• 0 Posts
  • 11 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 30th, 2023

help-circle






  • Student loans had to be a top answer. The fact that they even call loans “student aid” is bonkers. There were two events with student loans that really drove that home for me.

    First, there was a school I was considering applying to that advertised that they would pay 100% of what the government determined was your family’s need. They had 2 admission windows, one “early-decision” with a good chance of getting in, that was before when the govt releases their estimates of your need, and another with abysmal acceptance rates, but after you’d know the cost. For someone without money, you would have to give them a binding agreement to go there if accepted without knowing what you will end up paying, or you likely wouldn’t be accepted at all. I ended up not applying, but if I had, I could have attended a good school for around $3,000 per year, including room and board.

    Second, one year i was in college, my parents (who weren’t paying for any of my education) made less money. This made the government offer me higher loans. Because I could get more “student aid” from the government (loans), my school reduced my scholarships.



  • I posted this in a reply, but I’m reposting it here:

    Bacon is already cooked when you buy it from the store (at least in america). The difference between “pork belly” and “bacon” is that bacon is cured and then smoked. That smoking process gets the temperature above the range to cook it.

    Besides, even “chewy” bacon is going to get above the recommended pork cooking temp. It’s so thin, it will reach that temperature very quickly. If it gets hot enough to start rendering the fat, it’s definitely hot enough, and I have a hard time believing anyone would pull bacon out of the oven before it’s had time to render some fat.

    If you read the case report by the docs, they don’t say “we think he got this disease from bacon”.

    Our patient’s lifelong preference for soft bacon may have led to instances of undercooked bacon consumption, but this would have caused him to develop taeniasis, an intestinal tapeworm, and not cysticercosis [1]. Taeniasis occurs when consuming undercooked pork and the larval cysts embedded within, while cysticercosis is contracted when humans ingest eggs found in the feces of other humans with taeniasis [1].

    In other words, the brain version only comes from eating the eggs, which can only come from eating poop of someone who had the intestinal worms. They later specify that they think the most likely scenario is that he got the intestinal version, re-infected himself through the fecal-oral pathway, then somehow cured himself of the intestinal version.

    Personally, I think the most likely scenario is that he got the parasite the same way you get any other disease that uses the fecal-oral pathway: contact with someone’s inadequately washed hands, or eating food prepared by someone with inadequately washed hands.



  • Happened at Kent state, I believe. There was an old story from Inuits about a man who was being forced off his land, so he refused the leave, and they took all of his gear and clothing, hoping he would go with his family rather than freeze to death. He then allegedly pooped, fashioned it into a knife, and killed a sled dog for the hide so he could survive.

    The story was recorded by a reputable person (though probably told to him by Inuits that thought it was hilarious). In order to prove it was possible, or not, this experimental archeology lab tried it out. Hilariously enough, they tried to do it while on a regular “western” diet, as well as an “inuit” diet of mostly fish and very little fiber.