NielsBohron

We live in a small town in a state that has a law that to attempt a VBAC, the hospital must have an full surgery team on site. It being such a small hospital meant they almost never had a full staff at any given point, so the second two were scheduled C-sections.

However, like your experience, my wife went into natural labor the night before the second C-section was scheduled and almost certainly could have delivered naturally, but the hospital went ahead with the C-section anyway

Glad your wife healed well; my wife had three c-sections and the first one was done by a very old-school OB in an emergency situation, so she never stood a chance. That said, even old-school c-sections are better than my wife and son dying in childbirth, so I'm still grateful for modern medicine, but it would have been nice if it was a little more "modern"

The way I explained it as a science major who went to undergrad at a very conservative Christian college is "If you start from a flawed premise, you can use valid logic to get to very flawed conclusions without making any mistakes."

Religious conservatives are starting from a flawed premise (edit: that premise being the existence of a just, omnipotent, omniscient deity) and either imposing biblical law or libertarianism is the logical outcome of that flawed premise.

As an aside, this is my biggest problem with religion in general. I'm all for "live and let live," but the logical outcome of believing that your sect has a monopoly on capital-T "Truth" is to spread that "truth" to others by any means necessary for their own good. Most religions, especially Abrahamic monotheism, do not logically allow for pluralism, and the paradox of tolerance means that if we tolerate intolerant religion, eventually that religion will control everything.

I think you actually have that backward. In general, a jagged tear heals quicker than an incision because there is more surface area in contact between the two pieces, so a larger number of cells can be working to repair the tissue. That said, I'm not a doctor and it's been 10 years since my wife and I looked into this before our first kid, so I may be misremembering.

Even Cthulhu is subservient to the void...

Wait, is that Boots Riley of The Eagles of Death Metal? That dude is fantastic

Edit: nope, Boots Electric is the nickname of Jesse Hughes of The Eagles of Death Metal. Boots Riley is a totally different (equally cool) person

The older I get and the more metal I listen to, the more I'm convinced that Master of Reality is the best Sabbath album.

My dad is one of those "worryingly concerned about self-defense" boomers and I got an LED/lithium ion maglite-ish flashlight last year for Christmas.

It still doubles as a bludgeon and it's rechargeable and puts out like 5k lumens, so while I didn't think I needed anything like it, it's quite handy if you live in the mountains like I do. Nothing scares off a couple coyotes or a bear like just blasting them in the retina with a high-end LED photon cannon (short of an actual shotgun with bean bag rounds like my neighbor uses)

You should read more Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. The author, Zach Weinersmith (yes, that's his real name) has a physics degree and his partner is a bio professor at Rice University, so it's safe to say that they're pretty science literate, and it shows in the comics. The comics often focus on economics, religion, higher education, etc. (as well as science puns)

Broke: "my hyperfixations keep me from achieving my personal and professional goals 😢"

Woke: "my hyperfixations are my personal and professional goals 😘"

beat me to it, lol

It's a lot heavier than that! The density of steel varies as there are different alloys, but most are in the range of 7.5-9 g/cm^3

Gold has a density that's more than double most steel alloys at 19.3 g/cm^3. Of course, that's assuming we're taking about pure gold, but still, gold is way more than 10% heavier than steel