Barx [none/use name]

  • 0 Posts
  • 71 Comments
Joined 4 months ago
cake
Cake day: May 20th, 2024

help-circle

  • You need oxidants to live. Issues stemming from oxidants are about levels of free radicals getting too high in the wrong places for too long.

    Getting good sleep, eating a balanced diet, reducing stress, and getting enough exercise are the best ways to reduce the chances of such a scenario. Realistically, these things are also just a way to maximize wellness and health overall and it is probably not very useful for most people to think of this in terms of oxidation.




  • When we and other known organisms take energy from food we are actually taking molecules with higher-energy electrons, converting them into the high-energy molecules our cellular processes can use to do make cell things happen, and producing very similar molecules with lower-energy electrons. Rather than infinitely accumulating these molecules, our cells dump low-energy electrons onto another molecule that is amenable and thereby convert into a molecule ready to accept high-energy molecules from food (with a bunch of steps in between).

    For us, as aerobes, the electron acceptor at the end of respiration is oxygen.

    Oxygen as an electron receptor is newer than several others. Anaerobes came first. It was only after photosynthesis had produced a ton of atmospheric oxygen that it became a viable option, really. But it O2 is a comparatively good electron acceptor because the process in which it accepts those electrons allows cells to grab quite a bit of energy from that last step. It is fairly “electron needy” compared to earlier electron acceptors.

    So, basically, aerobes get more energy per food unit (sugar molecule) than the vast majority of other creatures. You need it to live because it is an essential part of how your cells get food, namely, how it can recycle molecules at the last step of the respiration cycle.


  • Barx [none/use name]@hexbear.nettoScience Memes@mander.xyzOxygen
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 day ago

    The dietary antioxidant fad is mostly BS. They’re supposedly meant to counteract oxidative stress and specifically free radicals. Both of those things are part of a healthy life and you would die without them. So any real impact is not so simple as “just counteract those bad things”. Dietary antioxidants don’t always lead to higher intracellular antioxidant levels, either.

    Some dietary antioxidants so lead to higher intracellular levels and may help buffer oxidative stress (like from exercise) but there isn’t much evidence that it doesn’t just boil down to “eating your vegetables is good for you”.



  • As a start, follow the 3-2-1 rule:

    • At least 3 copies of the data.

    • On at least 2 different devices / media.

    • At least 1 offsite backup.

    I would add one more thing: invest in a process for verifying that your backups are working. Like a test system that is occasionally restored to from backups.

    Let’s say what you care about most is photos. You will want to store them locally on a computer somewhere (one copy) and offsite somewhere (second copy). So all you need to do is figure out one more local or offsite location for your third copy. Offsite is probably best but is more expensive. I would encrypt the data and then store on the cloud for my main offsite backup. This way your data is private so it doesn’t matter that it is stored in someone else’s server.

    I am personally a fan of Borg backup because you can do incremental backups with a retention policy (like Macs’ Time Machine), the archive is deduped, and the archive can be encrypted.

    Consider this option:

    1. Your data raw on a server/computer in your home.

    2. An encrypted, deduped archive on that sane computer.

    3. That archive regularly copied to a second device (ideally another medium) and synchronized to a cloud file storage system.

    4. A backup restoration test process that takes the backups and shows that they restores important files, the right number, size, etc.

    If disaster strikes and all your local copies are toast, this strategy ensures you don’t lose important data. Regular restore testing ensures the remote copy is valid. If you have two cloyd copies, you are protected against one of the providers screwing up and removing data without you knowing and fixing it.


  • Governments have frequently laundered the surveillance state as “child protection” laws, pushing for a cozy relationship between companies with data and cops et al. They want the ability to snoop more or less whenever they want and will push in that direction. This kind of relationship is not just for cops, though. The same companies also gladly work with and hire people from intelligence agencies to craft narratives and manipulate sentiment. When a company doesn’t play that role as well as feds want, the hammer comes down (TikTok, Telegram).

    Though really, the actual question is why they are writing this article and why now. The answer is that Durov has been arrested and the author is attempting to justify it by piling on “Telegram is bad” claims while avoiding discussing the actual legal basis and evidence around his arrest. You will also note the sources used in this article are entirely government officials and NGOs in the constellation of NGOs that work directly with the government - or are unsourced stipulations. No academics were cited, nor free speech advocacy groups, or even lawyers.



  • Trump isn’t a fascist. In action he is actually a pretty standard reactionary liberal. You will notice that Biden has continued the salient policies that made liberals call him a fascist, such as extreme and horrible border policies (Dems actually outflanked the GOP on this from the right), anti-China policy, and extending militarism (like maximum pressure on Russia via Ukraine).

    He’s mostly just openly racist whereas the political class usually wraps itself in polite jargon bullshit before it fucks with a bunch of brown people.



  • Yes, I recall the speeches Biden has given where he rallies the crowd against the Palestinian scourge!

    Biden - of course, he is senile, so he is just a stand-in for the current Dem leadership - provides unconditional military, diplomatic, and financial support to Israel in their campaign to destroy Gaza. For example, the JDAMs used so extensively to destroy schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, bakeries, refugee camps, etc, are exclusively manufactured by Boeing and Israel “buys” them via US “aid”, which, in reality, is just the US government buying the weapons and giving them to Israel to commit genocide with. The US lashes out at every attempt to reign in Israel via diplomacy, gladly carries water for obvious lies intended to justify the genocide, and props up the Israeli economy through direct investment and trade relationships.

    But sure, as I already mentioned, liberals try to whitewash and deflect from the genocide they know they are supporting. They use euphemisms and start acting erratically when you remind them of what they are celebrating. But everyone knows what unconditional material support for Israel’s genocide means. You know what it means.

    Look, I’m not arguing that the Israelis are doing anything positive

    They are ethnically cleansing Gaza as part of a settler colonial apartheid project that depends on US support.

    I’m merely suggesting that the venn diagram of people who are thankful that Biden dropped out and people who support genocide is not a circle.

    I’ve already described the function of this. Feel free to directly address it rather than hem and haw.


  • Joe Biden has been supporting the genocide of Palestinians for almost a year. It is public knowledge and there is a significant movement against it that these people are now literally trying to suppress.

    “Thank you Joe” is a silly little bit of propaganda meant to derail all thought about both Biden’s obvious senility (as if he stepped down by choice, lol) and gloss over all criticism of Biden, such as his support for a genocide.

    Personally, I think it’s pretty easy to just not support genociding Palestinians by not helping run interference for its primary sponsors. Unfortunately you seem to think this is difficult or, perhaps, complex. I would be happy to help you out if you need any assistance.


  • It was people holding “Thank you Joe” signs hitting people holding a “Stop arming Israel” banner. Anyone holding a “Thank you Joe” sign supports the genocide of Palestinians and this is just a very on-the-nose case of how they are trying to distract from that genocide, as despite their support for it, they are embarrassed to admit it plainly. Like crypyofascists but neoliberal.

    The Summer of Love was a bunch of hippies and hippie-adjascent people engaging in what is basically hedonism in a single city for a summer. Drugs, sex, chilling, etc. This was during the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam, so there is a parallel in that this crowd chose self-indulgence and complicity over forming an organized resistance to segregation and imperialism (their opposition to the Vietnam War, such as it was, was primarily based on sympathy for their war criminals rather than their Vietnamese people), but they were not the cryptofascists that went around justifying and fighting for those things. That was people note like William F. Buckley and, as you might expect, the lanyard-wearing political class like those attending the current DNC.

    I’m not sure what you think The Summer of Love is but your comment sounds like a reactionary boomer Facebook comment.






  • It’s not even enough to challenge a precinct of cops. At a local level, they would be up against cops, Chavista armed groups, and if things got out of hand, the military.

    I’m sure it is part of some losers idea of overthrowing the government. But so are some of those “don’t tread on me” losers with 6000 rounds of ammo that haven’t quite put it together that in the event they need to “overthrow tyranny” they will be shooting their “thin blue line”. It’s not a realistic threat to the state, even at a local level.

    For context, you could move that much ammo in the back of a single pickup truck.