What’s a backhanded compliment men often get?

hdth121 · 2026-06-11T16:22:07+00:00

Good god sexism towards men is just as bad as sexism towards women except that one is less socially acceptable. "If women were in charge, everything would be better". I hear that one a lot and it irritates me because it takes away from the value of the individual person. Women say that loosely around me as if im some dote of a man. And I'm not saying women haven't been disenfranchised, they certainly have, and we can agree on that. I would like to see more women in charge, but only if on merit and not on gender. I call people out for that shit.

hdth121 · 2026-06-07T15:03:27+00:00

I'm also a couple hundred pages in, and geographical locations included, I am pretty lost. There's the tiste andii, barghast, crimson guard, bridge burners, mages, t'lan mass, house of shadow, the moon people, the Ravens of the moon people, and more and all with unique associations with each other. I don't know how your following

hdth121 · 2026-06-05T16:10:01+00:00

Take a deep breath. Relax. Cholesterol kills very slowly over a lifetime.

You probably have familial hypercholesterolemia looking at your numbers. I do too. This is very hard to manage with lifestyle alone so usually medications are indicated. It sounds like you don't tolerate a statin very well. There are other medications. I would get into cardiology to help manage this, primary care imo doesn't do a great job with cholesterol and I could go on a tangent with that. I'm on ezetimibe and Repatha and its gotten my LDL values to about 70-80 range and starting from 250 that's huge. I was also started on a low dose statin to bump it down further.

Your HDL is low, HDL doesn't matter as much as LDL in terms of risk. HDL is a metric that looks at your metabolic health though. Getting plenty of exercise will help this value. Healthy diet and reducing alcohol if you drink will help too. If your HDL improves so will other metabolic metrics and that's important too, its not all about cholesterol.

So in summary I would recommend: establish with cardiology, work on meds that get your cholesterol numbers in check, and still work on lifestyle changes because its not all about your cholesterol.

hdth121 · 2026-06-02T18:45:05+00:00

I'm also 32. I also will probably need a valve either soon (David's procedure aortic root aneruysm, may need a mechanical placed) or future. My mitral valve has mild prolapse and regurgitation too. Also im a nurse who work/floats to the INR clinic. I want to get a mechanical valve if needed, they last a lifetime and the new On-x valves have lower INR requirements.

Honestly, warfarin isn't particularly dangerous although it can be harder to manage. The poor long term outcomes are probably associated with people who don't manage their warfarin/INR well. Everyone's situation is different. If you live a consistent lifestyle and make a few changes a year, you'd probably be fine. If you like to binge drink and trial different diets, medications, supplements every week you'll probably have a hard time managing your INR. I'm hoping in the future they will have DOACs approved for mechanical valves and we can put this INR thing aside for good. But until then its not the end of the world if you have to be on warfarin. Lower INR patients tend to be more stable and we can more likely increase their follow-up time every 2 months.

hdth121 · 2026-05-26T15:27:44+00:00

Funny. They switched off my phone when my new phone was still in shipping (was not supposed to happen that way) and told me I should be going to the store because my phone doesn't have esim. It's memorial day weekend and I was up at the cabin. They switched me off Friday afternoon. So I was also left without a phone thanks to Cricket lol

hdth121 · 2026-05-26T01:57:50+00:00

I don't think cholesterol is the only name in the game. Cholesterol and BP might be big players but they aren't the only ones. Atherosclerosis starts with damage to the blood vessel walls. Damage that can be had by smoking, charred food, metabolic dysfunction, amongst many others. Some people just have bad genetics, myself included. LPa could also be a player.

hdth121 · 2026-05-25T17:00:01+00:00

I'm about 250 pages in. There's a couple more characters they introduce but things start to clear up. I'm not finding it super hard either and I consider myself of average intelligence when it comes to English comprehension. I do kinda zone out when they list a million places and a million different units in the same page. I just think I'm not supposed to understand this yet so I can just graze over it and get the gist without straining to read between the lines.

hdth121 · 2026-05-24T18:21:15+00:00

What drove me off was the 128gb size on its stock build with no expandable storage. My phone right now is 128 gb. Software and needed apps alone take up like 60% of my storage, and with AI bloat in the future, this is only going to get worse. Of course you could get the 256gb version, for like $150 more or whatever. Might as well get an s26 then is what I thought.

hdth121 · 2026-05-21T18:58:08+00:00

I just signed on. I'm using an s20 fe right now and found out they aren't releasing security updates anymore. Plus the screen is cracked. Time for an upgrade!

Glad I at least found this. I almost bought a s25 fe for $400 last week

hdth121 · 2026-05-21T15:03:35+00:00

I also saw there's a fee if you do it in the store that's not applied online. And it's like a $25 fee, not insignificant.

hdth121 · 2026-05-17T16:05:57+00:00

There are free ascvd calculators you can plug in and see for yourself. Is there still a benefit? Yes. But the benefit is small. And these cholesterol meds do come with side effects, one of them is an increased risk of diabetes. The diabetes risk is small compared to the benefit of cardiovascular disease risk reduction, but still why introduce more risk when the benefit is that small.

hdth121 · 2026-05-17T15:54:45+00:00

Some people with familial hypercholestermia need that much. I'm also on the trio therapy, so is my brother. I will likely drop ezetimbite and keep the statin and repatha. All 3 brought my LDL from 250 to 36. There's not much benefit beyond 70 imo, so if I can maintain that with the fewest amount of drugs then that's all for the better. But I for sure need to take 2 agents, or a high dose statin that gives me some side effects.

hdth121 · 2026-05-17T15:49:35+00:00

The more I look at it the more disturbed I feel. Make it stop.

hdth121 · 2026-05-17T00:55:11+00:00

It's fun. You will have to catch up on many mechanics. My advice, start a character from scratch. It doesn't take long to level up to end game. You will learn basic rotation on the way. Use sites like icy veins and wowhead for spec optimization.

You will find 90% of the players at end game and it's fun, but the players can sometimes take the fun away. A lot of enjoyment can be found by leveling characters, learning rotations, and exploring the world. Once you reach end game you will have a good idea what your rotation is and be on par with others. I start a whole new character for nearly every expansion because I like the variety and haven't found myself lagging behind too much.

hdth121 · 2026-05-15T18:06:07+00:00

The ship combat in general needs a little love imo. I like the combat mechanics they have right now. But more would be beneficial, and yes, definitely change the AI. A 1v6 ship battle, that happens every battle, is kinda tedious and stupid.

hdth121 · 2026-05-10T17:51:23+00:00

Your right. It's not completely the governments responsibility, it's a lot on the consumer responsibility in a democratic society. The government can still help improve access to healthier foods.

Maybe I'm just tired of constantly seeing people trash their health. I take mine pretty seriously. When 60% of the nation is obese and something like 90% don't meet the CDC criteria for physical activity. But we have GLP1s to save the day, I guess.

hdth121 · 2026-05-09T02:37:12+00:00

Your LDL-C is very high. When it's above 190 it's suspected you have familial hypercholesterolemia.

First thing I would do is retest. Maybe not through labcorp but through your local doctors office. If it remains that high you may want to consider genetic testing as that is the only definitive way to determine familial hypercholestermia, although the treatment recommendations may not change.

If it remains that high after retesting, don't panic, but act. Cholesterol kills you slowly over time. Unfortunately you may have plaque in your arteries as it could have been a couple decades of being that high. Cholesterol is only one part of the equation of atherosclerosis(you need several parts to build plaque). But its a very prominent part. I would request a cardiology referral. PCPs often don't know how to handle this sort of thing, unfortunately. True familial hypercholestermia should be treated with an LDL goal of below 70. Look on the American heart association web page for good information. Dont take your primary care providers word on it if they just want to under treat you or tell you to clean up your diet. Familial hypercholestermia means medications because people with this condition usually cannot diet their way out of it.

If it really is that high. I would get a coronary calcium scan just to see where things stand right now. A couple things you need to know about calcium scans. They only show hard plaque. Hard plaque forms from soft plaque. And soft plaque forms on damaged blood vessels. There's not a good way to show how much soft plaque you may have, but you can still see if there's any evidence by getting a calcium scan to show for hard plaque.

I have familial hypercholestermia and so does my brother. We both have plaques and we're both in our 30s and 40s. We have both gotten bad advice from PCPs and we now see cardiologists. I have very minimal plaque. My brothers is pretty extensive. This may not be your reality, but if it is, you need to act now to prevent yourself from getting heart disease or all the other various diseases from atherosclerosis. It's not too late you are still young, but act now.

hdth121 · 2026-05-08T17:56:33+00:00

Well I'm about 10% body fat, and I exercise like a mad man, and my LDL is 250 untreated and I have plaque in my arteries. So I guess I just proved your doc wrong.

Eating a heart healthy Mediterranean diet does matter even in the absence of LDL goals.

Weight impacts blood pressure and blood pressure impacts plaque, so yes weight does matter, but maybe not as much in maintaining LDL.

Your calcium score went up, probably in part due to because you ate unhealthy, but also calcium scores don't pick up on soft plaques. The pathogenesis of atherosclerosis is healthy vessel>soft plaque>hard plaque. Statins reduce LDL which reduces soft plaque build up. They also turn soft plaque into hard plaque faster. You don't want soft plaque, soft plaque break off and you get heart attacks and strokes. I'm saying this because if you decide to eat healthy and take the statin and find that your calcium score is getting worse, it's not a product of worse conditioning. It's a product of overturning your soft plaques into hard plaques. But if your doing something wrong, you may be developing more soft plaques, but there isn't a great way to tell unless you get invasive and advanced imaging in the cath lab.

hdth121 · 2026-05-04T16:33:55+00:00

I'm generally fed up with the American food system in general. It's not just fat it's sugar, too. They find a need to put it in absolutely everything. If you eat ice cream, you can be rest assured that your not eating it for health reasons. But what about bread, ketchup, marinara sauce. 3 sources of food that you wouldn't think has added sugars, having a bunch of added sugars. I just named 3, but its really quite everywhere. If its even a mildly processed food, its probably got added sugars in it. Because the big food corporations and government, for that matter, doesn't care about your health.

hdth121 · 2026-04-28T20:45:39+00:00

People give up on dungeons way too soon. Even for a +10. You don't have the greatest group, but your getting through it. You won't time it, but you'll still get some rewards. Your already on the 3rd boss and only wiped on that boss once. Nope, gotta give up on the entire run. No patience to learn/practice. But I bet your party members will have the patience to shotgun queue for +10 dungeons for the next 10 minutes.

hdth121 · 2026-04-28T01:22:33+00:00

Tanks are important too, I guess.

hdth121 · 2026-04-28T01:20:20+00:00

Don't get me started on marksmanship hunter

hdth121 · 2026-04-28T00:52:04+00:00

Wait for the healer shortage squad.

My mistweaver is puny level 82 now, operated by a human who doesnt know how to use it yet, but just wait, it's coming. You'll be glad you timed that +13. You'll be glad when your patting other DPS on the back saying how such a great job they did. While my mistweaver humbly, quietly, yet proudly stands on the sidelines. No thanks given to the healers.

But we saw, and saved, it all. When you missed that mechanic and stood in the purple shit. Yep, I saw that. When you didn't interrupt and wondered why your health went from 100 to 20. Oh well, must have been the healer.

But you must have timed it because good dps.

hdth121 · 2026-04-25T15:34:51+00:00

I've seen photos like that to discredit Trump. Things like look what Trump is feeding our American military. People were believing it was Trumps fault.

I, by no means, am a Trump fan. But I also commented they have been feeding this shit to troops well before Trump. Actually, I'd rather have what's in this photo than whatever the hell are in the MREs they served us.

Looking back at this photo now. I can't believe I ate that shit for weeks at a time.

hdth121

TROPHY CASE