I don't understand how people who are so "LOL magas don't believe climate change is real!!! How stupid!!!" are so blithely skipping to chatgpt as a search engine at the same time. Like you cannot be "haven't you noticed the lack of bugs this year" and simultaneously "here's how I made my 17 step skincare routine using chatgpt!!!". It beggars belief.
There is a line I came up with for the purpose of making people uncomfortable in discussions about residential schools and related topics here in Canada, and I think it applies here too.
It describes the point at which something bad becomes a problem only because it exceeded whatever threshold of acceptability the government set for human suffering.
imagine a world where everyone who needed a mobility aid got one for free. it was sized properly for them, met all of their needs, had free maintenance + repairs and even came in their favourite colour...
“if you’re plus sized you can just shop on shein/amazon/cider, they have a good selection!!” yeah but i don’t want to rely on fast fashion. i think fat people deserve more ethical and high quality clothing choices
Reading the new checks that might come in due to the Online Safety Act in the UK and this is actually bullshit
[Image Transcript:
And how will I prove my age?
There’s a number of methods a site or app might use to ask you to confirm your age. They might do this check themselves or use another company to do the check. These methods include:
Facial age estimation – you show your face via photo or video, and technology analyses it to estimate your age.
Open banking – you give permission for the age-check service to securely access information from your bank about whether you are over 18. The age-check service then confirms this with the site or app.
Digital identity services – these include digital identity wallets, which can securely store and share information which proves your age in a digital format.
Credit card age checks – you provide your credit card details and a payment processor checks if the card is valid. As you must be over 18 to obtain a credit card this shows you are over 18.
Email-based age estimation – you provide your email address, and technology analyses other online services where it has been used – such as banking or utility providers - to estimate your age.
Mobile network operator age checks – you give your permission for an age-check service to confirm whether or not your mobile phone number has age filters applied to it. If there are no restrictions, this confirms you are over 18.
Photo-ID matching – this is similar to a check when you show a document. For example, you upload an image of a document that shows your face and age, and an image of yourself at the same time – these are compared to confirm if the document is yours.
End Transcript.]
Not only is this such a fucking breach of privacy, but this is going to hurt adults in vulnerable and abusive situations. Some adults don’t have bank accounts or credit cards or even a fucking phone. I’m one of them. I could not give half of this information even if I wanted to. What the fuck is this. Fuck the UK government. This isn’t going to protect kids, this is just going to hurt adults, and I know full well when they say “sites that allow pornography” they’re going to be going after sites that have huge amounts of queer content, like tumblr and Ao3. Queer kids are gonna lose their fucking communities because of this shit. Abuse victims are going to lose online support systems because of this.
I’m genuinely fucked off about this, and worried about whether I’m going to lose every single one of my online friends. Anyone in the UK, please email your MP and sign this petition. It needs to reach 100k signatures to pass through Parliament.
I’m only hoping the backlash will be big enough for them to stop implementing these measures.
We want the Government to repeal the Online Safety act.
Foreigners will never understand how someone like Rawhide Kobayashi would immediately become a beloved local fixture in whatever small American town he ended up in.
every single time someone pulls the "How would you AMERICANS like it if someone came to AMERICA and" reversal, the answer is always "we'd fucking love it"
I just Googled the Swedish-Japanese guy in the OP, and according to this interview, his Japanese name was given to him by the master gardener he was apprenticed under:
“The family name ‘Murasame’ was given to me by my master. The given name ‘Tatsumasa’ is a combination of ‘dragon’ (tatsu), the [zodiac] year when I was born, and one character from my master’s name,” says Murasame."
So I think maybe it's less like naming yourself 'Brandon McFreedom' and more like moving to the states to work under a veteran car mechanic named Bud McLean, and then having him turn to you after a few years on the job, and say "Son, it's time for you to become an American so you can open up your shop. And when that day comes, I think the world should know you by a new name: McLeo GM Corvette."
Imagine that it is September 15, 1945. The world is just starting to have some idea how absolutely devastating the only two nuclear weapons actually used in war really were. Japan has just surrendered, a thing many considered close to unthinkable.
And someone asks you "what will US/Japanese relations look like in 2011".
And you say "I think there will be enormous conventions about Japanese culture in the US, and there will be a Japanese man who calls himself Rawhide Kobayashi, who is excited about American cowboy culture and wants to move to the US to work in an oil field and learn more about their culture".
from what I understand rawhide kobayashi is not real, he's a parody of americans who describe travel to japan in orientalist ways - a classification that doesn't match murasame on either point
(I do also think it's worth pointing out that the second reply is from a right-wing asshole)
if you could control the regulation/expression of three different genes in your body which would they be and why? i yearn to have this power lol
I'm assuming that this would be tissue specific, since many genes are. I'm also assuming this is some.kind of internal superpower that lets me control the exact expression level, at all levels of regulation of that gene, instead of using existing lab techniques and the baggage that comes with it.
Without these assumptions, this is an entirely different question. So assuming I have some kind of magic control panel that precisely controls gene expression:
#1: P53
Honestly, oncogenes and tumor suppressors could take up the full list, but I don't want to "waste" the list like that. But P53 is probably one of the most significant and well studied tumor suppresors. It's hard to estimate, but P53 loss of function mutations may occur in up to half of all cancers. It's a transcription factor that recruits an INSANE variety of other genes downstream of it, primarily related to detecting DNA damage, and then "deciding" whether that damage is extensive enough to go into a repair pathway or a cell death pathway. This is a dramatic oversimplification, but yeah P53 is probably the most obvious answer to this question.
#2: DMRT1
DM domain transcription factors play important roles in sexual development in a wide variety of species from invertebrate to humans. Among s
"Dmrt1 knockout (KO) mice also showed male-to-female gonadal reprogramming."
Will knocking out Dmrt1 give me functional ovaries? No. Will it possibly cause some ovarian tissue to develop in a way that's scientifically interesting? Yes. Will that amount of ovarian tissue have any functional effect on hormone levels or reproductive function? Who knows! That's why it's on this list!
#3: DAT1
It's responsible for reuptaking dopamine from the synaptic junction, back into the cytosol of the presynaptic neuron. This allows dopamine to stop being used for downstream signalling, and readies it for "reuse" when another stimuli is applied. Functionally, what does this mean? When DAT1 is not inhibited or isn't present, dopamine is "reused". It stays in the synaptic cleft, and excites the postsynaptic neuron more times than it normally would. That means more dopamine, per dopamine! And guess what, that's exactly how most stimulant medications, like the ones I take for ADHD, work. ADHD isn't always the same kind of impairment in the dopamine pathway, but it shares the commonality of dopamine being impaired SOMEHOW in all cases. Stimulant medications have a functional effect of increasing dopamine signalling. Replicating this with a power that let me dynamically control how much of this reuptake transporter is expressed would be really cool to play around with, and possibly alleviate the need for ADHD medication.
