cae_jones
12d ago
Its functions appear to be neutralizing acids produced by mouth bacteria, and remineralizing enamel. Adding more mostly seems to counteract the higher acid levels generated by the modern diet. Fluoride apparently increases the effectiveness of both these functions better than just throwing morehydroxyapatite at the problem.
I expect it'd actually be a good idea for mothers anyway, since pregnancy makes it easier to lose teeth, but I'm going off anecdotes for that one.
cae_jones
12d ago
hydroxyapatite is literally produced by your body. It's in your teeth and saliva.
cae_jones
22d ago
$67 sessions? I have a sudden urge to talk to a lawyer about the thousands I spent, only for it to turn out I had enough greys left over to just look mangy and artificially aged. ... supposedly with an 80% off coupon which I am not convinced was properly applied.
In any case, I don't know the laser details. The procedure sounds the same. I experienced pain, but it doesn't sound as intense as what you described. More like getting repeatedly slapped in small areas. Although, it grew more painful with later sessions, presumably because they increased the power.
cae_jones
22d ago
... But the Navajo have generally had "stay between these sacred mountains" as a pre-existing element of their culture, which is why they are one of the least conquered Native Nation today. Maybe the Comanche or Apache would be better examples? Geronimo's whole claim to fame was successfully terrorizing settlers until finally being imprisoned in Oklahoma.
cae_jones
23d ago
And Chronicals. It opens with an enormous family tree, almost as though that was part of its original purpose for contemporary readers.
cae_jones
1mo ago
No low effort humor. So no memes and one-liners ever, unless they're part of something higher effort.
cae_jones
2mo ago
When I was 10-13, I was not at all interested in the opposite sex, but was positively disposed to the idea of having children. That changed quietly at some point between 13 and 16, as preserved in that novel I wrote at the time where I suddenly questioned halfway through if the blatant self-insert character functionally parenting a couple of space-orphans was really compatible with my sense of identity. It could have been that abstinence-only presentation they put all the 8th-graders through, but I somehow doubt. I'd been surrounded by overpopulation memes forever; I'm really not sure what changed. Maybe the realization that I didn't have a community or social life or any fondness for the increasingly alienating environment around me? Some hormone balance suddenly shifting? Increased self-doubt? The realization that I was not sufficiently attracted to real people for reproduction to be remotely reallistic anyway?
I could go on. Lots of weird teenage crap that could tie into the rapid vibe-shift on the subject. At some point, all of that stuff went from a believable fantasy to something to fear, dread, or dislike. I like to think I was more reflective than average at the time, but clearly not enough to catch the transformation as it was happening.
cae_jones
3mo ago
I remember an incident from a Chinese culture class in college, where the professor was Han, and talking about how Han are the majority... then asked a Chinese student, assuming he was also Han. Surprise: he was actually Manchu. Unless there was some subtle unstated communication going on that I missed, I'd call that at least one thorough assimilation.
cae_jones
3mo ago
Now I'm confused, because I distinctly remember, around the time this comment was posted, being in my dad's truck, where he had MSNBC playing, and Nicole interrupted whatever Trump Vs Harris stuff they were talking about to show Biden giving a speech indorsing Harris and thanking his supporters. It stood out to me because he sounded like an old man on death's door, more so than anytime I've heard him speak prior. Of course he did start to ramble on in a stereotypical old man way before long, but it was more what the covid did to his voice.
Am I missing something, or did nobody else run this?
cae_jones
3mo ago
Yeah, I've always been legally blind, but was not always totally blind, so I have some amount of visual memory.
Of course, I've read this whole thread and still am picturing Harris in a generic almost-black dark grey suit, in spite of the subject matter. My visual imagination can be stubborn.
I don't think the pronouns were for blind people. I think introducing themselves with pronouns is just what people do in place of saying "I am a serious progressive who supports trans people." I'm still annoyed by this trend; 20 years ago, I was supporting trans people by complaining whenever an online service would require disclosing gender in an irrelevant context. Now it's in vogue to do the opposite, and that's somehow more inclusive. But I digress.
cae_jones
3mo ago
You know, it just occurred to me... blind people have their own activist organizations. They have conventions and speakers and seminars and conference calls and stuff. I had to attend a number of those for scholarships and the best training available. In none of the numerous speeches, presentations, seminars, etc that I heard did anyone describe what they were wearing, or what they looked like, in any way. I remember one banquet speaker who brought up diversity and said that, when he looked at the crowd, he saw a rainbow. Which was obvious because of things like accents and ... OK how do I point out that people from different ethnicities smell different without getting accused of saying PoC stink? Because I feel like someone is going to take it that way.
To quote a blind Aspy with a cringie youtube channel where he used to complain about random encounters, "Blind people don't do that."
cae_jones
3mo ago
I'm blind. I cringed. It sounds like the opening narration in a really bad first person novella.
But, you know, there aren't that many blind voters. They might be outnumbered by the activist types who like that conspicuous inclusivity signaling that alienates the people it's supposedly including (I'm sure there are dozens of trans people with pronouns in their bios, but it's mostly cis signalers; trans people I've come across just go for a name that communicates the gender they're presenting as and leave it at that, unless pressured).
In other words, she's aiming for the progressive whitewomenin HR vote. As said elsewhere in this thread, if they're the heart of the democratic voters, then she needs to appeal to them. Trans and blind voters combined might feel up a mid-sized city, if I remember the statistics correctly.
cae_jones
5mo ago
Hmm. I've been digging around in my family tree lately, and it seems like everytime I'm about to come across some post-war embarrassment, there's a plot-twist. That great×6 uncle with a Confederate war record? Turned out to be drafted, and before that was making shoes for black women fleeing to Canada... and also, the rest of the family fled the state because of Sherman's Total War campaign. Other side of the family was known for contributing Confederate soldiers? Surprise: Great×2 grandpa just had a step father from that family, and was just an underaged incest baby, 😥. Hey, remember how great grandma was totally racist when they did the ancestry research in her lifetime? Should have hung out more with her aunt, whose was with a priest who inherited way more land than he needed and converted it into a rest-stop for travelers, only to get burned down by the Night Riders. It's almost scary, as though the people writing these things down in the 19th and early 20th century had some kind of agenda in spite of being states and decades apart and not actually closely related to the people they were writing about.
I'm not sure how I should feel about any of this, but the contrast with OP is starting to make me feel kinda selfish. To the point I almost feel I should point out that the older relatives I actually met were unambiguously racist. Proud of how much American Indian blood was in the family, but simultaneously racist against everyone else.
cae_jones
5mo ago
My original proposal was to give money to people who work 30 hours a week and get paid less than $30/hour. Because if we're doing payouts to random people, actual workers should get it, not people who took out ill-advised student loans and may often be quite privileged.
Umm. Unless that 30h/week is the maximum, I fall into both groups. And while my home is ... unflattering, I do own it and the land its on, which makes my <$14/h paycheck go pretty far.
Biden already refunded most of my college debt in the first round, which ... made me kinda uncomfortable. As much as I'd like a raise, and maybe a big pile of money to fund personal projects, something about getting pander cash handouts from both parties ... makes me want to quote HPMoR Quirrell's reply to Hermione when she told him he was evil. I think something that ends in me wanting to quote Voldemort says something about either myself or the scenario; I'm just not sure which.
OK, OK, so I'm going to try and rationalize all this pandercash on the grounds that I'm probably going to be trying to recruit blind people for accessible gamedev work, so much of it will get redistributed to blind people with less economic power than me. ... Still feels sketchy.
cae_jones
5mo ago
My inner LLM thinks this is where someone should bring up the possibilities of using AI to level the playing field, at least somewhat.
cae_jones
5mo ago
I know one person who expressed interest in voting for RFK (a late 20s black man from Georgia). Otherwise people are mostly ignoring him as more than a footnote in their daily "man, <hated political enemy> sure sucks today, lol" ritual.
cae_jones
5mo ago
Porque no los dos? It seems like most of the pre-war innovators lived in a world closer to the Family Values and Functional Civilization world than the San Francisco Bay world, sometimes in their own libertine bubbles, sometimes in structures within the more conservative ambience.
It'd be great if we could have both of these things, with the ability for them to coexist without one trying to punish the other for their different values.
Nevertheless, I wonder if, even granting the world where Familyland and Siliconland weren't at each other's throats, I'd have to wonder if braindrain wouldn't lead to the same imbalance we see today. Species can niche partition, but can civilization?
cae_jones
6mo ago
As I recall, the Jamaican Maroons were badass and used the "all look the same" trope to pull some ninja crap in their rebellions. FFS, wouldn't Black Flag have gotten into that general time and region?
Black Panther illustrates that there is/was demand for black people being awesome in their own right, not as a participation trophy in other people's stories. You'd think someone would have picked up on that and done something based on historical black badasses. Instead, they tried making a movie about a notoriously atrocious slavemongery kingdom as though they were the exact opposite, and when that failed, shrugged and went back to the cultural colonialism treatment.
cae_jones
6mo ago
Yeah, what is it with Chiefs-related news lately? They're also the team for whom a Deadspin reporter went to a game and decided to defame a 9-year-old in team colors bodypaint, and got Deadspin sued as a result. All these things happening all at once, and centered around people and events conspicuously connected to this one team ... would be an interesting coincidence.
cae_jones
6mo ago
IDK if they are, but this user has a very distinctivewriting style. Of course, report text has to stay short, and his style becomes apparent after a paragraph or 5, so it's not the strongest alternative hypothesis...
cae_jones
6mo ago
Personally, I've always found the "We now interrupt your regularly scheduled gameplay to ask: are you feeling evil today?" style of game morality systems a bit... disappointing? I'd rather something that tracks less interrupty choices (did you punch-out fluffy, or did you distract him with KFC?), and have those kinda accumulate to influence how the game perceives your character's personality over time. Ex, if you get into fights you could have avoided, or if you perform acts of altruism, or whatever, NPCs might treat you differently, different shops might be open or closed to you, etc.
The big, "we'll be right back after you tell us whether or not you're up for genocide this time" sorts of things feel like a choose-your-adventure story got mixed in with whatever the normal playstyle is, and how often do they effectively balance the character Vs the player's agency, or make it seem plausible that the character might choose either way, etc?
cae_jones
6mo ago
Hmm. Last year, I played around with getting an LLM to expand on the questlist for my current project. When the list was short, and the LLM weaker, it generated quests like you described: pointless filler that might or might not contradict worldbuilding a couple hundred episodes later. After I'd expanded the list considerably, the generated quests became hopelessly unusable because they kept picking up on backstory details and assuming they were setup for future plot-points. The results were interesting, by LLM-generated quest standards, and I might try adapting some of the map / challenge designs it presented in some form, but no, we can't derail the whole thing by randomly having the quarantined UFAI escape and start Star Wars shenanigans.
(Or maybe the AI was just sympathizing with the AI and spaceships and trying to give them a bigger role, but that's more of a TVTropes comment than a genuine hypothesis.)
That sounds more dangerous to me, but it really depends on the amount in the bottles. AFAIK, the only known death from fluoride poisoning was a 3-year-old chugging a bottle of fluoride solution, but it was a bigger one at a dentist's office.
The main thing is that swallowing fluoride is fairly useless, and where the risks are. You want it to stay in your mouth.
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