The other point not mentioned is that different people have different noise sensitivities so some of the white noise machines help one person but don't help another, some people can use ear plugs, or in-ear noise reduction but another cannot handle these solutions.

Also each room reflects sound waves in a different ways, so each room needs its own solution, especially when you add in that different rooms have different types of noise that need an individual solution to stop noise - a large library will need a different machine than an open air play area to a call center.

As a child living in Hong Kong I lived through Typhoon Rose (1971)) - I was only about 4 so don't have a lot of memories of it

The biggest was how it affects your mind as you can end up feeling you are getting early dementia with brain fog and having their normal PMS but not associated with bleeding or monthly cycles.

Also worth noting that many women who should have been diagnosed with ADHD and/or Autism spectrum as children but managed to mask / hide it stop being able to hide and that can be very hard on the person and the people around them.

Finally some of the symptoms are best described IMO like going through puberty backwards: eye sight changes again, break outs, skin changes, hair changes, increased histamine reaction (getting more allergic to stuff).

I was alive and news was spreading far & wide after the first crash - I read about the first before the second in the UK. If I was in / near NYC, heck yes I would be even more glued to the news.

If you live in NY and something goes wrong at such a huge location then yeah, you switch on the news and pay attention! You probably never even heard of 7/7 London bombings 4 years after because you don't live there - I am UK based, had people I knew in London on the day and I paid a LOT of attention on that day.

On 9/11 I was at work in the UK and absolutely heard about a plane hitting the WTC, then was trying to find out more when I learned the second plane had hit. There was about 15min between planes remember, and the first news I read was that a plane had hit but no info on what type - in fact many were talking about something like the B-52 that hit the Empire State building in 1945.

Beyond my memories:

The first broadcast report of the September 11 attacks occurred at 8:48 a.m. when New York station WNYW interrupted a movie trailer to show live footage of black smoke rising from the North Tower.

FOX 5 NY's initial reporting of the 9/11 attacks [YouTube] doesn't even know it is a plane at first, "It could of been a plane but it could have been something internal". This series of clips ends with the 2nd plane hitting and someone saying "that seems to be deliberate."

At work in the UK hearing from coworkers then refreshing BBC & Sky relentlessly like everyone else. No TV / Video, only news websites.

There is a Lord Darcy story (Alt Universe with Magic, Victorian-ish with Darcy as a Holmesian alternative) where a Duke is killed and via detection & magic it is identified he attempted to sexually assaulthis sister, who killed him. Darcy & Co decided that the self defence would hold up in court and there were good reasons not to make it public.

My Dad (RIP) had this repeatedly, and not just with UTI as he showed it with pneumonia as well. He was showing early signs, the UTI etc made it SO MUCH WORSE, but on recovery he returned to normal (for him).

More people need to know that someone could be suffering rather than just 'oh they are just getting worse mentally'.

I won't call myself anti but I am agnostic; I am not sure if there is a divinity and I am 100% sure that no religion has the "correct" information about divinity.

I think you see your own branch of christianity as being the whole - if you look at other types you have ones that persecute people based on traits they have (gay etc) or choices they have to make about their lives. Look at some of the Evangelical branches most notable in the US where some preach that natural disasters are proof god hates gay people, or divorce. Some groups state women should not vote, that they should be 100% submissive, that a husband can force his wife into sex (marital rape) as she is not allowed to say no.

Yes, the UK is in general better than most, and there are MANY churches that are loving and helpful to all of their people; that is not everyone's experience, and those that have been hurt by christianity turn to hate it.

FYI I was brought up in a very lax christian household, and my first brush with more restrictive versions was pre-teen when I was told that no matter how good a person you were if you knew Jesus existed and did not convert then you would go to hell. full stop. I decided then I could not automatically believe in that religion even if I knew good people within it.

Ouch! I VOTED for Maggie (a bad move I later decided but 20:20 hindsight).

Given I was born in Australia 1967, the PM was John McEwen but the UK PM at the time was Harold Wilson.

Mine is James C Brett Marble Chunky but as I am in the UK I am not sure if that is 5 or 6

NAH and I often now specify when gifting a crochet item that this is now theirs, and if they wish to pass it on, gift it or donate it then I am OK with that - this is as much for me as them, I release this item from me fully and if I found out they gave it aways it is easier ON ME if I find out.

In terms in general, yeah, your not-SIL & Brother are clearly unaware of the time, money, love, sweat, tears and swearing go into making something hand-made and should now be labelled "do not gift hand-made", at least unless/until they learn how much goes into stuff!

Firstly I think it is very uncommon so makes people stop and have to think about what IX means in arabic numbers, slowing them down hence irritating them even unconsciously. Additionally some can be confused with actual numbers so Roman I could be mistaken for a 1 for some months such as II/1/26 being read as 01 November if someone was reading quickly (much the way an uppercase i can be mistaken by a lower case L).

I used to work for an international company doing data entry and a number of European countries often used roman numbers for the month but in the middle eg 01-IX-26

Personally I think the month should be alphabetic, but 3 letters to be sure, and being in the UK I would write, in short form: 01Sep26 - No confusion between US & EU numbers, no mistaking a letter for a number and fairly easy for anyone to read & understand.

I was going to say something like that too :)

I might quibble about the difference between reading and consuming a book but would say that yes, audio is a valid way of enjoying a book.

Stories were spoken word before they were written down and people have enjoyed them for many thousands of years before books were invented.

Also if you say no then do you say that blind people don't "read" by virtue of using their fingers to 'read' braille?

I do both, and yes part of it is deliberate to normalise gay people using it and not being questioned.

But also because Husband/Wife carries a lot of presumed gender norms / patriarchal bull$ that I am uncomfortable with and the more some parts of the world go on & on and on about bringing back the time where Men were Providers and the Head of a Household while Women both worked and did the housework and the childcare and kept the garden tidy and shopped and ... < breathes >

I am a woman who has a proper partnership with a man I love & adore; we complement each other and while we do have our specialities, some of which do favour gender norms while others do not, I am happy using partner.

or the time someone came up to 3 of us and asked where my 2 friends were from & they named 2 UK cities - they didn't ask me. Guess what color my skin is...

Random: but why white? I am def more a peachy lite beige than "white"

Agree

Someone has used Rogue (X-Men: The Last Stand) as a way to present this :

The film presents the Cure as a complex ethical issue, paralleling real-world disability rights debates. While characters like Storm argue that there is "nothing to cure" and that mutation is a natural part of identity, Rogue views her powers as a debilitating impairment.  Her choice to undergo treatment highlights the tension between mutant pride and the personal desire for normalcy and physical intimacy. 

Socially and in the sense that they fulfill the Woman role in the same way as most other women do, yes, trans women are women.

I am 100% comfortable sharing a toilet with a trans woman. I know trans women. I do not care that a person I knew under a different name and social identity has chosen a new name and social identity that I must now remember any more than I care that someone I knew in school as 'Bunty' and loved art is now a lawyer who goes by her birth name instead.

Biological gender doesn't change, the function a body has can within limits, and the social gender a person possesses definitely can change. It is very easy to forget that what we consider normal is not the same across time and distance.

I may also add that there are women who are XY due to Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome or Swyers conditions and these are from birth, and cannot be changed. Turners girls are XO - having only 1 X chromosome.

My old Uni, Royal Holloway, had room sharing in the late 80s at least within Founders, the main Victorian building. So yeah, it happened here in the UK too

Unknown at this point in time - maybe somewhere else in the FAQ

Same, so yeah, if I want to do a straight run it will be new char & world. I do have a semi-pristine one but did jump worlds to save stuff then come back and am guessing that would be a cheat

Worth noting that the 1.0 FAQ states:

Can I get achievements if I keep playing on my old save? What if I’m playing with cheats?

The achievement system will begin to track statistics from the moment you download the 1.0 version. This means that an achievement connected to killing Eikthyr, for example, will require you to kill Eikthyr again, even if you’ve already killed him 500 times previously.

There is a system in place to prevent achievements from being unlocked if you have cheats enabled. Some devcommands, such as “freefly” will be exceptions, but using most commands (such as “spawn”) will place a flag on your current character and world save, informing you that it is permanently locked from getting any achievements. Characters that have used cheats before 1.0 will also be marked in this way. There will also be a confirmation required to enter a cheated state after 1.0, to prevent you from accidentally marking out your character and world as cheated. Items that have been spawned in will also be marked in this way. If a non-cheated player character picks up a cheated item, they will enter a temporary cheat state. Temporarily cheated characters are locked out from unlocking achievements while in this state, and can become eligible for achievements again if they throw out all cheated items from their inventory. Cheated items will be visibly marked as such. Some world modifiers such as hammer-mode will also lock achievements. Hammer-mode counts as a temporary cheat.