(biologist - artist - queer)

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You’re the only magician that could make a falling horse turn into thirteen gerbils

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • You didn’t mention it, but have you considered how it would feel if you had a bad day and didn’t live up to this standard?

    You’re framing it like a moral philosophy, but feeling anger is not a morally bad thing. Neither is jealousy, or selfishness, at times. It’s just part of the human experience, and we can avoid it most of the time, but occasionally we’re going to need to focus on ourselves and our needs and our feelings.

    Similarly, it’s impossible to avoid having an ego 100% of the time. Honestly, it sounds like this quality is part of your identity-- would you like yourself less if you lived up to this standard imperfectly?

    I don’t think it’s unusual to want to be a good person and to want to control our worst impulses. But to describe it as “trying to act like a saint”, and saying you’re “deaf to your own needs”-- those are concerning statements.

    I don’t think anyone can speak for you or guess what’s going on from the outside. But if I were you, I’d be exploring if there’s fear underlying these impulses. Fear of judgment: how do you think the world would perceive you if you stopped being so strict about it? Fear of badness: how does it feel when you have a bad day and you fail to be perfect? Do you resent yourself? Fear of impurity: do you feel like other people are bad when they have these natural reactions? Do you fear being like other people who are experiencing and dealing with normal feelings?


  • Disclaimer: I am not an expert in this and this is just my understanding of how to answer this question

    You may or may not realize that most voters don’t usually go out well in advance and research all potential candidates, selecting the one they feel represents their values the best. Many of them don’t even check in to the conversation until the primaries are over and they can make a simple red vs. blue choice. Among voters that do participate in primaries, they mostly rely on information they learn about those potential candidates by watching advertisements, endorsements from other well known politicians, clips from debates, news and social media coverage, etc.

    Creating that information (ads, debates, news coverage, social media, etc.) requires two things: money and momentum. Money comes first, and is disbursed according to the process the other commenter described-- the party talks with its donors and collectively they decide who to fund.

    In Bernie’s case, he was systematically deprived of money by the DNC as described above, in addition to his moral philosophy of not taking money from big donors. Instead, he funded his campaign through small donations-- which he earned a LOT of-- but he still had fewer funds to generate advertisements, to host events, to “get the word out”.

    Without this funding and support, Bernie couldn’t generate momentum as effectively. The fact that he is as popular as he is despite the lack of support from the party illustrates how popular his platform is, but that isn’t enough to get disengaged voters interested. Further, in his case, other party members actively wanted him to NOT be the nominee, so there were fewer endorsements, more intentional maneuvering by the party to convince voters to vote for other candidates, etc.

    In essence, the idea that having the purest moral and policy philosophy is the most important element to winning the nomination is naive: it takes money and support from institutions, or else no one will ever even know what that pure philosophy is.






  • The fact this has 40 up votes right now makes me feel like lemmy is losing a diverse user base. Like, where are the women to down vote this obviously shitty take?

    Let’s list some reasons why these women could have done this that aren’t “women are sluts for clown daddies”:

    • he’s their boss, and leveraging his insane power over them to make it hard to say no and keep their job
    • he’s just an extremely powerful man and they’re afraid of pissing him off
    • they have insecurities, (like the “loser cuck” fallacy!) that they aren’t valuable or desirable as partners, and attention from someone as powerful as him feels like affirmation of their value even if they don’t like him or he treats them badly
    • they understand that, by not resisting his advances, they might be able to provide themselves a link to a financial source that could support them and a child
    • he literally sexually harasses, assaults, or rapes them and they don’t feel like they can criminally pursue one of the richest men in the world

    Like, yeah, some of them might be individuals who have bad taste in men or are shitty people themselves. I’m even certain that some of them are! But damn, can we take the perspective of the woman for one second? It’s not a good look to find yourself agreeing with incels on the internet





  • stoneparchment@possumpat.iotoMemes@lemmy.mlThis is the way
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    9 months ago

    I feel like I’ve seen this take a lot more in the past ~5 years than I did before. Not just that zoos are unethical, but that any animal ownership (or really interaction of any kind) is inherently abusive.

    You’re certainly entitled to feel however you want about animal ownership and act accordingly, but personally I feel like it’s honestly kind of a weird take?

    Humans are obviously not the only species that develops symbiolotic relationships with other organisms (in a diversity of power dynamics), but we are also not the only species who take on specifcally ownership or shepherd roles for other species (like spiders with frog pets, or fungus farmer ants, among many many other examples). Thus, the ontological position this opinion must operate from is that humans are somehow distinct and superior to nature, such that we have separate and unique responsibilities not to engage in mutualistic ownership with other organisms, on the basis that like, we’re somehow “above” that? That we’re so enlightened and knowledgeable that we exist in a category of responsibility distinct from all other organisms?

    Of course, a lot of our relationships to animals can be described as harmful in other terms without needing to take this specific stance. Like, our relationship with many agricultural animals can be critiqued through the harm done to their individual well-beings and through the harm their propagation does to the global environment. Or irresponsible pet owners can be critiqued for how their unwillingness to control the reproduction or predatory abilities of their pets can harm local ecosystems, like an introduced invasive species might. Or valid criticisms of many zoos when they prioritize profits over animal welfare, rehabilitation, ecosystem restoration, and education. Or that the general public picking up wild animals is a problem because it disturbs their fragile ecosystems and traumatizes them, especially when done on the large scale of human populations (but distinctly not for ecological study, wild animal healthcare, education, etc., like Steve Irwin et. al) But none of these are specific criques of the mutualistic ownership relationship itself as much as problems with the way we handle that relationship.

    Idk, I’m interested to understand your opinion, especially if it has detail I’m missing beyond “we shouldn’t have pets, zoos, or farms because we’re better than that”!





  • It’s also like, I guess I would prefer it to make mistakes like this if it means it is less biased towards whiteness in other, less specific areas?

    Like, we know these models are dumb as rocks. We know that they are imperfect and that they mirror the biases of their trainers and training data, and that in American society that means bias towards whiteness. If the trainers are doing what they can to prevent that from happening, whatever, that’s cool… even if the result is some dumb stuff like this sometimes.

    I also don’t think it’s a problem for the user to specify race if it matters? Like “a white queen of England” is a fine thing to ask for, and if it isn’t specified, the model will include diverse options even if they aren’t historically accurate. No one gets bent out of shape if the outfits aren’t quite historically accurate, for example



  • Oooh it’s even cooler than that!! You’re spot on, acid is the problem. And acid from food, candy, coffee, etc. is harmful for enamel for sure.

    But sugary stuff that isn’t acidic also rots teeth. Why? Because the bacteria in your mouth do what’s called lactic acid fermentation. Basically, when they take a sugar molecule and want to make “usable” energy out of it (in the form of something called ATP, or adenosine triphosphate), they end up creating lactic acid as a byproduct. In essence, the stuff living in your mouth makes acid out of sugar.

    We also need to break sugar down into ATP, but we do something called cellular respiration instead. It uses oxygen and creates CO2 as a byproduct! That’s why we need oxygen to breathe, and why we breathe out carbon dioxide. But, when you work your muscles hard (lifting weights, sprinting), you might use the ATP in your muscles faster than your body can make it with cellular respiration. In that case, your cells will also do lactic acid fermentation! That’s what we’re feeling when we “feel the burn” (well, that and micro-tears in the muscle, in some cases).

    Source: I’m a biologist! And I love sharing weird facts like this! Thank you for the excuse to write this out :-)


  • Other commenters have good suggestions also, but one option I haven’t seen mentioned would be to buy a powdered acid and make your own dilutions

    It’s easy to get citric acid in a dry form (like the crystal coating on sour candy), you can get 10 lbs (enough to make many gallons) of it for like $30-50 online. I put a small scoop in my dishwasher to keep my cups from getting foggy from our hard water, and I use it to descale our kettle and in our laundry, too.

    Just be careful, acid dilutions are no joke. Whether you get the cleaning vinegar or make a citric acid solution for yourself:

    • use nitrile or latex gloves when working with the acid solutions

    • wear something to protect your eyes, glasses are probably good enough but goggles are better

    • if you have an acid solution and want to dilute it, pour the acid into the water, not the water into the acid!!!

    • flush your skin or eyes with water immediately if the acid gets on you or your clothes

    These rules might seem like overkill but better safe than sorry!

    Citric acid is slightly stronger than acetic acid so if I were you I’d make like a 20% solution to have a similar effect to the cleaning vinegar (so like 100 g powdered acid to 400 mL water). You might have to mix it on the stove so that the water is simmering to get the acid to dissolve.

    Again, be careful! But as long as you’re smart about it, take your time, and prioritize safety, you can definitely use this for descaling and cleaning (and cooking!)