Spyke

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Is it possible to eat in such a way that you'll never have to fart?

In short, no. To explain: you have a bunch of beneficial bacteria living inside your digestive tract. These little guys help you digest your food, and in return they get a free meal. This basically means that the food you eat ferments into poo. Fermentation always results in gas being released (think how the plastic wrap on a bowl of dough can puff up as it proves.) So to sum it up, unless you drank a strict water-only diet, anything you eat can give you gas. (Even then, you would probably still naturally swallow some air with the water, and some would make it to the other end as a fart.)

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I understand it's normal to want to be in a relationship, but how do you feel happy when you aren't?

Not to get on my socialist soapbox, but we’re so tired and exhausted from work that we don’t have the time or energy to make friends and other connections. The only relationships we really have are romantic ones and even then it’s basically only allowed because it makes more babies to eventually exploit.

So my advice to you is this: don’t worry so much about romance. Try and cultivate relationships online and in person. If you have friendships that will increase your happiness. Plus you will then have a pool of people who share most of your values, and one or two might emerge as romantic partners.

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Preparing for Future Corporate Influence

Unfortunately money makes the world go round. Part of the meaning of “no ethical consumption under capitalism” means that no matter who you are, no matter what kind of service you employ, no matter what you try and do for yourself, somewhere along the line capitalism comes in and causes someone to suffer. It’s pervasive and insidious.

If instances are completely supported by user donations, that’s great. But they will never match the billions of dollars that corps can toss around.

The only real way to prevent corporate influence on anything is to abolish corporations and/or capitalism. In the meantime, though, we as users can take steps to mitigate their influence: discuss proactively, agree to defederate at a moment’s notice, and server admins can refuse bribes/offers/etc.

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When we go swimming and spend extended time in water, do the little bugs who live on our skin suffocate and die?

I am not a microbiologist. However I do know that bacteria are pretty resilient, and most pathogens and parasites can live for at least a few hours outside of a host. Plus your skin is really not all that smooth at a microscopic level, there are all sorts of little nooks and crannies to hold onto.

Drowning wouldn’t really be a concern for them, imo, but additives like chlorine are specifically meant to be disinfectants.

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What's with "rule" being in titles?

There was a community on the old site called 196, where the only “rule” was that you had to post something before leaving. It leaked over here because of a few splinter communities here popping up on the All feed, but if you look closer most of those posts will be to various 196 communities.

In other words, it’s not actually an enforceable rule, just one of those social things that pop up.

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How will we keep Meta out of the fediverse?

I don’t have an issue with social media companies entering the Fediverse, at least on the surface, because it’s ultimately more users and it’s in line with the ideas of free exchange of information and content. My problem with it comes in when they try to buy instances, communities, or what have you. No one should have a monopoly on the Fediverse, and it shouldn’t be pay to win.

So, my answer is this: because no one can stop anyone from making their own instances, users decide whether to defederate their instances from Meta’s, or Twitter’s, or anyone else’s. Join an instance that doesn’t federate with Meta, or start your own if you have the know-how. Just like anywhere else on the internet, you don’t have to interact with content you don’t want to interact with.

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Masculinity on sale

It’s hilarious to me because it’s not even for them per se, it’s for other men and they still want to crow about “alpha” and “no homo”.

Jokes aside, it’s a pretty disgusting culture surrounding cars.

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Since we have a higher state of awareness as humans, might we also have more intense experiences of pain / pleasure / emotions?

We say that we as humans have “higher reasoning” but most of, if not all of, our reasoning is predicated on animal instincts. People are capable of thinking through their actions and emotions and such, sure. Those same people also don’t always do so. How many times have you or someone you know let their emotions get the better of them, even if they are “aware” of them? That’s not really any different from a spooked horse running off or a hurt dog trying to bite the person trying to help.

“Higher awareness” is much the same. In fact many animals have senses far greater than ours (like a dog’s sense of smell) or which we lack entirely (like sonar.)

All mammals at least have similar brain structures with the same general set of glands and functions. Even the way humans think and feel and reason is different from one another, but we can still identify core emotions in one another. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that just because animals don’t experience the world exactly like us, doesn’t mean they don’t have similar feelings and reasons for feeling those things.

trees

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Hi fellow kids!

Hello! I’m trying to transition away from smoking myself (I use medically and recreationally) because smoking is bad for your lungs, but nothing really beats the instant relief from smoking some flower. I personally haven’t tried one yet but I’ve heard a lot of people use a dry herb vape to some success.

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What is up with people on mastodon being angry at Eugen?

I read a toot about it last night when I was very tired. Apparently there is some sort of (anti-)privacy protocol in universeodon’s source code that is getting implemented to Masto main source soon.

I wasn’t able to find the relevant post, but I do remember that it can only be disabled by toggling ‘Discoverable’ under account options. Evidently Eugen said something along the lines of “it’s what people expect from social media” but the point of Mastodon was to be a divergence from traditional social media, no?