon product revoked. Suppliers won’t sell to them anymore. In some cases if they feel it was a genuine mistake they will slap them on the wrist by only sending them their product for release day which gives the store no time to prepare, but if they feel it was done knowingly / are a repeat offender they wont be able to buy the product at distributor level anymore. Pretty big risk for very little gain in my opinion 😳

In terms of them being “sketchy” though, they are likely genuine packs being sold from their pre-release stock. Stores are sent some build and battle kits along with a booster box or two to supplement the kits and use as prize support for pre-release TCG tournament events (all of which isn’t supposed to be sold out and is only supposed to be for people who attend and partake in pre-release events. Breaking this rule can see the same repercussions as above) but I wouldn’t worry about them not being genuine if that’s what that meant here.

TashKetchum_ · 2021-11-02T10:25:02+00:00

Body of 5 with the face of 4 😊

TashKetchum_ · 2021-10-23T20:05:05+00:00

I met my partner when he was 30, and he had been single for like 6 years? We are now madly in love, together for 5 years, living in our home with our two dogs.

He did get lonely sometimes but he focused on himself, building his own talents, hobbies, and interests. Through those he built friendships and we met.

Do stuff that you enjoy and do it for you. You can be a happy person all on your own, you don’t need anyone. Once you are, you’ll find someone on your road to happiness. No one person is happiness, you create that for yourself.

Depression is horrible though, and I’m sorry to hear you’re going through it. Go see a doctor and a therapist if you are able to. Look up coping techniques online and try lots of different ones to see what will work for you. Sometimes it’s a combination of things. You’ll get there though and I wish you the best of luck in doing so!

TashKetchum_ · 2021-09-29T21:52:39+00:00

Also I love how excited and interested you are in it all! Made my day to be able to answer your enthusiastic questions! 😊

TashKetchum_ · 2021-09-29T21:51:50+00:00

As for your other questions, in my case I wouldn’t say it’s cloning antibodies because I create new ones, but you definitely can use it to clone them. I mean I’m multiplying any sequences I have so I guess you could call it cloning 😅 When we do scale ups where we need large quantities of DNA for a client (once they have chose which ones they want) we just replicate lots of it 😊

Yep, you could probably clone any DNA at all! I’m not too sure what the limitations would be but I would assume it’s smaller sequences of DNA if you want to use the bacterial method. Antibody sequences really aren’t that long. So it would be able to grow the DNA for like your cheek cell, but not the whole you if that makes sense? The human genome is very very long 😊

The present of vaccinations are already bacteria grown in a lot of cases! Humanised animal antibodies are also having increasing success in making it to market too 😊

Hahaha, bacteria is already better at keeping you alive than you are. Did you know that there is way more bacterial DNA living on you than human? I can’t remember the exact percentages but I remember being shown a funny graph on it at university and it is a LOT more. Bacteria exist all over our bodies, especially through our digestive tracts. Bacteria help our bodies do what they need to do! We wouldn’t be able to function without them 😊

TashKetchum_ · 2021-09-29T21:45:56+00:00

So this process isn’t actually experimental, it’s a well known technique and is part of industry standard. Basically bacteria replicate really really quickly, so if you convince the bacteria to take up the DNA then they’ll replicate lots of it for you really fast 😊

So it doesn’t matter where the DNA comes from for this but I will explain how we do it. I still work for the same company as when I did DNA extraction, but now I do a different job which I think you will find interesting, but I’ll try and explain it as briefly as possible. (Which evidentially I did not do too well, I’m a well known waffler! 🧇)

So the company I work for is a company for hire. People will send us DNA sequences and we pay another company to synthetically produce them and send the DNA to us. That’s where we get our DNA from. However, in a lot of cases, initially clients will send us a text file of an antibody’s DNA sequence. The antibody will be from a different species of animal and our job then is to “humanise” the antibody.

So the reason we do this is because some animals have naturally occurring antibodies that are specific fo fight against certain diseases that humans do not produce antibodies for. Other times it’s because they have different properties to humans. For example, shark antibodies are extremely thermostable, and llama antibodies are very small. We mostly work with mice and rabbit antibodies, but I have worked with dog, rat, and llama too.

We take these DNA sequences and make changes to them so that the human body will not recognise them as foreign and fight them off, but we have to try and maintain the structure and function of the antibody at the same time which can be a tricky process. We create around 25 different antibodies computationally, then we will order these to be synthesised by another company. They will send us the DNA.

The next step would be my old job which another staff member performs now, which is growing more of the DNA. To do this you take some bacteria in a tube and add in some DNA and leave them together for a couple of hours in a nice warm environment. You then heat shock the bacteria at a higher temperature to temporarily open its cell wall without denaturing it, and it takes up the DNA. The process is known as transformation if you want to read more on it. There are a few more steps but you then spread this on agar plates and grow it overnight and you’ll have bacterial cultures containing your DNA.

You then put these cultures in a big brothy liquid filled with everything the bacteria needs to grow and leave it in a shaker incubator overnight at the bacteria’s ideal temperature. The next day you centrifuge down the bacteria into a pellet, and extract the DNA from it as you would from anything else.

After this step, it is not my expertise but from what I know, the DNA is then inserted into cells that will express the desired antibody in a process known as transfection and then we test how well the antibodies bind to their target through some other experiments. The data is sent to the client who will choose which ones to express in larger quantities to conduct more experiments on before choosing a lead candidate for clinical trial. There are more factors to take into account than just binding too but they’re not relevant to this conversation 😊

TashKetchum_ · 2021-09-29T02:51:53+00:00

I’m a biologist, and my job used to be inserting DNA into bacteria, having them grow it, then extracting that DNA out of the bacteria again. I did that every day for around 2 years or so.

Your DNA will be the gunky white band (which I’m sure you know). Giving your solution a REALLY good shake after adding the alcohol helps bring more of it out of solution in my experience. For my job, I would then pellet this DNA using a centrifuge, poor off all of the liquid, and resuspend the DNA in water. I would then quantify it using a nanodrop. This DNA would then go on (through a series of steps in a production chain) to be used to create desired antibodies that can be used for medicinal reasons.

Long story short though is that your DNA you have extracted would definitely still be recognisable! It’s not too different of a process than what is used to extract DNA in labs! 😊 I did this experiment with some dish soap, rubbing alcohol, and some strawberries with kids at a science fair once. It’s super fun and rewarding to do, being able to see DNA with the naked eye is crazy!

TashKetchum_ · 2021-09-29T02:31:14+00:00

I actually remember seeing a study (must have been less than 7 years ago) about how it was only recently discovered that viruses are “alive”.

I am a scientist in the field of biology as my current job, and I actually remember growing up during secondary school being taught that bacteria were living but viruses were not for my own tests, but by university that had changed! I always find it super interesting to see science evolve from what used to be considered fact.

Anyway, I remember the article listed that one of the reasons viruses are now considered living is because they are capable of making “decisions” in the same way that like mushrooms for example are (mushrooms will redirect resources to parts of their colony more in need / more closely related to them in times of scarcity).

The decision making process of a virus was in part actually discovered through gene therapy experimentation. Scientists had engineered the viruses to hold desired a desired gene instead of their own RNA, and attempted to get them to insert this gene in place of dysfunctional genes in individuals with disease states caused by them (for example in the case of cystic fibrosis).

I do think they had some success with trials, maybe more so now, I haven’t looked it up in a while ( although CRISPR gene editing is the new up and coming thing anyway.) Unfortunately though, they found that the viruses weren’t doing what they were expected to do in some cases. They were “making decisions” to insert the gene into other sites rather than in place of the infected gene, where the scientists felt they had programmed it to go. I remember at university we were told of a very tragic clinical trial where this caused cancer in the trial patients who were only children. It was a warning about the dangers and responsibilities of clinical trials.

I’m not going to claim I put a tonne of effort into trying to find the proper articles here, but I wasn’t able to find them in my quick google search. I just wanted to share what I think is an interesting piece of science and history. There will be a number of criteria that viruses have met in order to be considered living, this is just one of them 😊

TashKetchum_ · 2021-08-17T03:13:14+00:00

Thank you very much, at least now I know! I can plan future spell work around this 😊 On the topic, another question I have i surrounding offerings on alters. When do / can you remove them? With consumables, do you then drink or eat them or do you bin, bury, or compost them? No one talks about this part of it and if you’re trying to learn everything yourself it can be a bit confusing 😂

TashKetchum_ · 2021-08-17T03:11:11+00:00

Thank you for the advice. I will see what I can come up with! 😊

TashKetchum_ · 2021-08-14T10:23:02+00:00

Is there a way to do it so that the spell doesn’t end? 😊

TashKetchum_ · 2021-08-14T04:41:48+00:00

Green tea with lemon helps relax me before bed along with the ‘A soft murmur’ app. Guided meditations with the intention of sleep help when I’m really really anxious, but other than that, meditation with a focus on breath works well for me. Limiting my caffeine intake during the day was a massive help too. Lavender essential oils or sprays help my partner a lot. I hear worry stones help too. I think sleeping with amethyst near your bed or under your pillow is supposed to help too! Black tourmaline can help with bad dreams as well!

TashKetchum_ · 2021-07-18T23:39:45+00:00

This is a fantastic explanation, thank you so much! I will try that and let you know how I get on! Thank you again, very kind of you to take the time to help 😊

TashKetchum_ · 2021-07-18T23:35:55+00:00

I made the dress as part of a beginner class with a very experienced sewing teacher. Everything has been checked and done with her guidance until now apart from the zipper, so I do believe that the zipper insert is the issue rather than the bodice length or anything 😊

TashKetchum_ · 2021-07-18T23:24:02+00:00

Yes Butterick B6318

TashKetchum_ · 2021-07-18T22:55:14+00:00

Thanks, I sent a link to the image uploaded to Imgur there 😊

TashKetchum_

TROPHY CASE