Oh yeah, I’m not worried about it at all.

It’s just disturbing to me to see the side that I see as the good guys (the left) getting increasingly drawn into the trap of violence and discrimination. It’s like no one in politics has the ability to self-reflect these days.

Yeah, the cartoon really conveys that with its stereotypical depiction of a Jewish person.

There are better ways to represent a country.

Really? We’ve basically descended to antisemitism now?

I 100% think the use of force in Gaza is genocide and a war crime, but this is a cartoon I’d expect from the Right. We’re better than that.

Looking forward to the downvotes for my ground shattering opinion that racial generalizations never have a place in political commentary.

EDIT: I’ve never been happier in my life to be downvoted. Keep them coming. I love how I even said in my initial comment that I do not support Israel and think they’re committing genocide (which is the general Lemmy opinion), but I’m still getting toasted. I would say the same thing about a WWII cartoon that made racial generalizations about Asians, or about the imperialist cartoons of the late 1800s that made generalizations about any number of a group of other people.

I hate to think about the human race becoming obsolete, but it makes sense if you think about it.

I think the loophole is going to stay in place. The hemp lobby has exploded since 2018, and has done a lot to keep the loopholes from closing in even very Red states. In the real world money is what talks, and I think there’s too much money at this point to put the genie back in the bottle.

But that’s my two cents. I could be wrong. Hope I’m not.

Awesome comment, thanks for the detail.

To play a bit of Devil’s Advocate (from a bench-top scientific standpoint I come from immunology/microbiology background—so I know enough theory to be dangerous but don’t have your depth of evolutionary understanding) doesn’t a lot of this rely on cosmic timescales? I’m sure I could easily do a web search on this, but I think there are a lot of galaxy clusters that are much older than the Milky Way. That would give the potential for many multitudes of planets that have been around much longer than Earth, which gives a lot of time for intelligence to evolve and sustain. Now, if an intelligent civilization can ever survive for that long is a different question in and of itself.

I personally have wondered if the natural, sustainable, next step in any intelligent evolution is artificial forms of intelligence. Maybe biological intelligence is just the bootloader for less squishy forms of life? Immortal silicon life sort of renders the biological limits of space travel a lot less problematic. I know that comment exceeds the scientific into the philosophical, but it’s a thought I’ve had a lot lately.

Yeah, and also I wouldn’t go out of my way to shit on someone who believes we live in a simulation. Simulation theory is sort of plausible with our current understanding of tech—but right now it has just as much evidence as most religions (which is none for both). So yeah, I don’t think it’s good practice to try and dunk on people for their beliefs.

Yeah, everyone in this thread saying the phone bad is a Boomer cop out is oversimplifying the issue.

Yeah, there’s probably a component of taking the blame away from decreased quality of life by blaming it on phones—but you can’t neglect the effect that lack of social interaction has. I’m from the same era, and it’s overwhelming to think how much more complex everything has gotten.

I don’t think the problem is that the government “wasn’t the best ever,” I think it’s that it hasn’t changed. And the US hasn’t done a lot to enforce some of the groundwork beliefs of the framers.

I still think the idea and balance of power of the US government is one of the best—but it was created to change with the times and address practical flaws (amendments) and hasn’t.

Re-read my post—I’m referring to things we’d experienced comparatively at the same age.

But I get your point. They’ve obviously experienced these same things but at a different stage of life. I do think the distinction matters.

Really good point and a very important distinction

Healthcare gang represent!

I said this too—the Hue system is game changing as a mood setter. Helps me relax at night by dimming, etc.

1. 8 Sleep Bed—it’s liquid cooled and heated based on your sleep stage. I know it’s expensive, but the sleep it’s given me has been unrivaled by anything else I’ve ever used to regulate my sleep. I work shifts so good sleep is priceless. You spend a third of your life asleep, so it’s worth an investment.
2. Hue lights for my entire home—privacy issues aside, it’s a game changing investment. We replaced the recessed lighting with recessed hue lighting fixtures as well. It’s insane how having multiple lighting settings and colors for times of the day/moods can change your entire mindset.
3. Home gym—if I were pressed for one component it would be the power cage and Olympic bar, but investing in a fully functional home gym has given me much more in return than what I’ve put into it (whether that be physical work building equipment or money).

Numbers like this are always bonkers to me. Like, how have we allowed this to happen?

It’s a fucking social media site. I know surgeons who work 80-100 hour weeks and make 1.5M a year—and even that seems obscene to me. But they’re academic subspecialty surgeons who are quite literally saving lives daily by personally performing heart transplants. How the fuck do we think as a society that a smug ass CEO’s “effort” is worth 200x that?

Society is so backwards and fucked.

I think in some ways that could work.

I think a better one may be fish living in a tank that suddenly had its filter break (fish being the brain, and the filter being the BBB).

Not exactly—although an MRI w/wout contrast may show some microvascular ischemia or cortical volume loss. Based on the study there may be some clues from secondary inflammatory markers, but those aren’t specific (other things can elevate them beyond long COVID).

I think this will likely remain a clinical diagnosis for several years until we understand more.

Bringing in a medical perspective since there is a lot of subtle misunderstanding in the comments section:

The source study is not referring to “brain bleeding” or “mini strokes” as a cause of long COVID—the results point more towards a breakdown of the integrity of the blood brain barrier and maybe micro vascular ischemia.

You can essentially think of your central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) as being surrounded by a very selective security system called the Blood Brain Barrier (BBB). The BBB exists to prevent certain chemicals and cell signaling molecules from entering the central nervous system and messing things up. Neurons and many of the cells that support neurons do not regenerate and tolerate stress as well as other parts of the body, which is why the BBB is so important. Through the various assays the primary authors used it seems like in the setting of long COVID there is a breakdown of the BBB—it starts letting things in and out that it shouldn’t be. This leads to inflammation and damage in the brain which likely results in immediate decreased processing ability and also long-term damage (which further leads to decreased processing ability). One of the components which “leaks” in this setting of BBB breakdown are components of the coagulation cascade (the things that make blood clot) which may potentiate small areas of clotting and decreased blood flow (a thing we called micro vascular ischemia—like an ischemic stroke but in very small capillaries). This entire mechanism is similar to (but very different in nuance) “leaky gut syndrome,” where the gut endothelium starts to break down and cause inflammation. I put that out there since leaky gut is gaining more popular understanding these days and may be more familiar for some folks.

As of now there is no available treatment that restores the endothelial integrity of the BBB. Off of the top of my head this study may suggest that more treatments to modulate the inflammsome (roughly—the amount of inflammation in your body) could be beneficial—which sort of tracks since there is some scattered evidence that high dose Omega-3’s help long COVID.

Think of your sleep as reading a series of engaging books, where each book represents a sleep cycle, including chapters of both deep sleep (SWS) and dream sleep (REM). When you finish a book (sleep cycle), you reach a satisfying conclusion to that story arc—this is akin to waking up after a full sleep cycle. You feel refreshed because you’ve concluded the narrative neatly, without interrupting a tense plot twist or leaving a storyline unresolved.

However, just finishing one book doesn’t mean you’ve completed the whole series. If you stop after one book each night, you’re missing out on the depth and development that comes from reading more of the series (accumulating more sleep cycles). Initially, you might feel okay because you’ve concluded a story (cycle) properly, avoiding the grogginess of waking up mid-chapter (mid-cycle). Yet, this approach doesn’t give you the full, enriching experience (or rest) your body and brain need over time.

As days go on, if you continue this pattern, you accumulate a ‘reading debt’—akin to sleep debt. You’ve missed out on the broader, deeper insights and the full narrative arc that only comes from reading (sleeping) the whole series or book. This debt reflects not fully recharging your brain and body, leaving you progressively more tired. While you might feel a temporary refreshment from completing a cycle, without the full, restorative rest of multiple cycles, you’re not truly at 100%—you’re running on the satisfaction of a finished story, not the full restoration that comes from a complete series.

Yeah, it’s about getting enough REM and SWS cycles. The effect decays over time, though. If you time your wake up to a full sleep cycle (around 2.5-3 hours) one night, you may wake up feeling fine. If you do this multiple nights in a row, however, you will build up a REM/SWS debt. So on day one it feels fine, on day two it feels less fine, and on day three you’re dragging.