Apathy Tree

Unless this one works differently than the one I read about a month or so ago, which isn’t at all clear from this article, no, probably not something we can get as kids.

The reason is that, at least at the moment, you need a sample of the cancer itself and protein markers for each individual, and each cancer type, so it’s a vaccine that you get only after you get the cancer. Plus it’s multiple doses over the course of several weeks.

They also aren’t sure if the cancer will come back after being eradicated, so for now they have no idea how effective it will be, nor how long it’ll last.

But this is a technology very much in its infancy. The first trial ever was earlier this year, so… who knows where it’ll go from there. Maybe they will be able to isolate enough common markers for enough cancers to have a childhood vax for prevention. Almost certainly a long ways off tho.

wtf is that from?

I’m too old to know what kids are doing most of the time, tbh, but the kids on my street spend most of their time outside, tons of kids walk to and from school, it’s just a pleasant, generally low-key area. It helps that half my local area is dead ends due to the train tracks a couple blocks away in any direction, so not a lot of street traffic, emboldening kids to play outside.

The majority of people of whom I am aware on my street are really nice and neighborly, or at least leave me alone, but it’s a rural-ish area and there are people who think laws don’t apply to them and their dogs… those people suck. The rest tho… my neighbor mowed my lawn for a year for me when I was sort of not capable myself, because he saw I had a company coming out and wanted to save me money, so now we sort of share the part of our lots that meet; because he mows it and I don’t have to think about it, I let him use it to store shit outside of his fence, even tho it’s mostly my property that I’m not using anyway. The old dude who used to mow in his tightie-whities gave me half a garden bed of lettuce because it overgrew. Just came up to my door one day with a bowl of dirty salad and said “here, it’s butter crisp. If you want more I have more.” And left. The neighbor directly across the street (where the black fam is moving in) often got my mail and brought it back, and so on. We all just exist here, sure, but it’s a pleasant area. Not like the communities of old, but… as good as ones likely to get these days.

My new business neighbor is even taking my advice to be a better neighbor. It’s a warehouse nobody ever really used, and he doesn’t plan to use it that often either, so he’s going to change the building lights from omnidirectional eyesores into unidirectional, illuminating his property and the sidewalk around it but not my walls or the windows of houses across the street.

But I grew up in an area where we didn’t lock doors, the postman, whomever it was, came into the house to deliver packages (technically a porch but not really… we also lived directly next to the post office so I’m sure my parents knew them well enough), I knew all the cops, and they lived in town (knew them due to my neighbor being a drug house, using said post office parking lot for house parties while on probation) and the mayor was my moms bff (best gay friend -he thought that acronym was stupendous!) I helped him with his campaign by printing t-shirts in my highschool photography lab back in like 2003 (which had a screen printer). So super small town vibe. This is close but not really the same.

We also need smaller houses damnit! Or more duplexes of reasonable size. We need more 2-4 family properties.

Not tiny houses, not 300sqft nonsense buildings that cost more to have as standalone units…

We need more 1-2 bedroom starter options, and fewer of the 4-6 bedroom micromansions that everyone builds because it’s more worth the money from a development side. Nobody can afford those things as first time buyers.

And while we are at it, we need more apartments that can be purchased like condos or houses. Rent is all well and good for short term, but people should have long term ownership options even in big cities if they will be there for a while. It’s absurd your choices are basically rent and be at the whim of your landlord, or buy a standalone.

There’s next to none in all water, when measured by volume.

But things concentrate, so the 0.00005% adds up over time.

Considering it’s also in the water, probably not, no.

lol I would pay actual money to see trump live on my street for one year.

For one thing, houses here were selling for 20-80k 10 years ago, so people without much money live here. (My neighbor bought his place for 25k in 2018, it needed a lot of work, sure, but all the same. Mine was 60 as a foreclosure in 2013 - 40k+ is a good yearly salary here…

The renovated laundromat kiddie-corner to me is rented out by four black/hispanic families, and the kids are always playing in the street on bikes, boards, and scooters, the other end of the block is an unknown number of Hmong sharing a house (they have 6 vehicles between them, and I’m pretty sure they converted the garage to living space), there’s a 30-some-yo with downs that rides his trike around the block 6 times a day every day, talking to everyone very loudly, and the house across from me just sold to a big black family.

That’s just what I know about; I keep to myself. There are 8 additional buildings with unknown entities. He’d hate it. I’d love it.

If it goes by wonka physics where it needs to be shrunk down from like 10x size, you’d get such intense diarrhea you’d probably never walk again after shitting out your spine.

Maybe, although the flavor of that probably does change somewhat due to being boiled, just like I imagine the bee concentration/dehydration process adds something.

Have you ever tasted flower nectar?

I grow gladiolus sometimes, and they produce a lot of nectar, but there aren’t any pollinators for those flowers around me, so I remove the nectar myself with a syringe. There isn’t a lot in each flower, but it’s nice in a cup of tea.

It doesn’t really taste like honey, even dilute honey. It doesn’t taste like just sugar water, either, though. I’m sure each flowering plant produces a subtly different flavor, like fruit.

And indeed, honey apparently tastes different depending what the bees are feeding on. But I’d say it’s probably a mix of something bee-specific and the nectar itself.

I thought you were saying the book is a bit pricy the way a tabletop art book in the $100 range is pricy. So I went to see if it was something I could justify for a friend of mine as a gift… but nope, way too expensive is 100% accurate. $620. Holy shit. It’s pricy the way textbooks are pricy (the worst textbook I got was $1200, and it resold for around $600… wasn’t rentable, and no pdf at the time)

Wow. That’s… a thing. And just imagine how he warped what actually happened to be presentable to his base… yikes.

Thanks for following up :)

I had a puppy that specifically ate the crotch of all my underpants in the laundry. She was pooping out ladybugs and tye dye for days.

Is that true, and if so do you have a source for it?

I did this in my car by accident multiple times way back in the day (like 2004). Stop for food after work, eat the fries and forget about the burger, which gets buried under stuff (I keep my car generally cleaner these days; I was a teen). It dries out completely with no actual change in appearance, smell, nothing but turning rock hard. Gross.

Needless to say, I haven’t eaten there in almost 20 years, other than an occasional fries on a road trip when that’s all there is.

Well now I’ve got the banana song stuck in my head… (from memory so if I got any wrong, too bad)

Charlie, you look quite down, with your big sad eyes and your big fat frown, the world doesn’t have to be so gray.

Charlie, when your life’s a mess; when you’re feeling blue, always in distress, I know what will wash your sad away.

All you have to do is put a banana in your ear, you will never be happy if you live your life in fear.

It’s true, so true, when it’s in the world is bright and clear, the bad in the world is hard to hear when in your ear a banana cheers, so go and stick a banana in your ear!

ETA: video, cuz then I had to go listen to it anyway. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EqwYzi_IG6k

I’m low-key annoyed that the article links to part 3 of the series but not part 1… Who does that??

So here’s part 1 if anyone wants to read it

https://reason.com/2024/08/05/operation-rolling-thunder-the-shocking-truth-behind-spartanburgs-traffic-stops/

For me it’s this comic (keeping to things related to SpongeBob). It’s kinda long, multiple pages, but definitely worth it.

http://stillinthesimulation.com/untitled-comic/the-bikini-bottom-horror-chapter-1-rise-of-the-star/

I’ve had a carrot cat too! I sliced some up and dehydrated them then sewed them into a toy and she just loved it! The trick I found is to break the pieces inside the toy now and then to release more of the smell (same way catnip works really).

Does your carrot cat also like swimwear that’s been used in a chlorinated pool, but not yet washed? Mine treated that like catnip, too.

I think this played out in my home last year around this time. (You can just skip reading it; this is catharsis for me…) (I’m debating just deleting this catharsis but I’m going to post it because I wrote it…)

I had one cat who hated everyone but me and sometimes her housemate. She was 16, but in pretty good health. The other I’d had for 10 years but idk how old he was, probably 5-10 when I got him. They didn’t get along that well, but he gave her space. He was a lover with multiple health issues who was on his way out for years. Importantly, he left her alone for the most part. She liked that about him.

I wanted kittens to learn his hyper-friendly ways and be good with her, too, because I thought she’d be around a while yet, and at least a few months on loverboy, so I got a pair from a barn. Runts; the only ones they could catch. Way too fragile to be in my care, but probably had a better chance with me.

One week after the kittens came home, the friendly cat had to be put down, he was ready to go, stopped eating and wouldn’t cuddle, he told me he was ready. So I scheduled it. I was ready for that to happen and had been since 2016 when the vet said he had 6 mths left. In retrospect he was telling me that for a while before that and I didn’t pick it up. That’s on me, and I accept it.

Next morning, the day of the euthanasia, woke up to one of the kittens being gone, she was failing to thrive and I didn’t think she was going to make it, but it still sucked really hard. They are buried together because other people seem to think that’s poetic or something… he waited for her, or some such. And that sounds nice so I went with it. (this was 15JUL)

The remaining kitten was depressed as hell, wouldn’t play or do anything for days, and even the crabby 16 seemed sad that her companion of the past 10 years was gone… got another kitten from that same barn but the grief did its damage… the kittens were ok with each other but they aren’t siblings or anything and they haven’t really bonded the way I’d like.

Just when the kittens were starting to win over the crabby girl, she up and stroked out on me out of nowhere on 02SEP, plunging my house further into chaos (I was ready for my boy to go… I wasn’t expecting that…)

Now I have a cat (kitten no longer) who suckles blankets for comfort, and another who gets misplaced aggressive when she sees another cat (and sometimes squirrels??). So you know, the trauma is real, and idk really how to help them, but it was a lot for them to experience in their formative stages… and I mean I was depressed about it the whole time too (as an unrelated bonus, one of my turtles died in November…), so that certainly didn’t help…