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Cake day: March 19th, 2026

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  • In a 2002 oral history interview with Rebecca Wright, then coordinator for the NASA Johnson Space Center History Office, Ride was asked what items NASA had added to her flight kit, including the tampons in question.

    “I remember the engineers trying to decide how many tampons should fly on a one-week flight; they asked, ‘Is 100 the right number?’” Ride recalled, according to the transcript. She replied that, “No, that would not be the right number.”

    “They said, ‘Well, we want to be safe,’” continued Ride. “I said, ‘Well, you can cut that in half with no problem at all.’”

    NASA engineers apparently had a history of sending women to space with inadequate supplies. In that same interview, Ride noted that the engineers had also decided that women astronauts would want makeup. So, they designed a makeup kit.

    “The engineers at NASA, in their infinite wisdom, decided that women astronauts would want makeup — so they designed a makeup kit,” Ride was quoted as saying in a January 2018 tweet shared by the NASA History Office.

    It is not uncommon for astronauts to head to space with their own personal hygiene kits, which have been issued as standard equipment for astronauts since the 1960s. These kits typically contain items like a toothbrush, lotion, deodorant, comb, and razor. But in a predominantly male field in the 1980s, experts apparently had limited knowledge in the types of hygiene items that would be necessary for a woman.

    The optional — and unused — makeup kit included eyeliner, mascara, eye shadow, eye makeup remover, blusher, and lip gloss. It went on display in the Human Spaceflight at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, in 2002.

    What a fascinating little piece of history! They even designed a makeup kit smh. Thanks for the rabbit hole!








  • “The messaging about HRT is so positive and all-consuming right now,” Ms. Maylone said. It seems like “you can experience this phase of your life totally differently, and there is relief,” she added.

    “I feel totally cut off from that,” she said.

    Rebecca Hastings, 46, cannot take hormone replacement therapy because it raises the risk of blood clots, which she is already more likely to develop because of a genetic mutation that she carries.

    At a recent family party, she started commiserating with another woman about perimenopause symptoms, which for Ms. Hastings have included night sweats and hot flashes. They were half-complaining, half-laughing when the woman became serious: She had wasted two years suffering before starting hormone therapy, she told Ms. Hastings. It had fixed everything.

    “I immediately lost connection and felt isolated,” Ms. Hastings said.

    As a woman on the receiving end of these posts and marketing and friends, it really does seem like the overall and only answer to perimenopause and menopause is HRT. And not only that, but managing symptoms through just diet and adding a fan to the bedroom is difficult and doesn’t provide the type of relief that HRT can.

    Doctors don’t have much guidance for other ways of managing the symptoms either. So much of this knowledge is still being passed from woman to woman.

    Jamie Davis Smith, a 51-year-old writer and adjunct professor in Washington, D.C., said her doctor advised against hormone replacement therapy because she is at increased risk of stroke, but has not suggested any alternative ways to treat her symptoms, including brain fog that often causes her to lose a word midsentence while she is writing or teaching.

    Ms. Maylone said that when she tried to raise the subject with her providers, she hit a wall. “Through no fault of their own, they’re like, ‘We’re trying to have you not have cancer,’” she said. “It just feels like you hit a dead end.”

    There is a “humongous provider knowledge gap” when it comes to menopause care, said Dr. Rajita Patil, director of the Comprehensive Menopause Program at UCLA. While demand has exploded, many clinicians are still not up to speed on the full range of treatments, including nonhormonal options, she said.







  • A lot of the issues you have with Lemmy is in large part because there’s less people here than Reddit. You really have to curate your subscriptions page to get that kind of algorithm treatment you’re used to from Reddit. There’s a lot of communities here that don’t hit the top posts in all but are still active.

    You also kinda have to be the change you want to see and be stubborn about it. Keep posting things you find interesting, throw out those comments on posts even if there’s no other comments or motion. A new community isn’t going to get built up overnight.