Oh, my bad, sorry! I’m with you on this one.

With my limited view from Germany, thank God that it is not Trump. Presidents come and go, Democrats and Republicans swap places every now and then, but at the end, the US stays an oligarchy. By killing Trump you don’t change much, you might create a public outrage, but it’s like popping a pimple without addressing the acne. It might lead to an even bigger divide within the working class - those who were fooled into voting for Trump vs Democrats vs disappointed, disillusioned Democrats. One of the problems of the election was that not enough left leaning people saw the Democrats as much different from the Republicans, and they are right. Killing a politician would just distract from the problem even more. Just think of how much momentum Trump (and his movement) gained from the assassination attempt.

Here, for once in months, when we see tiktoks or other clips from the public, we cannot even tell immediately where they lean politically - we just see that everyone is fed up with the same crap. Now both left and right, united, experience how the media lies to them and tells a skewed narrative. This is amazing. I sincerely hope it will not die, I hope this will grow and continue to spread like a cancer through society.

It is sad that it took the murder of a person and a young man’s freedom for this.

I’ve grown up fascinated with several diseases and was eager to study them and find treatments that would better and prolong the life of the patients. By the time I was done with university my disease pet peeves were already very well managed. Take cystic fibrosis, a disease that was still considered a childhood disease when I was born in the 90s. With trikafta and other treatments CF patients now climb mount everest and whatnot. They have kids, back in school I learned that the few cases who made it to adulthood were infertile because of their viscous mucus. Like, I would love to work on an mRNA based gene therapy for it, but it seems almost unnecessary, given how manageable the disease has become.

I also agree and want to stress what you are saying about the acceptance of gene therapy/ GMOs in general. I am in Germany and people here are insanely against GMOs of any kind. Manipulating the human genome is so far off the rails for the vast majority, I mean there is still so much hate against GMOs in food, we are nowhere near trying to use gene therapy on a broad scale. Let alone that to actually cure a genetic disease, you would have to undergo the gene therapy while you’re still a zygote. This is simply illegal here. Our research opportunities are severely limited on genetic manipulation.

To be fair, usually you get that when you are already employed somewhere with good working conditions and an above average salary. Eg Daiichi Sankyo does that with technical assistants, but they already have a great starting salary of roughly 43k with no job experience. That’s much higher than other companies pay their TAs (Eurofins paid 22k to new TAs), and these companies pat themselves on the back for giving you a punch on a 30 minute Christmas themed extra break as a holiday treat.

I have actually thought it might be misinterpreted because it’s vague in that sentence - no, I don’t mean that the guy thinks the hotel sucks. He still doesn’t care. But his wife thinks it sucks and she is solely responsible for her choice. In a partnership.

Most likely, when confronted with her dislike, he would not be comforting her like “honey, it’s ok, you picked a nice hotel, I don’t think it’s bad at all”, but just be like “look, it doesn’t matter, we’ll just sleep here”. Basically invalidating her feelings and experiences.

The point I am trying to make is: if you are in a committed relationship you sometimes have to care, have an opinion, help with decisions, even if it was something that you usually don’t care about. But saying “I don’t care about the outcome of something that you care about” is definitely neither kind nor loving and devastating in the long run.

Could it be because decision making is hard and you end up telling your partner that you a) don’t care about what they care about b) leave them hanging when they might need help to decide c) they end up having decision fatigue because you don’t have an opinion? Sometimes, a consultation or just a talk about something one tries to make a decision on feels good, doing it all by yourself sucks.

Let’s say you don’t care what hotel she books. She ends up doing all the research on hotels. Presents you with it, pros and cons. You still say you don’t care. Ok, so now the burden of choice is solely on her. You guys arrive, the hotel sucks. Can’t you see that this is frustrating in a different way than if the two of you decided on the hotel together?

I once broke up with someone because he couldn’t stop using ^^ after every sentence even in the middle of a serious discussion/argument

Peter I swear to God if this is how we meet again I’ll lose it

Go from Wales, Alaska near the Bering Strait to the southern tip of Florida. You have traveled 4,580 miles (7,370 km) in 14 states and provinces. At no point were you not in a jurisdiction that was predominantly English speaking.

Laughs in Russian

Very honestly, since I was a child I wanted to be burned to a point where the flesh is gone but the bones are still intact and have the bones buried.

I think it is even possible to do that in Austria but I live in Germany and obviously no one is going to spend time, money, and energy on these shenanigans once I am dead. But if I could selfishly wish for a way, this would be it. There are reasons for why I don’t want to be buried and why I don’t want to be cremated and this would feel… The rightest.

The thing is, while everything is so starkly clear for us here, it’s not that black and white for other countries. So yes, India and China will become stronger business partners. And I think even if they will pressure Russia into bad deals, those deals will still be enough to keep Russia somewhat working economically. Whether this economy will be sustainable in the long run or do the country any good prosperity wise doesn’t matter. The top 1% couldn’t care less about how well the economy does. Do you think Putin or some oil oligarch really cares about inflation or whether millions of Russians can’t afford to buy food?

The problem is that the west cannot really go without sanctions, but everyone is fully aware that the rich and powerful have no problem overgoing them. The rich guys will always have access to Gucci. They keep becoming richer. And it is very difficult to impossible to get rid of this problem. While, for them, it is a minor inconvenience, it is a major catastrophe for the broad population. I think even if we tried something like going after the brands as you described (“ban them from doing business in the west if caught dealing in Russia”) they will still find a way to not get caught, blame someone else for being sold, pay a fine, continue business as usual in both hemispheres.

Having no McDonald’s and a Russian rip off is not the problem here. Believe me, people whine a bit, but they are resilient to these changes. You have to be resilient in Russia because for generations, everything went further south, the more you tried the more so. No one will start a revolution because they miss McDonald’s, Palmolive or Ferrero. You whine, accept, and life goes on, just a bit harder and shittier than it was before, again and again, there is no time to care more than that because you have to survive. You know you’re absolutely powerless and the best you can do is focus on your little life and make it as bearable and enjoy the little things before it gets worse again.

What do you mean? What is the strategic value of banning western luxury brands in russia, is that the question?

I do care a lot about that. Brands claiming they are pulling out of Russia because they got the moral high ground and/or sanctions just to sneak back in because they still can make additional profit in this market. Especially luxury brands. As long as you are rich, you won’t care about sanctions and risen prices. And again the poorest people who are already suffering and are completely powerless politically suffer the most, be it from inflation, drafting, or sanctions. So fuck all those brands for making sanctions even less useful than they are, for catering to the oligarchs who give a fuck about their country going to shit and people dying.

Unfortunately most western brands still find their way to the russian market.

I thought it was 500. I think I even read that 50 might be enough by some estimates.

As someone living in Germany, I am so pissed at everyone for being pissed about the current government. It is a coalition of three parties that inherited a country that was led by one person for 16 years, post pandemic, and was hit with two huge wars that they are inevitably involved in. Cut them some slack, maybe? I honestly feel like I am the only one thinking they did quite OK. Give them some time (and fire Lindner) at least. But no, let’s be mad that they didn’t solve recession, climate change, didn’t establish world peace and got the country out of its stillstand of one and a half decades within three years.

Oh god “too scared”/“two square(d)” jfc took a minute

I wasn’t the most popular growing up and I remember becoming popular and developing a larger friends group in late high school. Above all, I remember going out for pizza when I was 17. At home, we always shared a small (frozen or delivery or restaurant) pizza - me, my sister, and my mom. Eating pizza meant having a slice or two for dinner (with salad, there was always salad). So this also always meant prior discussions on the toppings. Therefore, going out with new friends, I was highly confused why no one was really engaging in my question about what kind of toppings they want, everyone was just stating what they want and gonna get and I was hella confused. When it occurred to me that everyone was going to order a whole pizza for themselves I couldn’t believe it. I don’t remember what happened next, I only remember the horrible realization that everyone is going to buy a pizza and eat this food, that to me was absolutely meant to be shared, by themselves like psychopaths, a whole family meal, for each person. And that this was the normal way to do it. As I said, I don’t know what happened next, but I don’t really like pizza to this day - maybe something happened that day, I don’t know.

Thank God I found a spouse who likes to share a small pizza and can’t have more than 2-3 slices tops either.

Lol as someone from biomedical sciences I thought you were speaking about applications in the broad field of biology/biological sciences. I was so excited to ask you about what companies would accept an “R strategy” application because fuck this, even for a technical assistant job I need a fucking tailored cover letter every single time because otherwise my application doesn’t even land on anyone’s desk.

Oh thank god one person on this threat who is not opposed to children or straight out antinatalist

I can smell this picture