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A guy gets a worm in his brain, somehow becomes secretary of health, loosens all the rules so the rest of us have a higher chance of getting a brain worm. This
by jm4 3mo ago
A guy gets a worm in his brain, somehow becomes secretary of health, loosens all the rules so the rest of us have a higher chance of getting a brain worm. This is comic book villain kind of stuff. Can we start a serious discussion about whether we might be living in a simulation with a troll teenager at the controls?
- voidfunc 3mo agoIf were living in a simulation then all of this is meaningless :)
- apsurd 3mo agoas opposed to the meaning of absolute reality? oh boy you’ve got so much reading and movie watching ahead that you’ll enjoy very much.
- Arodex 3mo agoCan we start a serious discussion about whether you might start taking responsibility of who you elect instead of wasting your time fantasizing? I mean, it is not as if RFK was the darling candidate of HN at one time?
- monkpit 3mo agoYes because everyone else on HN is one hivemind, other than you of course.
- SpicyLemonZest 3mo agoYou might benefit from looking up the Goomba Fallacy. As a former anti-anti-RFK guy, I absolutely have to take responsibility, I severely misunderstood the wellness movement and didn't realize that inflicting disease on people was their goal. But I don't know why you think the person you're responding to supported RFK.
- pstuart 3mo agoHe's definitely got the broken clock syndrome. And back in the day he was a strong defender of the environment. I've got a family member and ex friend (both trained in science) and they drank the koolaid hard. A funny story about them -- both had stayed at my home (different times) and I had taken to heating the water for my coffee in the microwave. Both of them were horrified by that and refused to use that water. Neither could give reason why, and artfully deflected when I pressed the matter. I think antivaxers caught a virus that melted their brains.
- jacobolus 3mo agoI think the worldwide disruption of the pandemic melted people's brains, and the recent surge in the anti-vax movement is a symptom. Along the lines of: if all this bad stuff happened and my life was significantly harmed, it must be someone's fault; all those doctors and scientists kept advising everyone on what they thought was happening and what to do, so they're probably the ones who caused the problem.
- noduerme 3mo agoI say this as a committed fan of RNA vaccines and masking, who believed we could have contained covid with more serious lockdowns very early in the pandemic: In point of fact, it was someone's fault, and the someones whose fault it was - the ones doing gain of function research - were the same people who took control of lockdown policy in the US. That would be enough to melt a lot of people's brains, even if it weren't for the psychological effects of lockdowns, remote schooling, and the consequent arrested development of an entire generation. At a bare minimum, the concealment by the CCP of what they knew of covid was an act of war. The cover-up itself killed millions of people and caused untold economic damage to their adversaries, with the collusion of health officials in the US government who had offshored illegal research there.
- pstuart 3mo agoFrom what I've read about GOF research, it's essentially explored in defensive posture, because viruses mutate and they're looking at how to get ahead of the curve (not a researcher, just my take). But what is never discussed in the Lab Leak pursuit is: so what? I mean, yes, poor biosecurity and containment should be called out and not covered up, but the real value is in being the foundation of a conspiracy. "The government conspired to make you sick!". Think about this: covid has mutated consistently since it's been tracked. Were those mutations coming from a lab or was it viruses doing virus things. Was Ebola made in a lab or did it come from a place we know viruses come from. Was the Spanish Flu a Chinese plot? Was AIDS? The handling of the outbreak was clearly bungled, but let's remember who was in charge in the US when it happened. The guy who shut down research and tracking teams because Obama had funded them (So had Bush -- until then, this kind of stuff was non-political and taken seriously as a non-partisan issue). The failure for masking was again, on the then POTUS, and it's been conjectured by many (including myself) that he was against masks because it would mess up his makeup. Yes, it could have been handled so much better, and sadly, could have been an incredibly valuable teachable moment that made us all safer in the future. But instead it was used to further divide us and foster the literal fucking insanity of antivaxxers. I have nothing but contempt for those people because they are a danger to humanity.
- epistasis 3mo agoI've been a long time foe of RFK Jr., spend way too much time here, and have never been under the impression that RFK Jr. was a darling here at all.
- Arodex 3mo agoFilter for dates around his presidential run: "he's not really anti Vax", "he's the only candidate talking about health"... With Dorsey and other SV actors boosting him. https://archive.is/kce6f https://archive.is/kce6f
- idiotsecant 3mo agoThis was never a majority opinion here
- lostlogin 3mo agoThere are plenty of topics here where you’ll find that statement untrue.
- pstuart 3mo agoWait, so techbros angling for influence represent the HN population? Sadly, there's enough MAGA here to share their downvotes but your "evidence" is pointing in a different direction.
- ZeroGravitas 3mo ago"Darling candidate" is overselling it but there's a solid chunk of anti-vax, covid-truthing, lab-leak is-proven-fact, JFK just wants better food nutballs on HN. They overlap with the climate deniers, the nukecels, libertarians and Trump fans. And it clearly goes to the top, since his vice-president and primary funded was a Google CEO ex-wife, and he had high level support even before he went back on his stated opinions and joined the Trump campaign. "Trump isn't Hitler, Hitler had policies" being one memorable zinger of his.
- 3mo ago
- rozap 3mo agoGoomba fallacy
- Waterluvian 3mo agoThe Americans have what’s basically a cultural trait at this point of deflecting ownership of their government’s actions with “not my president so not my failure” abdication of responsibility. I wish we could open trade talks with these people instead. But, alas, that’s not how it works.
- w0de0 3mo agoFine, it’s all my fault. Neither me nor my state voted that way, I’ve protested like hell, but nonetheless at your insistence I accept personal responsibility for the policy choices of the federal government. What do you propose I do? Or did you just want my permission to be personally angry at me? Not sure you needed it, but you’ve now got it.
- lovich 3mo ago>I mean, it is not as if RFK was the darling candidate of HN at one time? Wasn't my darling candidate. Mostly because I can read research papers and understand that drinking raw milk and avoiding vaccines doesn't make me healthier.
- ExoticPearTree 3mo agoFWIW raw milk is actually OK. Drank it “directly” from the cows, never got sick from it. *directly = cow milked into a cup.
- manarth 3mo agothe plural of anecdote is not data.
- inigyou 3mo agoYes, it is, actually. Especially in social sciences.
- lostlogin 3mo agoThere were a few times when I didn’t look as I crossed the road. It was fine.
- sjsdaiuasgdia 3mo ago"The objective of this review is to provide an integrated historical account of the complex, often convoluted events impacting milk hygiene and its resultant effect on infant mortality from 1875 to 1925. Heat pasteurization of cow's milk is necessary for rendering this important nutrient source safe for humans-particularly infants. Developed by Louis Pasteur in 1864, pasteurization evolved from the commercially important parboiling of wine and beer when the Industrial Revolution was effecting rapid societal change in Western societies. In European and American societies of the early and mid-19th century, infant mortality rates were 30- to 60-fold higher than the current rates of five or six deaths per 1,000 live births per year." https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30234385/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30234385/ Not every pre-pasteurization child died, but far more died than post-pasteurization. Raw milk is just a bad idea at anything beyond incredibly tiny tightly controlled scale. Sure, you got lucky. It's still not a good way to feed a society.
- cyanydeez 3mo agothe republicans spent the last 50 years gerrymandering and disenfranchising. the "who you elect" is a specious argument. Everyone in California could elect democrarts forever, and 2 senators in Wyoming still have a larger sway per capita.
- analog31 3mo agoThey should stop calling themselves republicans, since they don't represent a republic.
- collingreen 3mo agoDon't get me started on the words being all used incorrectly or misunderstood! Liberal, conservative, democracy, socialism, communism, free market. These are core concepts to a lot of current political debate and yet the words are effectively meaningless the way people use them. It wouldn't matter except the gap in understanding is exploited to paper over a bunch of dishonesty and corruption.
- FireBeyond 3mo agoTangential but nonetheless, I always think of this quote from Lord of War: > Yuri Orlov: [Narrating] Every faction in Africa calls themselves by these noble names - Liberation this, Patriotic that, Democratic Republic of something-or-other... I guess they can't own up to what they usually are: the Federation of Worse Oppressors Than the Last Bunch of Oppressors. Often, the most barbaric atrocities occur when both combatants proclaim themselves Freedom Fighters.
- CalRobert 3mo agoReminiscent of the toxoplasmosis life cycle.
- sethammons 3mo agoInstead of making mice seek out cats, this one encourages poor public health policies in people.
- CalRobert 3mo agoIf it results in more and fitter offspring it will be selected for.
- eqvinox 3mo agoSounds like a nice topic for a PhD for someone 100 or 1000 generations down the line...
- ElProlactin 3mo agoI don't have a parasite in my brain so take everything I say with a grain of salt but at this pace I'm skeptical there will be 100 more generations.
- eqvinox 2mo agoWell I didn't say it would be generations of humans ;-)
- hogwasher 3mo agotoxoplasmosis doesn't actually do that to mice. It makes them less scared, but iirc, not even so much that they don't flee. it's one of those studies that got blown up into a worldwide news story sensation even though the actual paper didn't say what headlines claimed it did. I don't know if it was ever proven replicable or not, either.
- Dr_Incelheimer 3mo agoRead https://www.docdroid.net/MfW3sAr/parasite-pill-version-20-pdf https://www.docdroid.net/MfW3sAr/parasite-pill-version-20-pd... and be enlightened. I believe it was originally made by a 4chan user so obviously there are a lot of insane ramblings there but if the theory is true, the implications would be hilarious
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- tgv 3mo ago> Can we start a serious discussion about whether we might be living in a simulation with a troll teenager at the controls? Why? To skirt the fact that this is reality and needs to be changed? There is no simulation. There is no super-natural teenager interested in making your life a tiny bit worse (I mean: a human teenager would just let N.Korea send nukes, and it's not as if you're living in Sudan either). Your question seems to be either trolling itself or delusional, or the feeblest attempt at humor. Neither is helpful.
- ourmandave 3mo agoTwo things that got RFK nominated. He's the opposite of Fauci, who Trump hates for contradicting him. And MAGA hates because during the pandemic they saw mask mandates as government overreach. And he's the poster boy for conspiracy-loving anti-science halfwits like Trump and MAGA. And he got approved because GOP senators get primaried and death threats if they go against Dear Leader.
- dredmorbius 3mo agoThat's a large value of two.
- FireBeyond 3mo ago> And he's the poster boy for conspiracy-loving anti-science halfwits like Trump and MAGA. I mean this is the guy who as head of HHS has funded research in his government department to "figure out which other government department is doing chemtrails" (He named DARPA as his prime suspect on an episode of Dr Phil, ye gods). You can't make this shit up. If it wasn't for his family name and connections he'd be living somewhere in a trailer as a sovcit with a Don't Tread On Me Decal adorning the back of his pickup truck on blocks in the front yard while he barbecues armadillo roadkill.
- hammock 3mo agoWhat rules are you referring to that he loosened?
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- jm4 3mo agoMy comment is partially in jest. Off the top of my head, I'm not aware of any particular policies that make brain worms more prevalent, although the person I was replying to mentioned prions and I believe that's a real concern. In general, this administration has favored a looser regulatory environment. Specifically, there have been policy changes directly linked to cyclosporiasis. Last year CDC scaled back the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network from eight monitored pathogens to two. Cyclospora was one of the six dropped. The remaining two are Salmonella and E. coli. For what it's worth, there has also been an uptick in salmonella cases. Food policy experts have pushed back on the assertion that the policy change caused the outbreak, but concede that outbreak response programs are underfunded and the fact that cyclospora no longer being monitored makes it difficult to understand how it fits in with longer trends. What the food policy experts say really points to the broader issue - an overall decrease in response and monitoring capability - and that's a bigger concern than playing the blame game on one particular outbreak. It's reasonable to question how government agencies are making these decisions and one just yesterday on the peptide industry may be one of the best examples yet of how flawed the decision-making process is. The FDA's Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee (PCAC) met and voted in favor of adding several peptides to the list of substances compounding pharmacies are allowed to produce. Eight members of the panel had been recently appointed under RFK, including six who run clinics that offer peptides, increasing the size of the panel from 6 to 14. The votes on the peptides were 8-6. So... back to my comic book villain theory. This is exactly how a comic book villain would do it and fool everyone with a veneer of legitimacy.
- customguy 3mo ago> Can we start a serious discussion about whether we might be living in a simulation with a troll teenager at the controls? Nah. Power centers consolidate and seek slavery, whatever other differences they may have there is consensus there, which we can tell by their practices. The "mission" of most people we recall by name is really just "knock out any pillars you can find, and cause chaos", they're given free hand and in that sense it's not planned or predictable, but overall it's no more random or silly than dead cows hurled via catapults. The cow has no name, no history, no meaning, it isn't hurled at a precise location in the exact right instant, but at a general location during the siege. And one thing is sure, it controls nothing.
- neumann 3mo agoMaybe it's the worm doing it?
- FlamingMoe 2mo agoI can't stop thinking about this comment.