this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2026
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Science Memes

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top 43 comments
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[–] village604@adultswim.fan 1 points 58 minutes ago

Have you ever seen a vape bro blow clouds? That's a pretty good representation of how far your breath can go

[–] Prior_Industry@lemmy.world 8 points 2 hours ago

Always enjoyed this one

Sky TV diagram on the spread of COVID is supermarkets

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 15 points 3 hours ago (1 children)
[–] ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world 9 points 3 hours ago

Fake, gas isn't dense enough to be recorded by thermal imaging.

[–] Fmstrat@lemmy.world 3 points 5 hours ago
[–] Deconceptualist@leminal.space 43 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

I shared this with a buddy and he responded with his favorite.

[–] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 7 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

It doesn't even say what year that is, which is just bad practice.

If it's 2020, that steep curve is because it took till March for it to reach the US.

I get that the point is to criticize his handling of it, but there are plenty of honest ways to do that without using misleading statistics

[–] Deconceptualist@leminal.space 1 points 23 minutes ago

It's obviously 2020 because it starts at basically zero cases. Also it's weird that your expect rigor from memes.

[–] NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 6 hours ago (3 children)

Not American. I know he didn't handle it well and spread misinformation, but how much worse did the USA have it compared to the rest of the world? We all had it rough regardless of our leaders, so can any of it really be attributed to him?

To be clear, I think he's incompetent in so many ways and is perhaps the worst thing to happen to world politics since WW2. I'm just saying covid was out of everyone's hands, how different could it have really been if he handled it better?

[–] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 4 points 2 hours ago

Yes, he is incompetent and policy-wise he could have done a lot to flatten the curve. I wasn't trying to vindicate him, I was just saying the skate-park-like graph was a little misleading without basic statistical context like what year it was referring to, and whether the number of cases was in the US or worldwide, etc. I think it's entirely possible to criticize and even ridicule him while still being intellectually honest, and showing the initial increase at the onset of the pandemic is just not good practice.

I get that it's just a meme, but I prefer a basic standard of integrity. Otherwise, what really sets us apart from the right-wing troglodytes?

[–] kogasa@programming.dev 4 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Generally the US just did nothing helpful at a federal level and the Republican party took an ideological stance against preventative measures like masks or social distancing, which meant a large portion of the country went out of their way to avoid such measures or even ban businesses and local governments from implementing them. Schools and universities had their funding threatened if they required masks. I was a grad student / TA at the time and the most we could do was put up flyers that said "please consider wearing a mask, it's not required" and 0 of my students wore them. We had elderly professors retire early because they didn't want to die over such stupidity.

[–] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I was in the suburbs where we didn't really get hit until the second or third wave when vaccines were already rolling out, so I didn't have it that bad.

I think a lot of the disconnect regarding the mask mandates was between urban and suburban/rural populations. The more spaced out people were, the less risk there was, but everywhere was trying to issue blanket policies between urban and rural areas.

Like I get it, people who live in densely populated cities can't understand why anyone wouldn't wear a mask. That makes sense, cause they're used to so many people being crowded together, and they can't imagine living somewhere more sparsely populated.

But some people live in areas where you can go for a walk and never come within twenty feet of another person, so it's a little different for them. Not just because of the social distance, but also the risk of passing someone infected is just generally lower in those areas.

And then there was the whole tail-end of the pandemic, when nearly everyone was already vaccinated, there weren't as many infections and the infections there were weren't as severe, yet so many places kept mask mandates in place even a year or two later.

At some point, a lot of people just wanted to return to normalcy. A year of social distancing has a substantial impact on people's mental health, but nobody was considering that in their cost-benefit analysis. It was always "in an excess of caution." Sometimes an "excess of caution" is just too much caution. At some point, we could have just treated it like the flu.

Society never fully recovered from the pandemic, to be honest. There's a collective trauma that we all just ignore, but it's a lot harder to meet people and make new friends than it was before.

[–] kogasa@programming.dev 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

The calls to return to normalcy came at the height of pandemic related deaths and so we stopped testing, stopped reporting, and pretended the pandemic was over when it wasn't. I will never forget when a large portion of the population decided the lives of the vulnerable mattered less than "normalcy."

[–] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Again, I think those calls were coming from suburban and rural populations who weren't hit as hard and probably could have gotten by with less restrictive measures than what was necessary in urban areas. People from the city don't really understand that not everyone everywhere is packed together like sardines, but there's no reason why the same degree of caution would be necessary in areas with a fraction of the population density.

Not everyone who disagreed with how things were handled was a trumper. I guess someone who's never left the city wouldn't be able to tell the difference though...

[–] Deconceptualist@leminal.space 1 points 20 minutes ago

You write like you didn't lose anyone in your life to the pandemic. Must be nice.

[–] arudesalad@piefed.ca 8 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

The US has the 17th highest deaths per capita and covid was the 3rd largest killer in 2020, behind cancer and heart disease.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_the_United_States

Not per capita they had the highest number of deaths and highest number of confirmed cases (and experts think that actual cases are much higher due to a lack of mass testing and a shortage of tests)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_by_country_and_territory

[–] NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 1 points 21 minutes ago

The US certainly treated the issue horribly. It became a bizarre political misinformation campaign.

At the same time obesity and mortality from covid have a strong correlation. In wealthy countries it is one of the top factors. Helps explain your stats. Still might have been better with getting vaccines and masking of course.

[–] fossilesque@mander.xyz 3 points 11 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Rooster326@programming.dev 3 points 2 hours ago

Kowabunmer dude

[–] ummthatguy@lemmy.world 131 points 17 hours ago (4 children)
[–] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 9 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

Imagine one of your first memories in this world being getting shot by a priest.

I know it's just a water gun, but babies don't know the difference.

[–] rbn@sopuli.xyz 10 points 6 hours ago (3 children)

Babies don't know guns in general.

[–] mech@feddit.org 5 points 2 hours ago

They don't even know what it's like to get shot at, until they're in school.

[–] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 hours ago

That was supposed to be a subtle part of the humor, yes, good job for figuring that out.

[–] kogasa@programming.dev 1 points 3 hours ago

They will learn

[–] how_we_burned@lemmy.zip 4 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Be glad that was the only thing that priest did to that child

[–] anomnom@sh.itjust.works 3 points 4 hours ago

Its been 5-6 years, we don’t know what’s happened since then.

[–] BanMe@lemmy.world 20 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

I always liked that the man of faith was the only one actually following personal safety protocol here. Doofus and Sarah Huckabee Postpartum here were just like "hyuck little mysyls milestone day"

[–] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 3 points 6 hours ago

Is that who that is? I thought it was just some rando, but it's ten times funnier that it was some B-rated corrupt sycophantic rando.

[–] Deconceptualist@leminal.space 8 points 12 hours ago

I too would want a robe, mask, and gun if these fools approached me.

[–] Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip 25 points 17 hours ago

Van Helsing at it again.

[–] TheGiantKorean@lemmy.today 33 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (2 children)

So anyway, I started blastin'

[–] mech@feddit.org 6 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)
[–] doug@lemmy.today 14 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

If I could see all the germs flying around all the time at my face I’d probably never let anyone speak to me again.

I already feel stressed when I flush a toilet with no lid or use one of those Dyson fans.

[–] rumschlumpel@feddit.org 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I heard that depending on the toilet design, flushing with the lid down is even worse.

[–] doug@lemmy.today 1 points 1 hour ago

Why have you told me this 😦

[–] daannii@lemmy.world 3 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (2 children)

So smoking and vaping. Kinda gross in my opinion (but to each their own). But you know what I dislike about them both the most. ?

They have shown me just how much I breathe in other people's breath and that's just horrifying.

And I don't like being reminded visually.

[–] ulterno@programming.dev 1 points 3 hours ago

I don't need being reminded visually.
I can usually taste the different air that is filled with their breath.
And they feel weird that I want to keep a 1m distance.

Bet you love public transport on a wet day when all the windows steam up. 😂

[–] null@piefed.nullspace.lol 11 points 18 hours ago

🎵These fangs are for you only🎵