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YS > I am not unconvinced that most of the posters on CR are not robots
This is called Turing Test – whether you cant distinguish between human and bot. Maybe some yeshiva bucher is just testing his AI skills? In fairness, the Turing test is becoming easier and easier – not only because computers are getting smarter but because of yeridas hadoros.
My apology, I did not know he has a PhD by now! His semicha is before that and is also legit.
Re: machlokes, surely each of the chazal had their own approaches, mesorah, and opinions. There are patterns in those disagreements and a lot of Gemorah is discovering and then applying those patterns in cases that we can’t resolve otherwise. When R Yochanan pointed to Resh Lakish former occupation, surely there were personality and life experiences involved …
A big part of learning would be to get rid of inappropriate biases, of course, by working out with counterparts. Resh Lakish did not keep his former attitudes, but retained knowledge of how to make a weapon.Again, as in many cases, I see you (and not just you) reacting to negative development by going into opposite direction. Yes, there are academic authors who abuse Torah by assigning everything to psychology, but rejecting them does not mean rejecting the real part of it.
RebE, is this still so? If we define parnosa as abililty to have some food, shelter, clothes, a little extra food for shabbos – then, really, if you are legal, you will get this from state of NJ withou, has vesholom, any davening. So, maybe, tefilah is to earn honest living. Even then, the situation is not as dire as yam suf. Yes, everyone is anxious when looking for/losing a job, but 95% of people who want it are employed. Need more guidance how to apply this Chidushei Harim to our days.
2scesnts, mathematically this is the same – punishing for bad behaviors or rewarding for good. Possibly incentives work better, I agree. And they are done already by some insurances or self-insured companies. As to insurances, as I mentioned, Obamacare allows charging for smoking. Company insurances simply bundle for a group. When my employees get a lot of medicine used, my price goes up next year. If the salaries would be lower and insurance be a big part of compensation, I would probably not be hiring smokers and other health abusers just on the cost alone.
Yeserbius > Most of you have a primary care doctor. One that you’re had since before COVID that you go to when you’re sick.
You are right. To my best knowledge, none of the anti-vaxers (or any other anti-anything) here quoted their doctors. Still, asking a doctor in an emerging situation has limits (I presume you have a garden-variety primary doctor, not on university faculty):
1) As R Meir Twersky wrote – we value life more than the general culture, or in a case of great uncertainty: ask several doctors and take the safest approach. It is called “robust estimation”, I am pretty impressed by R Twersky’s approach here.
2) Doctor will give you a conservative answer and will follow general policy that may be behind times at current speed. I asked about a particular covid action my, pretty experienced in other aspects, doctor – he said that there is no recommendation “yet” for my situation. So, I acted on my own, and he called me two months later saying that the recommendation arrived (to do what I did). In another case, he said “we only do it for research subject, I can’t order it within the system, there is no button” (that is, yes, it is important but the system does not let me do it).
This is practical – as in latest Omicron craze, maybe people who got infected en masse lately – would not if they would take action earlier. In my area, suddenly everyone is in serious masks in some stores – 2 weeks after they should have.
If someone learns and then davens for parnasa – could someone who works whole day and does not learn daven to become a Talmid chochom? Is reciting brochos on Torah a good segulah? Which day of the year is the best? Asking for a friend.
we have a related case in halakha of “almost” forcing someone to do the right thing despite the explicit autonomy – beat up the husband until he says “I _want_ to give a get”. Is this because another person is affected?
If you hold by the above analogy, presuming there are some consequences of non-vaccination for other people (taxing hospitals, reducing transmission even somewhat – and more for Delta that was out there at least as of last week), then nudging them – require for jobs, flying, eating out – is ok and is not the same as vaccinating by force.
Avira, are you using “Dr” as a term of disparagement or just misspelled R? I did not know that Midrash Shmuel has a PhD program. I would say if someone actually finds as unicorn, that the finder’s pedigree is not important. Otherwise, your question is good. But do all chazal stand by the unicorn? Are there ones that do not take a stand and, thus, presumably, are also in the sceptics camp? I am not a baki in unicorns, so have no position.
RebE > don’t believe the Satmar Rav ztz’l said that as mentioned above.
I am also suspicious: 9am is too late to start working.
doomsday > You are brainwashed to hate the Unvaxxed by the Democratic Party.
Thanks for your concern. I never went to a Democrat party without N95, so I think I am protected.
I can also bet that I am not going to lose my medical license, because I am a real Dokter, not some MD that can lose a license. I can’t. But please don’t lose your respect for MDs because of me.But, seriously, let’s share information and think critically together. To your comparisons with smkoers, etc – they are already paying more: medical for smoking and life insurance for obesity, and all pay co-pays. People at fault of accidents – their insurance pays damages and their premiums go up. The practical question is – we don’t want people to get broke from one incident and have rahmonus on them, letting them bump into several people before they lose their driving license.
But I don’t think this really matters to us here. Can we immediately affect mandates, unless we are so upset that go to demonstrations? Let’s discuss things we can do right now. We can protect vulnerable people close to us by being more careful. What are your suggestions? how do you approach this challenge that Hashem gave us? Please share, but leave politics out, this aint critical thinking.
Gadol > However, by initially overstating vaccination benefits,
what did they overstate? (as admitted, I am not following political statements closely, reading scientific literature takes too much time).
I think there were some things that people initially did not predict, that would be foreseeable to experts – such as decreasing antibody immunity, robust T-cell immunity, new variants with increasing propagation (that was high to begin with), inability of Bidenistas to do anything productive. Mi hu haham, haroeh es hanolad.
YI > Kefirah to Daven for Parnassa?
Like asking your parents to help you with math homework while you did not bother opening a book.
If Hashem creates challenges for us, and you turn around and ask him – no you go first, then you don’t believe that what he created is really important for you to deal with, you have a better agenda.
I am not hugh fan of federal mandates. There are many things that feds should be doing, but on the substance of your argument:
VAERS canard is totally incongruent with all research done using controls and via historical data in multiple countries. Research discovered some complications related to myocarditis and it is well documented in terms of risk rates per age (and that risk is lower than risk of same disease from COVID).
Transmission was significantly reduced for Delta when mandates came out. You are right that the omicron seems to be transmitting more. I see only preliminary estimates that possibly transmits less but by less than Delta. So, in this sense, you are right that mandate may be less relevant.
Remaining public policy argument for vaccines is that they reduce serious hospitalization and thus stress on medical system. Paraphrasing a WSJ comment: I am a nurse for 50 years. We are all exhausted by now. Know that if you arrive here we will still take care of you, whatever your views are. But please do what you can to reduce our stress so that we can continue taking care of patients. There is also a libertarian argument – you should be free to sign a paper that you will be last in line for medical services and responsible for all medical and burial costs.
At the end, I am not sure what is our interest in discussing mandates, instead of discussing our obligations. All anti-vaccine arguments I saw here were not based on any psak, or any valid medical information, just on some website quotes, some based on gross anti-Torah notions of disregard of human life, of logic.
My wise F-I-L taught me a good tip: always have the last word.
“yes, mam”.TLIK +1. I guess I am a Nistar (Modern-Litvishe) Satmar. Same for Igros Moshe, I think there was a response from R Kanevsky recently why religiously lighting candles does not always help raise a T’Ch – “maybe he did not supervise what the child is learning”. Note focus on parent supervising, not “maybe school did not teach properly”.
Also, current Daf Megilah talks about several people giving their segulos for long life. Here is what I learned:
First lesson – these questions are being asked of actual people who are pretty old, not from a rando in the street who wants to teach longevity.
Second – those segulot intersect but vary. According to my maggid shiur, this means that each person might have his own moment in time when he needs to make a special effort that is special to him. Gemora sometimes refers other people who do same middah when explaining it, but does not mention anyone who copied someone else and had a long life!
3 – while patience is mentioned, it is NOT a required one apparently! One elder’s guards chased R Akiva to the palmtree for asking about longecity secrets until he proved that he is a T’Ch.RebE > that it does not get used up.
our substances are off. Yes, Torah is _compared_ to water, but it _is_ an alcoholic beverage. Source: Brochos – a man takes an empty kli to pour wine. Not so Hashem, He pours wine into a full kli. So, you need to bottle your Torah to the brim and label accordingly to be considered for further filling.
Syag, I am talking about non-acute issues already that might have accumulated from all this. If your oxygen is 99, B’H, great. If you simply too lazy to check but would rather write about it, ok too. I actually tried to post something non-controversial, but never mind 🙂
Syag, indeed. As reported, lung capacity is *way less* of an issue for those who had Omicron. As there are *way more* people who are getting it, it may be relevant for some. Others might have had Delta. Others might have had Delta last year and Omicron now. Others might have had pneumonia 5 years ago.
It costs $5 to get one oximeter per family or yeshiva dorm and you’ll see if you need to pay attention to your health. I am not “correcting” anyone, just gave a free piece of the advice. Thanks for helping me clarify the information.
A general thought: a standard medical advice is about acute things that happen on average. Lots of covid public policy advice is based on balance between hospital capacity and a need for children to be in school. You can often do better. For a pre-covid example: children vaccinations are structured to maximize efficiency and probability that kids take all of them. We re-scheduled them to delay those that were not an issue (our kids were not digging dirt with metal knives unsupervised) and space out remaining one instead of cocktails. The doctor grumbled but complied.
Why Jews used to daven for rain rather than stam for food? What if Hashem taki sends rain, but I don’t want to go sow and harvest in bad weather?
It seems from some Gemoras that any kind of segulohs or stam requests from Hashem might be considered after you did hishtadlus. A person who asks for segulah for parnasa but does not send resumes out is challenging Hashem.
In addition to all other avanos, it is also bizayon for meis midrash: the only reason one can bring coffee there is to drink in order to learn better.
If just one student from the beit midrash throws coffee at policemen, the whole yeshiva should do soul-searching and fast, or at least not allow coffee in beis midrash for a week. They should also give out free coffee to all passing policemen if they agree to say a brocha.
A question from my first class in statistics:
you ask two people on the street whether bus N5 goes on this street. One says – yes, one says – no. What is the probability that the bus goes there: A. 50%. B > 50%. C <50%.A variation: same question about seeing a unicorn.
Syag > Wake up sir,
Look, you seem to be up to date, but you can hear here so many people who use Radio Moscow as their information sources. With so many people sick lately, maybe someone did not think about this. Using oximeter is a simple objective way to check your lung status, whether it is from a recent sickness or from old one, or from anything else – and do something about it.
Gadol, work (with your head) for 8 hours, then learn for 10 hours (or other way around) then you should sleep well for the remaining 6.
For those who recovered, it is recommended to do light exercise – reduce sitting time, walk 30 minutes daily/up to the time you feel tired. deep breathing exercises for lungs. Get yourself an oximeter – if you are doing less than 97%, do more of the above. Gezunte heig.
Israeli issues are indeed harder.
Demai is a concept that makes certain assumptions about how Amei Haaretz behave and, at least, take
it to MidRabanan level where oter kulos are available. Are any similar concepts used in modern Israeli practice? Did it change over time? After all, a median agricultural worker in 1950s was an anti-religious kibutznik who would “bite like a horse” while now a median food worker (not including machines) is a traditional Marokai, who may not be up-and-up on all Ashkenazi minhagim and humros but respects religion and knows basics. At worst, he might add some rice into kneidlach.RebE > They were elected in 1932 to fight the left
exactly. Every extreme action on the left becomes a fundraising letter on the right and vice versa. They feed off each other. That is why we need to find solutions that unite reasonable people. It does not have to be 50-50 on every issue as “no label” people suggest, but at least each should get some reasonable people from the other side. Maybe combine measures attractive to both sides – give more money to poor people, in the form of school vouchers
I found a partial answer to the question I was curious about – does it matter whether you just spent 15 minutes with a sick person or whether you were sitting in the same unventilated room for hours? The paper below gives a clue:
among admitted to the hospital in 2020, chances of death was 5x higher for those with high viral load at admission v. those with low – about same as difference between 30 y.o and 65 y.o.
Of course, viral load may be a factor of how disease is progressing. They have another clue – how viral load changed during first weeks of pandemic in 2020, when people became aware and started practicing SD. Low viral load went from 30% of cases to 70% in one month. So, seems like level of exposure is important.
SARS-CoV-2 infection: Initial viral load (iVL) predicts severity of illness/outcome, and declining trend of iVL in hospitalized patients corresponds with slowing of the pandemic
Said El Zein, Sep 2021 PLOSsag > hospital is filled with the unvaxed (fake news)
I have no idea whether this statement is fake news or not. may depend on when and where. How hospitals are filled depends on vaccination rates by age, ages of patients, and why they are testing.
what _is_ not fake news that if you take two similar persons of same age, then chances of having a serious case is 5-15x lower for a vaccinated person v. the one without prior immunity – this is across the board. Ones with “natural immunity” obviously already went through that elevated risk. Omicron risks seems to react similarly to previous vaccine/disease immunity. Those who had that more than 6-9 months ago still have some risk.
Has Veshalom, I am wishing anything on anyone. To the opposite, I am urging those who are reluctant to go vaccinate right now as the chance of getting omicron is high both for those who were sick previously, as you know, and those were vaccinated and had a previous safe routine. I know some people who did, but stats shows that latest peak of vaccination was people prepping for their holidays, now nobody does it, maybe because they are in line for testing.
ujm > forced to pay for medical expenses resulting from obesity.
also, I do not know whether you are working for Feds or a college, but most private insurances have now huge copays and deductibles, so yes obese pay more, unless they are very poor. I am not sure what is the case with Covid. At some point government was paying it all, I think, and it seems to make sense if we want people to go get help, but maybe it will be also productive to make them look at the cost side also.
ujm > And people who over-eat should, per your argument, be charged higher insurance
We do. I do when I pay insurance for my companies with rates reflecting prior year expenses by the employees. A number of big companies self-insure and provide positive incentives for employees to go the gym ($800/year on average). ACA allows charging smokers 50% more (the only one surcharge allowed). Life insurance is less regulated and charges smokers 3 times more, obesity 150% more, Delta (airline, not variant) started charging $200 more for insurance for covid unvaxers.
Is this wrong somehow? In halakha, if you can assign cost to specific people, then only those people pay tax. If a wall protects everyone, then everyone pays.
crazy horse > The point here is critical thinking
agree 100%. The problem seems to be that sheker, like a virus, has 100 opportunities to attack and only one needs to work to get inside the person’s mind and heart. Some fall for some Kennedy, others for a radio personalities, etc. Maybe our way is to hold tight by whatever EMES is out there. It is generally difference between Yiddishkeit and science. Torah starts with known truths and then we use logical and other tools to extend this truth to new problems. Science generally goes towards truth and looking back consists of a lot of sheker.
So, in the vaccine example, there are some simple truths that can be evaluated post factum. They may not always answer today’s question, but helps to see back what is correct. some ideas:
– excess death statistics, reliable for many countries. Funeral houses do not pad numbers. They show how many extra people passed away, subtract drugs, altzheimers and you get your stats. For more research: subdivide by age, county, vaccination levels, and you have your reliable statistics and answers to people who say “covid is flu”, etc
– total number of people in ICUs. These numbers do not depend on how people test, what takes them to hospitals. They show how many extra people are in critical condition at this point of time.
if you think there are problems wit these numbers, let me know.
maybe there are other reliable statistics if we think more about them. These should be the first line of discussion, if people want to make their minds straight. I don’t see hope in discussing various claims quoted around. When presented with a counter-argument, most of them do not reply like R Yohanan, they just go to another claim.syag > the current run of covid, according to more reliable sources, is not putting people on ventilators”
My choice of words may have been too harsh, but with current risks, I hope people use their brain and do simple things to protect themselves and their relatives despite the websites they are reading.
It does looks that there is less lung problems, indeed, B’H. Statistics seems to bear that and so do anecdotes from people saying that “this time it was much easier”. During very high fall season, some/not all of the reports were that “this time it was worse”. Still, as of now, death rates started unfortunately going up in their grim 3-week lag cycle after cases. In your Chicago, it is 1/3 off. That is deaths go “only” 1/3 up of cases v. previous, but cases are way up. In NYC, correlation is closer to 1 somehow.
Whatever mistakes doctors do, I don’t think we can explain full ICUs by that. I live in a place with good hospitals and educate doctors, and ICUs are filling up. A couple of antivaxers I know who were there in the fall talked about many theories, but did not attack doctors who saved their lives.
Rambam contradicts himself. He says 8 hours and wake up with sunrise, but he also says in halakhos deah, I think, that one should learn both day and night, a this is different type of learning. During summer, both are impossible. So, one advise is to maximize health, another – learning.
As different people need different amount of sleep and at different periods of their life, you should experiment: go to sleep at same time daily and wake up without alarm clock. In 1-2 weeks, you’ll stabilize at the hours of sleep that you need.
If you sleep less, you may be forgetting your learning. Basic experiments with mice show that: show a mice a new box, it will go explore it on the first day and ignore on the second as a known object. If you disturb sleep, it explores the box on the second day forgetting what it saw a day before.
There is research comparing pairs of nearby US cities, one at the west end of one time zone, next – at the beginning of the other. One of them gets more sleep, almost an hour on average, also has 10+ on IQ and $10K on income. Whether sleep makes them smarter/richer, or whether smrt/rich people choose to sleep more, it is a good example to emulate. Hope I did not offend anyone on the western side.
Also, try not to get up during deep sleep. Fitbit and similar can measure your deep sleep cycle, usually every 1.5 hours. Teenagers especially should sleep more in the morning. Explain it (respectfully!) to your parents and teachers and tell them you’ll learn better that way. And actually do that.
ujm > No one is obligated to put chemicals into their body
and nobody should be denied access to medical system on the account of people who put themselves at risk on their own. In our country, this could be resolved very simply over time (that we do not have due to fast moving events): insurance companies should have different rates based on vaccination status. Also, discounts based on masking and social behavior (tracked by GPS, as already done for car insurance).
Among millions anti-vaxer, surely there are some who run an insurance company and who will provide discounts to other anti-vaxers. If not, you pay the risk you present. BYOV. Buy your own ventilator.
Gadol > Dems have –and continue to–misstate the purpose and efficacy
I’ll take your word for that. I don’t use Dem party for medical information. Next, you’ll be asking CNN for psak halakha. I think Phase 3 results were pretty clear on chance on getting infected: 95%, or 20x reduction 2 weeks after vaccination and seemingly was all over the news.
what changed from then?
– decreasing efficiency over time. this was as expected
– vaccinated can still infect others, to lesser degree. this was seemingly unknown.
– variants decrease efficiency, as expected.
– 2 doses were given too close to each other (3-4 weeks), decreasing long-term effectiveness
– T-cell immunity (completely unknown after Phase 3) holds against severe disease even against variants.
– most of population does not understand statistics and listen to pundits. As expected, but still jarring.participant > Vaccinated still have to wear masks. …
Take it to Hashem that he made your life completely unpredictable and this ruins your seder. Maybe it is the point? The classic difference between Mitzraim and E’Y is that previous depends on predictable river, while later requires us to daven for rain. Taaanit goes describing multiple types of public prayer of increasing intensity if the rain is still not coming.. so, even with public prayer, we admit we don’t know what is going to happen
ujm > Is it not okay to tell people that “Hechsher X” I do not consider reliable?
good question. Same goes for shidduch and job applicants. I am thinking that if the listener respects your integrity and you actually have it, then it might be enough to say “don’t deal with X”, no need to share details. On the other hand, when you are advising someone who can’t rely on your personal integrity, you would need to help him with facts that can help him make a judgment. I think, we are mostly in the second reality in an online group. When someone here says that something “aint frum”, I can generally guess whether it means selling treif or not following the latest humrah, or has kippah srugah on premises, based on the poster, but more specificity would be helpful.
hello99 is a little more specific and eems to know something, but I don’t know you enough to judge. What is lack of integrity – koshering questionable treif to save money, dealing with evil zionists, relying on phone calls instead of visiting – my mind creates more scenarios than I like. I could even decide that if a low-integrity director left, maybe the place was better than the director?
“Explain yourself”, to quote the Caterpillar.
according to google trends, this year Jan 6th interest was over by 3pm Eastern on Jan 7th and the peak was 5 times lower than Sep 11. Sounds like heavy promotion in the media did not ignite any passions and probably is finished – probably until a new revelation what kind of beer Trump was drinking while watching Fox on Jan 6th.
another trends: interest in Trump became more than in Obama in June 2015 and nobody googled Obama after Jan 2017 except him family, perhaps. Same date for Hillary. Interest in Biden overcame Trump for the first time was Jan 17, 2021 for a week and from time on, both presidents generate about the same interest.
Well, Britain may got her own medicine – being a remote part of a mega-state is not attractive. Maybe the Queen can apologize on behalf of George III.
I think Torah is Mayim Chayim, not sure if bottled water, cut from the source, qualifies. Maybe Divrei Tirah designed to achieve a pre-ordained conclusion rather than to honestly discuss a topic is “bottled Torah”.
Would all of this qualify as lashon hara of relatively high degree (as it damages someone’s business). If you have specific reasons and have proofs for them, state them: this heksher is allowing halav stam, or does not chdeck knives, or uses yain nesach …
interesting, and even as Eliahu was chief rabbi (sic!) of Chelm, this does not sound like a joke!
He lived a short life born after and died before Maharal, there is 1630 book assigning Golem and “old synagogue” stories to him. Chacham Tzvi, Yaakov Emden are his descendants.
I don’t see references to him being in Prague, but I also don’t see references that he was not (sorry for using Chelm style!)
For further confusion, there was another Eliyahu Bal Shem _Loanz_ who was born at a similar time and actually was Maharal’s student. So, maybe this is how golem was transferred – through confused references to two Bal Shems?
TLIK, this seems like a good approach and it would work with an observant therapist, but not like the doctor heterim, as ujm points out. I wonder whether the phone connection can indeed solve the problem. Just put the spouse/mother/friend on an app. Possibly just video, reduced resolution. If connection goes down, they should call the office to do a check.
One problem with the above is the experience of security monitoring. There is almost never a case when a security person discovers low-level crime in real time. It is after a computer is stolen, you can wind the tape and find the perp. But even a lapsed security monitoring should make the doctor aware of consequences. The key is that the monitor should be independent of the doctor.
ujm, sorry, I skipped that you are discussing therapists specifically. It is not just the nature of the session, but also developing a close relationship.
from the same book:
a woman who visits a therapist may not rely on the heter of Baaloh B’ir, since she develops a close relationship with the therapist and he is considered a Libo Gas Boh (Nitei Gavriel 36:3).mdd1, I am not “speaking about Ravina”, I am asking a question specifically because of the his stature. I hope you have a good explanation.
I have a related question about “hasid ehad” who used to speak with Eliahu. Then he blocked the entrance (and poor could not come in) and Eliahu stopped coming. Presumably, the hasid noticed that Eliahu stopped coming. Surely, he then did teshuva and opened the entrance – based on the principle that T’Ch sinning in the evening does teshuva before morning. Then, Eliahu is so strict that he would not come even with teshuva. Alternatively [less likely, but suggested by Gemora not mentioning teshuva] the hasid prefers comfortable living to Eliahu’s visits? Then, what kind of hasid he was to begin with? Did he change in one day?
> Rebbe Meir is enough of a source, being a tanna
haver wife’s honor same as havero, so maybe she is also a tanna :)?> As the drishah famously writes, exceptional women can learn gemara,
Drisha indeed had a proof – his own mother (order of candlelighting on yom tov)> she didn’t put herself into a nisayon
I mean that she put herself into the nisayon by her learning. I think “daatan kalos” is a mida of being able to do/consider multiple things at the same time, not only/necessarily a put-down. As mentioned, she was learning from multiple teachers.> rebbe Meir may have initiated it, but it was min hashomayim
min hasomayim is never an excuse for someone’s actions, of course.Gadol > superscript R2, R3, or R4
I think you are going against the author’s intent 🙂
Mathematically, if R is infinite, then R^n is the same. There are of course, different infinities, appropriately called aleph_0,aleph_1 by R(eb) Cantor.amom > So everyone sticks to their beliefs.
this is indeed a sad case and information is very confusing, although a lot of things that can be supported by data and there are a lot of opinions that are clearly based on wrong information. As a bright spot in this sea of darkness, early in the pandemic, my kids talked to a friend who declared (parroting a parent) that covid takes less lives than auto-accidents. They jointly went through the math, and next week the friend wears a mask …
There is a story about, I think, R Salanter who got into a dispute with a maskil in an inn. R Salanter suggested that the loser of the debate would change to the opponent’s style of suit, and he took his jacket off to start. Maskil refused this condition and R Salanter refused debating saying there is no point debaing someone who is not ready to consider a possible defeat. This describes a lot of anti-intellectual discussions lately.
ujm, did not know about railroads!
We learned something though – Blackberry tried everything unique, failed. Apple survived. Everyone else uses standards.excellent news re: Britain, maybe they can soon join the union?!
or a husband?