I’m significantly less convinced by the supposed mechanics of craniosacral therapy - adjustment of the fused cranial joints in particular - but more generally, gentle rhythmic manipulation of lumbar fascia and neurofascia is something I don’t see focused on often in traditional deep tissue massage and subjectively it’s had surprising effect, especially when done by someone who specializes in it. There are a lot of important nerve connections in both areas that gentle, surface-level manipulation can affect. The aspects of craniosacral therapy that are probably bunk are at least not going to hurt you, unlike chiropractic. Worst case, it just won’t do much. I am interested to see if some of the basic manipulation techniques are integrated into other modalities in the future, even though their origin doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. And yes, like other alternative therapies, anyone claiming CST can cure illnesses is a grifter.

Several did show some positive short term effects, but it’s no surprise that several don’t. Dry needling isn’t going to cure pain on its own or work for everyone, much like other forms of bodywork. Individual results vary and it needs to be done over a long period of time alongside other work to restore stability and mobility. A supplementary treatment just needs to be low-risk, accessible, and possibly beneficial enough to try. The risks associated with dry needling are less severe than those of several common PT interventions such as corticosteroid injections. To say nothing of the risks associated with chiropractic.

The lack of a standardized placebo is a problem, yes. This study had pretty good results from using a blunted needle glued in an introducer. The patient feels the sensation of the introducer being pressed against skin and “pistoned” in, but the needle doesn’t actually make contact. In the group of people who had not received dry needling before, only one correctly identified that they had received the placebo.

You’ll find more study in the West of “dry needling”, a technique directly inspired by acupuncture. Here’s one recent review.

I see an acupuncturist because the results for me are great, she’s good at what she does, she does believe in germ theory, she practices in a sanitary way, and she doesn’t claim to cure illnesses. These are the norms for modern licensed acupuncturists. I’m not saying every acupuncturist out there is like this, hokey grifters do exist in alt medicine spaces, and that’s kind of my whole point. It really depends on the practitioner.

this is my general impression too, the origins of the practice is kinda bunk and it’s probably not worth the risk for a lot of people. I particularly dislike that a lot of people will see a chiropractor for pain before they’ll consider seeing a PT.

that being said, there are individual chiros out there that do good work. The main person I go to for non-chiro bodywork, who really knows her shit, sees a chiro herself and highly credits them for her recovery from pretty severe spinal issues. I’d probably see one only if I was referred from someone I trust.

but generally speaking there’s other alternative therapies I’d recommend over seeing just any random chiro. Acupuncture can be a game changer, and is starting to become less “alternative” as some PTs offer “dry needling” now. Craniosacral work can be great for some too, it’s a very gentle form of bodywork that can have a big impact nonetheless. Both of those are a lot less focused on manual adjustment, lowering the risk significantly.

When I’m mentally unwell, I isolate myself instead of sharing the load with the loved ones in my life that would jump at the opportunity to support me. I fear being seen in a vulnerable state and given enough rumination I can easily find “reasons” why maybe it would be for the best if I disappeared for a bit instead.

I haven’t been able to directly overcome it yet, but I’ve become aware enough to communicate it and people in my life at least know the signs of it happening now.

Sure, but that’s still not necessarily sex?

One can also wear fun undergarments to a date and then decide not to undress or have sex - usually I think of it as “in case something happens” rather than expecting it from the outset. If nobody sees it, it’s not a disappointment, it’s just fun regardless.

🥵

don’t worry I got lost for you :)

it’s a common and frustrating trope for sure.

Today is Sunday, March 2093rd, 2020.

what I’ve learned is that your average confident-looking gym rat can also still have no idea what they’re doing with the equipment. Pretty much everyone needs someone to show em the ropes and get em started at least.

You’re not wrong, “I arrived” is the better translation, “I came” is just (to my knowledge) the more common one people recite in the context of “veni vidi vici” and what this joke was playing off of.

“I came, I saw, I came”

This, 100%. For some reason people imagine vegans as an ideologically aligned group rather than a bunch of people making their own varied decisions for their own varied reasons. Then when inconsistencies come up between vegans they’ll decry it all as performative. Meanwhile, vegans themselves tend to just be happy to see others making their own best effort and the hair-splitting over what is vegan matters a lot less than generally resisting animal product consumption in any capacity.

Setting a unifying standard for a broad group of people that they’ll never meet and then reacting to the shock of them failing to meet that standard is a common rhetorical tactic in other contexts, no surprises it turns up here too.

This tracks for how a lot of people use the app, but depending on where you are you can also have some fairly normal (for a dating site) conversations with people as well. I spent a couple months on Grindr despite not being interested in hookups, since it’s a decent way to meet other trans folk in my area. My inbox was mostly dick pics but I also met some amazing people I’m still with several years later!

One I haven’t seen in this thread yet: the last playable bit of Bastion, if you choose to take Zulf with you. An early example of Supergiant’s mastery of interactive storytelling, coming to a head with a recognition of humanity in the midst of apocalyptic war.

I won’t overhype it, as others are saying it changes up a lot and there’s a particular section near the end that a few people I know bounced off of. It will be a very different experience, built on the same bones, but trying to accomplish something different.

But holy shit, to me it’s an improvement on an already phenomenal game, and builds on its narrative and mechanics in ways I thought were really clever. It feels like the other side of the coin from the main game and bolsters its themes from another perspective. Can’t recommend it enough.

I gotta get around to the other games in the series sometime, To The Moon was incredible. It’s been so long and I don’t remember many specifics, but I do recall it being one of a few games that encouraged me to come to terms with mortality.

Same on both counts. TWD season 1 is absolutely masterful and got me to care for its cast incredibly quickly.

I genuinely can’t believe the renegade interrupt that can happen during that scene in ME3 is in the game. I haven’t gotten spoiler tags to work consistently across Lemmy so I won’t say it but you know the one. One of those times where being given a choice to kneecap an incredible story moment felt really weird. Maybe other players didn’t connect with him as much / had more desire to continue the genophage?

Outer Wilds got me too, for sure, and stayed in my thoughts long after I finished. The music from the slideshow at the end of the DLC still makes me well up a bit. Such an incredible game. I still think of “the universe is and we are” from one of Solanum’s logs all the time.

I was raised around a lot of “patriotism” (closet nationalism) and have had to adapt the feeling now that I understand better what America actually is and has been. I found that trying to abandon the feeling altogether was making me feel cynical and alone. The parts of America that I love in fact tend to exist despite our government and dominant culture, which steals and appropriates the things I love about us and turns them into the things people know about us and dislike for good reason. I love the source materials, not the end result. As a white person born into privilege on stolen land, my existence is not entirely apart from this, but all’s I can do with that is try to make something better of it.

There’s a salt-of-the-earth working-class segment of this country that’s getting screwed over, knows how and why they and others are getting screwed over, and has learned to survive together in spite of it. People that make families out of communities. Rail hoppers, union organizers, queer punks, the list goes on. That spirit is not unique to this country but there do exist uniquely American forms of it. I’m more proud of these people than words can express, and that’s about as close to patriotic as I can feel these days.

Maybe I just like seeing our shitty protestant labor worship turned to something more productive. Maybe I just spent too much time in the mountains to not fall in love with the land itself. Or maybe I just love banjos.