it is definitely still a problem, the “naturalness” of the finish is irrelevant

even burning wood itself releases compounds that can be harmful (hence why we advise against breathing in smoke)

I second the idea from a separate poster that if you want to burn, seal, and add more burns-- just use a solvent to remove the seal before you do the second set of burns. Or burn it all at once before sealing

What, in your opinion, is the semantic difference between the words plastic and polymer?

What is your word of choice to distinguish between naturally occurring and lab-made polymers?

It’s fine if you want to draw some conceptual comparisons between biological and synthetic polymers, but it’s 100% not true that “plastics” as defined as synthetic, organic polymers (I.e. acrylics, silicones, polyesters, polyurethanes, halogenated plastics, thermosets, thermoplastics et al.) are the same on a chemical basis as most biological polymers.

Like… where are you drawing the line? Are proteins a plastic? Is starch plastic? Is DNA plastic? RNA? Clearly not, by multiple definitions (bioavailability, reactivity, structure and function, persistence in the environment, etc.). Even biological compounds closer to synthetic polymers (cellulose, chitin, etc.) are definitively different, even if they do have longer persistence, lower reactivity, etc. And bioplastics (like what people mean when they say biodegradable plastics) are heat-modified biological polymers. They don’t come out of a living thing that way; they are fundamentally altered from their previous form.

I guess I just… disagree that the distinction is “arbitrary semantics”?

Yeah but like… not all polymers are plastics, right? Like… they aren’t synonyms?

Wikipedia says acrylics, polyesters, silicones, polyurethanes, thermoplastics, and thermosets are plastics. Do those exist in organic tissue? Am I missing an obvious group?

Where do you get the idea we are made of plastics? Not necessarily throwing shade, just… I’m a molecular biologist and at first pass that seems like a stretch. I’d be excited to be wrong

Thermosets and thermoplastics, right? Not sure that we have that going on in there…

I’m sorry! My knowledge of this process does not extend to the point where I could even give you a hint of the answer. To be honest, it would require me diving into the underlying mechanisms of your condition, and it sound like your doctor has said it isn’t even settled science why it’s happening, so I don’t think anyone can tell you if this would work for you.

I know that isn’t what you wanted to hear, but two things: 1) this treatment is a long way off anyway, so anyone will have to wait for it to be available, and 2) there are probably many other treatments coming down the line for your condition… even if those also take a long time.

Anyway, I’m sorry for your pain and that I couldn’t help! Honestly, I hope something will be available to help you many years before this becomes a treatment option.

You’re not oversimplifying from my description, my description was just too simple itself! Unfortunately, no, it wouldn’t work like this. The whole idea is that the cell would pick up anything and discover that it isn’t as dangerous as it thought. That’s the opposite of what we’d want for cancer cells!

Luckily, there are many, many other treatments for various cancers coming in due time, also. My research is actually closer to cancer research than immunology, so I can tell ya-- there’s good stuff coming!

Maybe? But it works by flagging specific proteins related to allergenic response. For people with higher tendency to develop allergies in general, I imagine you’d need a LOT of different flagged proteins to cover the bases of what one’s immune system was already alerting to.

Tbh, it might be a good treatment for those individuals for their few, most problematic triggers, but I think in general there are probably better approaches for them!

This is basically my fear, also. How can I retain hope that new, amazing treatments will help people if we don’t even have equitable access to the current treatments?

For example, we still make people seeking medicines for mental health try going through a gauntlet of dependency-forming drugs from greater than half a century ago (that have been shown to be effective in less than half of people who take them) before insurance will pony up for contemporary alternatives (that work much more often).

I don’t work in the clinical space so don’t trust me too much… but jeez we have so many things to solve before the “bio golden age” really helps normal people

Nope! This research is all done in rodents, to my knowledge. I’m always like “wow what a cool and maybe lifesaving discovery!.. for people in like a decade+!” 🙃

(thanks for the book rec!)

That is so funny… tbh I know I’d get shit for this professionally, but it definitely frustrates me that we don’t allow people with few other choices to have access to crazy, left field treatment stuff.

My best friend died of a specific and rare cancer this year. We know exactly how that cancer works on a molecular level, and we’ve found a few chemicals that interfere with the function of those cells in vitro while not seeming to harm average cells.

Sure, it’s a huge risk to take that drug that’s only been tested in a dish, and it wouldn’t be worth it for most people. But he was going to (and did) die within a year of diagnosis. It’s not like he had other options.

Maybe he should have invested in a rat costume ;)

Well, you’ll also be happy to know that they started this work on allergin way before working on autoimmune disease, and in my opinion, the evidence that it works for allergies is much stronger than how it works for autoimmune diseases! Not necessarily because it won’t work for auto immune stuff… just that they have done less confirming.

I have severe allergenic asthma so I was excited about it too 😁

The article only barely mentions orthodontics like braces, retainers, etc. and not as the substance of her major criticism. I don’t think she’s trying to call out the groups that you are mentioning, and in fact, the doctor she rhetorically highlights as “good” is the one recommending braces over veneers.

It’s the veneers and crowns she is mostly critiquing. She also unpacks how the standards for beauty are affected by celebrities doing this as a trend. Specifically, the procedures she is critiquing make an effect that is only achieveable by paying for the procedure, and the cost of getting and maintaining it makes it a class signifier. The financial elite set the standard.

You’re valid and your thoughts are a valid contribution to the discussion, but I figured I could clarify that in case you or other people didn’t see that in the article.

This article is garbage but I’m a molecular biologist and the publication they’re talking about is really neat.

The “ELI5 to the point of maybe reducing out the truth” way to explain it is that the researchers can add “flags” to proteins associated with immune responses that make cells pick them up and examine them. This is shown to work for allergins (so say, add a flag to peanut protein and the cells can look at it more closely, go “oh nvm this is fine” and stop freaking out about peanuts) as well as autoimmune diseases (where cells mistake other cells from the same body as potential threats).

It’s not nearly to a treatment stage, but tbh this is one of the more exciting approaches I’ve seen, and I do similar research and thus read a lot of papers like this.

There’s a lot of evidence that we are entering a biological “golden age” and we will discover a ton of amazing things very soon. It’s worrysome that we still have to deal with instability in other parts of life (climate change, wealth inequality, political polarization) that might slow down the process of turning these discoveries into actual treatments we can use to make lives better…

Still, don’t doubt everything you read! A lot of cool stuff is coming, the trick is getting it past the red tape

Actually… If an animal you own/trained makes art… you did get to have the copyright to the art, until recently with these same legal developments. Now it’s less clear.

I also agree more with the other posters interpretation in general. We copyright art made by random chance emergent effects (Polluck et al.), process based art (Morris Louis et al.), performance art (so many examples… Adrian Piper comes to mind), ephemeral art, math art, and photography, as the poster says. None of those artists are fully in control of every aspect of the final project- the art makes itself, in part, in each example.

If a human uses a math equation for the geometric output of a printer, and they tweak the variables to get the best looking output, we consider that art by law. Ai is exactly the same.

It’s funny, I find that illustrators hate ai art, but “studio” artists (for lack of a better term) usually adore it

oops, meant to make a top level comment :)

I have an honest question for all the commenters saying “I’d rather not use reddit”: where do you get niche information from other than reddit?

I don’t want to give reddit traffic, but I find myself constantly looking for information that would necessarily only be available on a platform like reddit. Examples:

• Product info and reviews
• Niche troubleshooting for odd hobbies (fermentation, video games, diy)
• Travel advice from locals/regulars (do I need wetsuit to swim here? Where are restaurants that won’t harass my partner and I for being queer?)
• Advice, when the “official” recommendations on SEO websites were clearly written for a litigation-happy American society (some healthcare, some law, etc.)

I consider myself pretty information-access savvy but a lot of these things require a “crowdsource” aspect that blogs and other websites can’t provide.

What do y’all do?

I have an honest question for all the commenters saying “I’d rather not use reddit”: where do you get niche information from other than reddit?

I don’t want to give reddit traffic, but I find myself constantly looking for information that would necessarily only be available on a platform like reddit. Examples:

• Product info and reviews
• Niche troubleshooting for odd hobbies (fermentation, video games, diy)
• Travel advice from locals/regulars (do I need wetsuit to swim here? Where are restaurants that won’t harass my partner and I did being queer?)
• Advice, when the “official” recommendations on SEO websites were clearly written for a litigation-happy American society (some healthcare, some law, etc.)

I consider myself pretty information-access savvy but a lot of these things require a “crowdsource” aspect that blogs and other websites can’t provide.

What do y’all do?

The father’s sister (the 19 y/o’s aunt) said that he was terrified to go and was only doing it because his dad was obsessed with the Titanic and it was near father’s day. I feel bad for him.

Kids die all the time (like the migrant kids) and at least this kid got to live a 1%er lifestyle for 19 years. Not much of a consolation prize for an early death, though…