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.

I was assaulted by a family member for not giving “IV Ivermectin” to someone with COVID who I had just crash intubated (honestly thought they were going to code, but somehow didn’t) back during the Delta wave.

My view of humanity has gotten pretty pessimistic since COVID. If I had the guts I’d honestly love to go create an insulated community of people who actually think about stuff and want to help each other.

1. Smoking
2. Smoking
3. Smoking

There are already a lot of good answers but I want to highlight this. Chronic tobacco smoke causes increased aging due to multiple mechanisms. Moreover, environmental tobacco exposure from second hand and third hand smoke prior to the 1990s was MASSIVE. So even if you didn’t smoke you got insane daily exposures to the same chemicals.

“I moved to a place to be surrounded by white people, and decided I didn’t like white people because those white people weren’t hostile enough nor did they have enough of a desire to conquer other people. This made me realize white people are weak, so now I’m disappointed in them. But actually it’s because the white people in that area came from inferior nations 🤡.”

That’s the premise of the article to save you from having to read absolute horse shit. That guy is a waste of atoms.

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.

This is a really good example of me feeling really one-sided about something and then having my mind changed by the comment section. Somehow I didn’t think about the fact that being on the Titanic sinking would be a pretty pivotal memory in someone’s life lol.

I know this isn’t necessarily the point of the post, but I’m going to use this as an opportunity to bring it up anyway—

I can’t help but fear that the 2024 election is going to be an example of the DNC “reaping what they sowed.” In 2020 it felt like the DNC did whatever they could to push Biden through as a candidate despite more youthful, progressive options (and Bernie, who wasn’t youthful, but was progressive and in line with what a lot of the US left wanted). In many wants it felt like they did this because Biden was:

1. More moderate in willing to bend to the political interests of lobbyists
2. An easier option to beat Trump

In some ways I understand why it happened, but I was terrified of the situation we currently are in back then. Fast forward four years and now we’re left with a very elderly Biden versus an even more extreme Trump; and now it’s not a sure shot that Biden is going to win. Instead of uniting as a party and building up a new candidate who truly represented the people’s interests in 2020 the DNC decided to kick the can. As a result of that can kicking we may be facing the end of American democracy as we know it in 2024. It’s sickening to me.

I’m so sick and god damned tired of corporations and governments making sweeping decisions with no evidence base to back them up. I work in a field where there is no option for remote work, but I think it’s pretty clear at this point that most non-service industries can be just as effective via remote options. All of this is just about control and it’s so stupid.

The sad thing about UBI in places like the US is they further systematic change needs to happen prior to UBI being implemented.

If you have UBI added on to our current capitalist hellscape (since UBI rates will be publicly known) landlords and corporations will just hike prices to make life cost just as much as UBI—therefore forcing people to work for any scrap above that. So essentially UBI will be fed back into corporations/the elite, who will also continue to make profit on the labor the lower class does to afford anything above basic necessities.