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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • Not entirely true. Vaccines induce the adaptive immune system, which is slow but precise. Getting sick for real induces the innate immune system, which is god awful and you should not be relying on it. S. pneumoniae causes pneumonia because the innate immune system goes overdrive and kills you before it kills the bacteria. COVID-19 induces cell-innate inflammasome activation and leads to a cytokine storm, which then leads to even more damage to the lungs as the immune cells come in. Both diseases have effective vaccines that do not do anything close to this.

    Deadly diseases tend to be deadly not because of the microbe itself, but because the innate immune system overreacts and kills you in the process of fighting off the disease.

    Getting vaccinated diminishes the role that the innate immune system plays when you get sick, since the B cells responsible for producing antibodies for the disease are already mature. Having available antibodies also allows the immune system to rely on the complement system, which allows it to detect and kill invading microbes way earlier than otherwise.



  • Lemmy.world, by political ideology, is most similar to old Reddit. Namely, you’re most likely going to find generally-left-of-center people. Several other instances (namely lemmy.ml) are known for being significantly more left-leaning, basically hard communist.

    As is tradition for left-leaning people, there’s a lot of infighting. .world people think that .ml people are tankies. .ml people think that .world people are corporate bootlickers. Both sides accuse the other of heavy-handed censorship.

    Basically, I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s just your standard leftism infighting.


  • I think people tend to have a very narrow view of what goes on around them. And frankly, I don’t think that’s really a bad thing. Everyone does it. It’s just a fact of life. But we have to account for it. Talking about big-picture issues doesn’t work when people are focused their narrow view of the world. Even if they agree with the issue, they won’t be riled up and take action. I think there’s 2 takeaways to this:

    First, regarding talking to the people around you: narrow your focus. Focus on things that affect them directly, or frame things in a way such that they interpret it in a way that affects them. Don’t talk about concentration camps, talk about Trump retroactively rescinding birthright citizenship and how that might affect their lives (especially effective if that person happens to be an ethnic minority or is in a relationship with one). When talking about anti-immigration policies, focus on ICE arresting American citizens because they didn’t look American enough. You don’t have to convince people of everything, you just have to convince people of enough that they feel personally concerned.

    Second, regarding yourself: it’s easy to think that all Americans are similar to the people that you’re with. Society is a bell curve. You don’t need to shift the entire bell curve to the left to exact change. You just need to stretch it out leftward - pull the left leaning people more to the left. Trump didn’t win by convincing leftists to be right-leaning, he won by convincing the right-leaning moderates into shifting right. Consider the audience and pick arguments that would be most effective against that particular audience. Be more direct toward more left-leaning people. Republican? Sow seeds of suspicion toward Trump. Moderate? Make them fear for their way of life. Left-leaning moderate? Maybe we should punish the rich. Leftist? Hell yeah socialism baby







  • A lot of people here are pointing out the fact that leagues don’t exist, and that is true. But there’s a bigger issue here that’s not being brought up, which is that you’re viewing relationships as mutual infatuation. That’s not what relationships are.

    Love is a conscious choice. You love with your mind, not with your heart. You don’t need to be infatuated with someone to love them. And frankly, I would argue that infatuation is a huge negative in a relationship, because it causes you to make irrational choices that will put strain on the relationship. If you aren’t attracted to your date, the proper thought process should be:

    “That sucks, but it’s not a dealbreaker. Do I feel like I will still be friends with this person after years of living together? After learning all of this person’s bad habits? After being annoyed to hell and back by this person, do I see myself still choosing to value this person?”

    If the answer is yes, then you’ve got yourself a potential partner that you might love.

    Another thing to point out is that physical attraction is very tightly related to the people you’ve been around. It’s not uncommon for someone to find their partner increasingly attractive over time.



  • For reference, that business model is called the loss leader pricing scheme. It’s the one where you sell a product for cheap with the expectation that the customer will buy something else that’s more expensive alongside it. It’s more common than you would expect.

    For instance, eggs and milk are placed at the back of the store because there’s a higher chance of you picking up other things to buy on the way to the back.

    IKEA does something similar with their food court.

    The Steam deck is sold at a loss, because Valve makes their money back via game sales. The same is true for all gaming consoles

    All F2P games operate on the same principle

    My understanding is that Costco gasoline is so cheap because it’s offset by product purchases in-store. Also, Costco food court


  • Scaled and subscribed. There’s a lot of other languages and other topics that I don’t know much about on All. I’m sure that they’re useful, but I don’t understand it and I can’t meaningfully contribute to it. Subscribed is more curated and therefore more meaningful to me. The key is to be lax with what you subscribe to. Seek out niche communities, and subscribe to communities that may not perfectly fit your interests - you want to diversify your feed, so subscribe to basically everything that you’d be ok with seeing.

    Then, sort by Scaled. Hot has a tendency of pushing all the big communities to the top and burying the smaller communities, so you’ll just get a ton of news articles in your feed. Scaled will normalize for community size and make for a more diverse feed




  • That’s actually a misunderstanding. Sure, regular bacteria can’t thrive at boiling temperatures, but some of then can at least survive boiling temperatures for brief periods of time. In the same way that tardigrades can survive the vacuum of space - they’re not really doing anything in space, but they can enter a state of hibernation that’ll allow them to survive


  • No, but it may as well be considered sterile for normal purposes. Boiling doesn’t actually kill everything - endospores and also fungal spores are ridiculously hardy, and you’d need to autoclave (steam at high pressure) in order to really kill everything. And microbes are everywhere, so the tea is going to get colonized again really quickly unless you pay special attention to making sure that that doesn’t happen. Don’t attempt to can or store the tea, if that’s what you’re trying to do. Also, if you’re attempting to use unsanitary water to make tea, be aware that some bacteria and fungi make toxins that can’t be destroyed by boiling, so even if you manage to kill off the microbes, you can still get sick.