Barx

@Barx@hexbear.net

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mandibles⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Ohhh. Well the big parts that grab stuff are mandibles. They aren’t legs but they originate, evolutinarily speaking, from legs. Same with antennae! The parts closer to the head do the eating.

  For venomous arthropods sometimes it’s the mandibles that have the venom (like spiders, where they are called Chelicerae), for some it’s saliva and they use various mouthparts (the water bug uses a proboscus), for some it’s their tail end (like ants), etc etc.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mandibles⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The lower left is a toe biter water bug with one of the most painful venoms on the planet

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨OpenAI CEO: We may have AI superintelligence in “a few thousand days”⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  lmao okay buddy

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨shag carpet⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Peak performance

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Oxygen⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You need oxidants to live. Issues stemming from oxidants are about levels of free radicals getting too high in the wrong places for too long.

  Getting good sleep, eating a balanced diet, reducing stress, and getting enough exercise are the best ways to reduce the chances of such a scenario. Realistically, these things are also just a way to maximize wellness and health overall and it is probably not very useful for most people to think of this in terms of oxidation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Oxygen⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Oxidative stress happens every time you exercise. People need exercise to have better health. Oxidative stress is actually a necessary part of a healthy life.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Oxygen⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If aliens exist they would probably have many things just as strange. They would also need a way to harvest energy via some cycle. It is possible they would require even more reactive substances to live.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Oxygen⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  When we and other known organisms take energy from food we are actually taking molecules with higher-energy electrons, converting them into the high-energy molecules our cellular processes can use to do make cell things happen, and producing very similar molecules with lower-energy electrons. Rather than infinitely accumulating these molecules, our cells dump low-energy electrons onto another molecule that is amenable and thereby convert into a molecule ready to accept high-energy molecules from food (with a bunch of steps in between).

  For us, as aerobes, the electron acceptor at the end of respiration is oxygen.

  Oxygen as an electron receptor is newer than several others. Anaerobes came first. It was only after photosynthesis had produced a ton of atmospheric oxygen that it became a viable option, really. But it O2 is a comparatively good electron acceptor because the process in which it accepts those electrons allows cells to grab quite a bit of energy from that last step. It is fairly “electron needy” compared to earlier electron acceptors.

  So, basically, aerobes get more energy per food unit (sugar molecule) than the vast majority of other creatures. You need it to live because it is an essential part of how your cells get food, namely, how it can recycle molecules at the last step of the respiration cycle.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Oxygen⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The dietary antioxidant fad is mostly BS. They’re supposedly meant to counteract oxidative stress and specifically free radicals. Both of those things are part of a healthy life and you would die without them. So any real impact is not so simple as “just counteract those bad things”. Dietary antioxidants don’t always lead to higher intracellular antioxidant levels, either.

  Some dietary antioxidants so lead to higher intracellular levels and may help buffer oxidative stress (like from exercise) but there isn’t much evidence that it doesn’t just boil down to “eating your vegetables is good for you”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Responding to work emails after hours contributes to burnout, hostility⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If you want my help outside of work hours I expect a huge on-call pay bump

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Telegram repeatedly refused to join child protection schemes⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Governments have frequently laundered the surveillance state as “child protection” laws, pushing for a cozy relationship between companies with data and cops et al. They want the ability to snoop more or less whenever they want and will push in that direction. This kind of relationship is not just for cops, though. The same companies also gladly work with and hire people from intelligence agencies to craft narratives and manipulate sentiment. When a company doesn’t play that role as well as feds want, the hammer comes down (TikTok, Telegram).

  Though really, the actual question is why they are writing this article and why now. The answer is that Durov has been arrested and the author is attempting to justify it by piling on “Telegram is bad” claims while avoiding discussing the actual legal basis and evidence around his arrest. You will also note the sources used in this article are entirely government officials and NGOs in the constellation of NGOs that work directly with the government - or are unsourced stipulations. No academics were cited, nor free speech advocacy groups, or even lawyers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨USA | Democrats Attacked a Muslim Woman for Protesting Biden’s Speech. She’s a Harris Delegate.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, I recall the speeches Biden has given where he rallies the crowd against the Palestinian scourge!

  Biden - of course, he is senile, so he is just a stand-in for the current Dem leadership - provides unconditional military, diplomatic, and financial support to Israel in their campaign to destroy Gaza. For example, the JDAMs used so extensively to destroy schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, bakeries, refugee camps, etc, are exclusively manufactured by Boeing and Israel “buys” them via US “aid”, which, in reality, is just the US government buying the weapons and giving them to Israel to commit genocide with. The US lashes out at every attempt to reign in Israel via diplomacy, gladly carries water for obvious lies intended to justify the genocide, and props up the Israeli economy through direct investment and trade relationships.

  But sure, as I already mentioned, liberals try to whitewash and deflect from the genocide they know they are supporting. They use euphemisms and start acting erratically when you remind them of what they are celebrating. But everyone knows what unconditional material support for Israel’s genocide means. You know what it means.

  Look, I’m not arguing that the Israelis are doing anything positive

  They are ethnically cleansing Gaza as part of a settler colonial apartheid project that depends on US support.

  I’m merely suggesting that the venn diagram of people who are thankful that Biden dropped out and people who support genocide is not a circle.

  I’ve already described the function of this. Feel free to directly address it rather than hem and haw.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨USA | Democrats Attacked a Muslim Woman for Protesting Biden’s Speech. She’s a Harris Delegate.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Joe Biden has been supporting the genocide of Palestinians for almost a year. It is public knowledge and there is a significant movement against it that these people are now literally trying to suppress.

  “Thank you Joe” is a silly little bit of propaganda meant to derail all thought about both Biden’s obvious senility (as if he stepped down by choice, lol) and gloss over all criticism of Biden, such as his support for a genocide.

  Personally, I think it’s pretty easy to just not support genociding Palestinians by not helping run interference for its primary sponsors. Unfortunately you seem to think this is difficult or, perhaps, complex. I would be happy to help you out if you need any assistance.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨USA | Democrats Attacked a Muslim Woman for Protesting Biden’s Speech. She’s a Harris Delegate.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It was people holding “Thank you Joe” signs hitting people holding a “Stop arming Israel” banner. Anyone holding a “Thank you Joe” sign supports the genocide of Palestinians and this is just a very on-the-nose case of how they are trying to distract from that genocide, as despite their support for it, they are embarrassed to admit it plainly. Like crypyofascists but neoliberal.

  The Summer of Love was a bunch of hippies and hippie-adjascent people engaging in what is basically hedonism in a single city for a summer. Drugs, sex, chilling, etc. This was during the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam, so there is a parallel in that this crowd chose self-indulgence and complicity over forming an organized resistance to segregation and imperialism (their opposition to the Vietnam War, such as it was, was primarily based on sympathy for their war criminals rather than their Vietnamese people), but they were not the cryptofascists that went around justifying and fighting for those things. That was people note like William F. Buckley and, as you might expect, the lanyard-wearing political class like those attending the current DNC.

  I’m not sure what you think The Summer of Love is but your comment sounds like a reactionary boomer Facebook comment.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I totally forgot this was an actual shot in a TNG episode.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  They made her wear a unique low-cut purple spandex suit for the first half of the series.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I totally forgot this was an actual shot in a TNG episode.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The low resolution will blur out all hint of anatomy, don’t worry

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Common low-calorie sweetener may be riskier for the heart than sugar, study suggests⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I avoid erythritol because you have to use so much of it. With something like aspartame it’s so much sweeter than sugar per gram that even if it all converted to formaldehyde a few sodas would be nothing to worry about. But erythritol is 30% less sweet than sugar so they put a bunch in. And the full effects of a bunch of a not-very-metabolized substance haven’t been well-enough studied for me to not just get some other fake sugar thing instead.

  As the other commenter said, though, this study had very small N.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Helixx wants to bring fast-food economics and Netflix pricing to EVs⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Capitalists love to rent-seek

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Dell said return to the office or else—nearly half of workers chose “or else”⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  More honest headline: Dell created intolerable working conditions so that they could engage in constructive dismissal and avoid paying for unemployment for their massive layoffs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Was it a good thing that SNW explicitly said the Federation is socialist?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s good because most of the American audience is too politically miseducated to recognize it otherwise.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨T-Mobile users thought they had a lifetime price lock—guess what happened next⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Monopoly capitalists did the most monopoly capitalist thing ever, journalists are surprised.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Some company heads hoped return-to-office mandates would make people quit, survey says⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah duh. This is a very, very old way to fire people without having to actually fire them. Just create intolerable working conditions.

  In modern times they’re mostly trying to avoid paying for unemployment.