I don’t. One thing I object to more than “everyone gets a trophy for showing up” is the actual government telling me that I may not give out random prizes.

Like, what? Why are senators discussing this? School teachers should be discussing this.

I wasn’t as premie as this baby.

My family has a condition that predisposes towards premature delivery. My grandmother had three premature births where the babies died within a few days. My mother was the fourth. She survived because she was born in 1964. Her siblings were born before the technology existed to save them.

My mother was not expected to live, and if she did she was expected to have significant issues. She was a “miracle” baby - she became a physician.

By the time I was born, being as premature as my mother was not as significant because science had advanced so very far. I had a far better outlook than my mother did. So did my siblings. Every one born alive lived.

Today, being as premature as I was is considered relatively “good” as far as a premie birth goes. My own children will be in far less danger compared to what my aunts and uncles faced in the 1950s.

I like to think about what it was like in 1964, and imagine what it will be like when this baby is as old as my mother. It’s pretty cool to think about.

I’m a premature baby who survived and has lifelong problems.

It’s still cool that I’m alive. This is uplifting news.

I’m also a biotechnological scientist. I wouldn’t have been able to do that if I were dead. Or, like, play with my dog. Both cool things.

Two things can be true

I mean, a couch potato is a derogatory term for a person who takes little exercise and spends a great deal of time watching TV. I’m disabled and largely housebound. I’d be offended if someone chose to insult me by calling me a couch potato as if I chose this life, but I can’t deny that the definition fits.

A friend of mine inherited a cockatoo from his grandfather. Grandpa had gotten the bird when he was a young man, and when he died my friend took over care.

These birds live for like 100 years, so it’s a big deal to get one as a pet. This particular cockatoo was a grumpy little thing and only liked grandpa. No one else. It was a hellion after grandpa died.

It happened to be an endangered species, so eventually my friend donated him to the local wildlife sanctuary. He was given a big enclosure and lots of stuff to do.

We went to visit him once, and he was there calling out to visitors. “Come closer, come closer.”

Whenever anyone did, he threw rocks at them, then laughed uproariously. Living his best life.

> Obviously, they have no concept of the fact that a hairless land ape was causing all of this destruction

I wouldn’t be so sure of this. Whales are known to not only understand the impact humans have on their lives, they have changed intergeneral behaviour because of it.

There is a species of whale that used to sing loudly in the Arctic. It was heavily hunted in the 1800s, and thought to be extinct for a while in the 1900s because it wasn’t seen or heard for decades. Only when recording devices were left behind did the whales get “rediscovered”.

It turned out that the whales had straight-up learnt that humans were hunting them in boats, so they went quiet and hid when they perceived human presence. They taught their children how to do this, and every generation since.

Studies with other species of whales showed that they can perceive the difference between a research boat and a whaling ship.

TLDR: whales understand an awful lot

What solution do you want the employers to provide?

They already have security. They already have panic buttons and heightened police presence. Everything you’ve suggested here has already been tried and tried and tried - and employees have still gotten badly injured.

What solution would you come up with, if you were the owner of the franchise? Instead of slinging insults, solve the problem.

What do you propose as a real, immediate solution? Not an ambiguous or long-term solution that will take 10 or 20 years to really take effect. An actual solution that’s going to protect the employees from being stabbed?

You don’t want to ban the violent people doing the stabbing from the restaurant. For some reason you mentioned that malls have valuable items for sale and McDonalds doesn’t, so it makes sense to ban them from malls and not McDonalds. Okay, explain that premise. Explain what you’d do instead, if your goal is to protect the employees from dying.

I feel like this should be the expected reaction if you climb someone’s sacred anything without permission.

Did you just completely and totally dismiss the human beings working in fast food restaurants as “not valuable”?

The point of the new rule is to prevent harm to them. It’s not about preventing obesity in kids, it’s about making sure that minimum wage workers can do their jobs without getting assaulted.

What happened during the fight? Did you say anything very hurtful?

Could it be that he’s still processing his emotions after the fight? Sometimes a person needs a little more time to get over something, even if they accept an apology.

When you say he’s treating you badly, what is he doing?

A human body has an average price of $550,000 according to Medical Transcript. Of course, if you could max out your prices and sell every part of you for its individual street value, you’d walk away with 45 million dollars.

So, they’re not wrong. Human remains are extremely valuable.

A person came in saying he had been raped, and the response was to play music to drive him away?

Did they at least call the police or an ambulance for the man who had been assaulted?

Apparently, doing this isn’t enough. The companies are expected to do a full allergen clean before making a product without sesame in it, according to the article. Otherwise they’re liable if a person eats it and has an allergic reaction.

Honestly, I’d probably put some sesame flour in, too, under those circumstances.

It’s cattle.

Of course there are. There’s Yambah Station, and a bunch of other farms around the town. Cattle and stuff, I think. Definitely camels.

The stigma is attached to COPD - chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Having COPD is a big problem, and causes a huge strain the on healthcare system. If you “give yourself” COPD, it’s seen as an unfair burden to society.

Asthma medications are not included in this stigma, because they don’t cause COPD, they treat it. That said, Ventolin (which causes COPD with extended use) is not as readily prescribed in Australia as it is in some other countries. It’s used only as an acute treatment, not as a preventative treatment. The inhaled corticosteroids are preferred even though they have other, sometimes severe, side effects.

There is also an oral asthma medication that is very en vogue in Australia right now.

They are toxic. Our lungs have defence mechanisms designed to prevent us inhaling dirt and dust. The mucocilia escalator in your lungs, plus an army of white blood cells, work hard to keep your lungs clean.

The problem is that you’re only equipped to deal with a very small amount of dirt and dust. And even then, you get damage. This is how your lungs wear out over the course of your life. Inhaling smoke, city air, water vapour - it all wears your lungs out faster.

That’s still an inhalation method. Anything other than air - whether it’s water vapour or wood smoke or literally any other kind of air pollutant - inhaled into the lungs increases the incidence of lung disease. Australia has A Thing about inhalants.

Oral as opposed to inhalation. Australia has A Thing about inhalation drugs. Cigarettes are so heavily taxed that a pack of 25 costs around $50. A pack a day smoker would spend more than $12k per year in Australia.

There has been a lot of resistance to the idea of just replacing tobacco with weed in case it sends lung conditions back to number 1 place on our death list. Studies about other methods of delivering cannabis to your body are really useful to dispel some of the doubt.

Antibiotics kill bacteria in a bunch of different ways. One of those ways is by stopping them producing folates.

Folates are an essential part of DNA production, so without them bacteria can’t replicate.

Unfortunately, humans need folates, too. We get them from our food. These bacteria have developed a way to take folates from their environment like we do, rather than making them in-house.

It’s like if someone was building a shelter and you broke their roof, so they just leaned over and grabbed the roof off your shelter to cover them instead.

Don’t let anything get beyond “normal” until you’re no longer her student.

Love will wait. It’s far better to be able to honestly say that you didn’t start your relationship until after she stopped teaching you. She could literally go to prison over this. It’s not a small thing.

It depends on what you mean by “spend time.” You can absolutely be neighbours and friends. You can hang out and have barbecues and complain to each other about Mrs Next Door’s garbage bins.

But while you are her student, you cannot have sex with her. You cannot kiss her, speak romantic thoughts to her, fondle or embrace her, or in any other way have any kind of romantic relationship with her.

A teacher is in a position of authority over their students, so they cannot have romantic relationships with them. That can ruin their careers.