A discussion on test tube babies:
”Got my first successful IVF done at 34-years-old. Both mine and my husband’s DNA are just fine, so I never even considered there’d be a problem. All my checkups were normal too. And yet I gave birth to a genetic mutant baby. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything bad in my life. I even donated several hundred to charity every month. Whenever I see Go Fund Mes for sick kids, I’d get sad and donate too. I was just so naive. I felt like a good person like me would surely get good karma too. But that wasn’t the case. The world doesn’t make sense at all. Some selfish people have perfectly healthy babies and abandon them. Some great people have sick babies. What can we do? Just bow down to fate?”
“Test tube babies have a higher risk of genetic illnesses.”
“Cause it was DNA that was meant to be eliminated, that you forcibly made happen.”
“Did IVF at 33, and the first kid I had was on the spectrum, developmentally delayed. I told people on the internet that test tube babies are often screwed up, and got bullied for it.”
“Because a lot of people think IVF is for selecting the best babies.”
“Really? I always thought IVF meant you got to pick the best. I’ve seen a threat before where someone said that test tube babies don’t turn out well, and a lot of people who’d done IVF came out of the woodworks to tell her off, so I thought it was safe.”
“Of course they did. They went through so much trouble and spent so much money on that kid…sigh. If it happens, not like you can turn back. Every parent with a genetically ill child has regrets. All of them think that they would’ve been better off never having it.”
“They’re just picking the best out of the worst. If it’s actually great DNA, why not do it the traditional way?”
“Reminder from a hospital worker: all he has to do is improve his lifestyle habits, maybe take some supplements, and then wank off in the hospital once. But you need to stimulate ovulation, extract eggs, externally fertilise. If it doesn’t work the first time, you have to do it again and again and again and again (and meanwhile, you have to deal with pain, bloating, bleeding, lack of appetite, hair loss, and various other side effects). Once you have something that barely works, you still might not be able to keep the baby, since the seed was bad to begin with. So you’re going to show signs of a miscarriage. So you have to work hard every day to keep that baby. Every day, you have to get progesterone shots that leave a hard lump in your ass. You have to quit your job so you can be on full time bedrest. But by the time you get to the second or third trimester, most people have a miscarriage anyways. Even if you somehow manage to keep the baby, it’s probably going to be a premie, and end up in the ICU as soon as it’s born.”
“If God wants to eliminate bad DNA, then don’t get in his way.”
“I’m still known to this day around the whole industrial park as the widely acknowledged Best Son-In-Law Ever.
Really, in a two mile radius, all the grandma and grandpas acknowledge only my bitchwife has the best husband. I’ve gotten their unanimous approval.
1. I’ve got a great diploma, 985 university [Ivy League Equivalent], and studied overseas.
2. I’ve got decent looks. At least, a fair, smooth-skinned average person.
3. I’ve got a sweet mouth. This point really gets the grandmas and grandpas riled up. A lot of people’s DIL or SILs just don’t know how to be smart with their words. They just get stubborn and offend everyone.
4. Never get in trouble.
5. Never fight with my MIL or SILs. In the whole industrial park, almost everyone is a second-generation factory worker who’s married. Those poor kids.
6. I pile enthusiastic praise on all the grandmas and grandpas. I often tell the maids, “The elderly decide everything in our house. I don’t have any demands of my own.” Grandma and grandpa are very happy about that.
7. I’m not wasteful with money. It’s been years, and my only demand has been square footage. My intention was, “Add my name, quick, quick, quick.” I never thought that I’d be helping this family invest, and quickly became the top of our industrial park.
8. I don’t go out at night. I basically spend every night hanging out with my wife and kids. This is more or less standard practice for marrying up for men, a tradition passed down for generations, a shining historical treasure.
9. I’ve got good DNA. My kid’s good-looking and has good grades.
10. I surrender quickly. As soon as my bitchwife gets mad, I immediately look for a spot next to her massage chair to drop to my knees and listen to the lecture. Then, I turn my phone over and let her dig through my messages, and hand my bank card over so she can go through my accounts.”
Comments: “Is this why she recently bought 10K RMB blankets for you?”
“So the theme of this post is, if you can do these 10 things too, you can become a man just like me? I mean, how many can everyone else do? For myself, I can’t do the first three. I can consider 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, no way for 9, and maybe 10.”
“Just having a sweet mouth and not going out at night means you’ve already won against 99.99% of men.”
A tiktok video telling the story of a Dongbei auntie who tried to make a big pot of pickles, and she blew the minds of all the professors at China’s Academy of Agricultural Sciences. At first, she merely posted a video asking for advice, explaining that she was trying to make pickles, but for some reason, her cabbages have sprouted new leaves in the pot.
“I swear I put salt in and everything. What am I supposed to do? How is it growing in the pot?”
As soon as the video got posted, a bunch of postgrads and PhDs just about had a heart attack. “This isn’t pickles. This is hydroponic farming. In alkali soil in low temperatures. Even if professors from CAAS [Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences] came, they’d have to call you Master.”
She even received comments from students at CAAS, begging her, “Teach me how, please! Then I’d finally have something for my graduating thesis!” As the competition ramped up, internet commenters even put a “bounty” on the project. “Will you sell this pot of pickles for 6000 RMB? My best friend needs it to graduate.”
Generally speaking, if you can grow crops in alkali soil, you already qualify to become a Yuanshi [post-doctorate? It’s like one level above being a PhD. I’m not sure the same thing exists in America. Google says maybe a “Fellow” is the equivalent? But I’m not in academic circles or anything, I don’t know anything about this]. This auntie wasn’t just working with low temperatures and alkali soil, she’s even doing it hydroponically. Many people have suggested that she should be given a doctorate right away.
The most ridiculous part is that this auntie’s casual attempt at making pickles is something that most Agricultural researchers will never achieve in their lifetimes. And all the cabbages that are being carefully raised in labs will die if you put in 1 gram less water than usual, or the CO2 content is slightly off, or you came in the door with your left foot first today.
But the main reason internet commenters are so shocked is that traditionally, when you’re making pickles in Dongbei, you cut the base off of the cabbage first and blanche it. Theoretically, all the cells should be dead. And yet this auntie’s cabbages are more lively than ever. They could make 10 episodes of Paranormal House Inspector about this.
Just as everyone thought this auntie was going to turn her life around with this jar of pickles, something unexpected happened, just as you might have expected. The very next day, the auntie had taken out all the cabbages growing new leaves and added in more pickle seasoning. Look at the salt floating on top of this jar. Doesn’t it look like the tears of Agricultural Science students? If Nobel himself saw this, he’d have to hand out a negative prize overnight. This is almost as bad as the other tiktokker who tried to make caramel, failed, and accidentally made perfect icing instead.
Comments say, “She didn’t cut off the bottom, didn’t blanche it, and put the pickle pot under the sun for photosynthesis. Didn’t keep it covered so there’d be oxygen, and the water level inside was too low, or the two cabbages that sprouted new leaves weren’t put in perfectly level, so they were poking up on top never even touching the water. The root was in contact with air and water, but not enough salt. Or she put in less salt than one usually would for pickling. With sunlight, humidity, the right temperatures, of course the cabbages will grow.”
“Some people pickle raw cabbages. My grandma used to do it.”
“Is this like how mould grows everywhere randomly in real life, but specialised labs can’t keep it alive no matter how hard they try?”
An askreddit question asking, “Which was worse? Nazis or Imperial Japanese soldiers?”
I’m not gonna translate the very long answer, as it’s full of extremely trigger warning-y stuff. If you’re interested, you can start with Wikipedia’s articles on the Nanking Massacre and Unit 731, but the core of the message is the answerer believes that the Germans performed a cold, mechanical, production line style “quick and painless” death for Jews, so although they died, they didn’t suffer as much. Whereas Japan entertained itself by going out of its way to figure out how to kill people slowly, how to cause maximum suffering. That aside from targeting Jews (and other non-Aryan people), they were relatively nice to common French/Belgian commoners. French people could refuse to serve Germans in their business and get away with it. But Japan took this habit with them no matter where they went and no matter who they fought.
“When have you been really impressed by an old person?
The first time I got pregnant, there was a bus stop right under our apartment building that took me straight to my hospital. So long as it wasn’t rush hour, the bus would be super empty. I basically went to all my appointments on that bus.
When I was done delivering the baby and got discharged from the hospital, my husband and my MIL came to pick me up. He was holding our luggage and walking in front. My MIL followed right behind with the baby. I was walking in the back with empty hands. As soon as we got out of the hospital, we saw the bus to our apartment building parked right there. And my straightman husband immediately turned around and said all excited, “Quick! Hurry up! The bus is right here!”
Oh my god. Is this idiot really trying to give me the experience of taking all the disabled seats on the bus? Or is he really going to test the humanity of all the bus riders today, when our little parade of old, sick, pregnant and babies?
Just as I was thinking about how to tell my husband off, my MIL slowly spoke to my husband, “When I die, you don’t have to worry about holding a wake for me. You can use the money you save to get a taxi for your wife and kid.””
An tiktok video showing off Ancient Chinese laundry-drying techniques using dirt to cake the clothes, and then shaking it off. Supposedly, the pants remain super clean afterwards?
Comments say, “What’s dirty has never been inorganic dirt, but microorganisms. If she actually disinfected all that dirt, it wouldn’t be dirty. If she hadn’t, then who knows?”
“If you step in water outdoors, you can boil rocks and put them in your shoes to dry it out. Same logic.”
“You believe this shit? You know what mould is? Women don’t use washing machines, but use dirt? Aren’t you scared of getting a UTI?”
Under the hashtag #Experts say newborn rates are going to fall no matter what policies are put in place, a blogger writes, “As a nurse, I can talk about what it’s like in our labour and delivery department.
For the entire latter half of this year, we’ve had an explosion in deliveries. It used to be that only a couple of mothers acme in during covid, and now we’re getting well over 20 a day, and another 15 or so at night. All of our beds are basically full.
We’re getting a lot more patients with signs of miscarriage for the last 5 months. Problems with cervixes, lots of people being kept on Atosiban. With all the viruses going around, we’ve got a lot of people with fevers or coughs.
Very few expecting mothers are testing positive for covid antibodies anymore.
Lot more mothers getting abortions. Genetic problems in kids 30 weeks along, number of deformed kids increasing…
A lot more second kids. People born after 2000 are having kids now. People born after 1980 are on their second kid.
More requests for epidurals.
A lot more expecting mothers with pregnancy diabetes or high blood pressure.
Well, that’s all I have. I’ll add more if I think of it.”
Comments say, “Are you seeing a lot more miscarriages?”
“There’s a lot more people with infertility problems too.”
“So when the experts are saying there’s a big problem, they’re not actually getting daily statistics from hospitals? They’re just making shit up in their office?”
A tiktok video of a bride being asked on her wedding day to throw a bunch of chopsticks, and she’s crying as she refuses to. Internet comments explain that the tradition means that once you throw the chopsticks from your parent’s place, you’re separated from your family, and you won’t ever go back to eat their food.
Comments say, “Are they…playing funeral music at this wedding??”
“If they know the meaning of this tradition, and they’re still forcing the bride to do it, they’re all crazy and she needs to throw those chopsticks right in her face.”
“What fucking society are we living in? How is it so feudal??”
> “Which was worse? Nazis or Imperial Japanese soldiers?”
I'm a white American, and I have boomer relatives who refuse to watch anime - even Totoro! - because they grew up hearing horror stories about the Japanese from their parents' generation (the ones who fought in WWII). Whereas they had no problem with the Germans, after a while. Maybe it was a Navy/Marines vs. Army thing, though.
That bride is just realizing what mistake she has made.