They’re not actively drinking it. It’s just on the leaves they eat.

There’s a raccoon at the Saigon zoo in Vietnam. No joke, it’s there because it hitched a ride in a shipping container of frozen meat a couple years ago. It ate up a bunch of the meat during the journey and then made itself a little shelter with the leftover boxes to stay warm.

People simply do not think when they panic. As a rescue diver one of the key things you practice is how to save someone who simply forgot to inflate their buoyancy control device on the surface.

In case anyone is wondering, you approach them and tell them to inflate it. If they do not, you submerge yourself before you get too close and come up behind them. Then you inflate your own BCD while wrapping your legs around their tank, reach around and inflate their BCD for them.

It is actually true that a lot of people in Asia don’t know how to swim. I live in Vietnam and I have personally resuscitated someone after drowning. I have several other friends who have saved drowning victims. I’ve heard of friends of friends dying because they fell in a lake and no one else could jump in and save them. Drowning is the number one cause of death for children here. None of my Vietnamese friends can swim, even ones who grew up on the coast. When I go on vacation here and to other Asian countries I often see groups of tourists wearing life jackets in waist high water.

That said, I do a lot of scuba diving and the all the boat captains I’ve met do know how to swim.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Not everyone has an easy time conceiving. Some people take years, and eventually those tests add up.

Personally it took us 20 cycles before we had a single positive. I had lots of months where I didn’t test at all, some where I tested once, some where I really had a feeling they were it and I tested a couple of times (testing early can give a false negative).

It is common when you do finally conceive to keep testing and watch the lines get darker. Many people have chemical pregnancies. These are very very early miscarriages that we only know about because the tests have gotten so good. Back in the day where you had to wait several days to a week after a missed period to test, you would never even know that you had a chemical. Now, you may get an early positive but have the lines get lighter over the next few days. If you’re having fertility struggles, it’s helpful to know whether you are conceiving and losing pregnancies early or not conceiving at all.

When we did conceive I think I took about 4 tests over the course of a few days but online I often see people do 6-8. Many people will test until they get a “dye-stealer” which means that the test line is darker than the control line. People take this as a positive sign that it is progressing well.

There are some digital tests now that say “pregnant” or “not pregnant” (and also some kind of digital ovulation tests - I think they flash a smiley face if you are ovulating).

They are more expensive, wasteful, and would have to be different in every language.

The way the test usually works is that it responds to a hormone you produce while pregnant. If that hormone is present, you will see two lines. If you’re not pregnant you will just see the control line. This is very rudimentary - making a test with a digital screen is a lot more complicated.

People who are actively trying to have a baby may take dozens of tests over that time. They usually buy a box of cheap tests that are literally just a tiny strip you dip in a cup of urine (as opposed to a big plastic one you can pee directly onto)