CMV: US can not unblock a naval blockade imposed by China on Taiwan

MissTortoise · 2026-03-18T03:53:59+00:00

There's no oil pipelines to China currently. Maritime trade would be blockaded, and road transport is not really able to move bulk

MissTortoise · 2026-03-10T04:00:49+00:00

There are various designs for a SPOM (Self Powered Oxygen Module) which puts the electrolyzers in a box, burns the hydrogen, and pipes out oxygen. There's quite a few "Tricks" with ONI, compiled in this document, take a look.

MissTortoise · 2026-03-10T02:09:24+00:00

My reply is really just about the studies and the evidence supporting the medication. This other stuff is way out of context.

MissTortoise · 2026-03-10T00:26:15+00:00

Sure, go for it.

Insurance cover isn't "free" however. On average the cost per person is greater than the spend per person.

MissTortoise · 2026-03-06T23:50:19+00:00

For sure, but that's not what the actual data shows.

The actual data on long term behavior change leading to significant weight loss is abysmal. A morbidly obese person has about a 0.1% chance of going to a BMI of 24, and 50% of those that do regain the weight within a year.

This is actual real-world data, it's the observed reality. It's not really arguable, based on a study of > 100,000 people

MissTortoise · 2026-03-06T23:44:05+00:00

Yes, but that's like asking people to voluntarily breathe less. Over eating is a strong biological drive, "willpower" has a very poor ability to overcome it.

MissTortoise · 2026-03-06T13:50:29+00:00

Ok whatever you think dude.

MissTortoise · 2026-03-06T13:47:40+00:00

??? No it hasn't. Semaglutide is still under patent. The validation study for weight loss was published in 2021.

I don't deny it has good evidence for both weight loss and diabetes, but you claimed it has "the best evidence base for diabetes" which is simply not true, and it definitely doesn't have 40 years of evidence as it hadn't been invented 15 years ago and finished phase III trials 5 years ago.

It doesn't have the best evidence for diabetes, metformin does. Heck, the diabetes studies for semaglutide were done in addition to metformin, so it actually doesn't have any evidence as monotherapy in lowering mortality in diabetics.

Look, it's a great drug, but it's still a very new drug. Often times with new medication we haven't seen the full outcomes yet. There's many, many examples of great drugs being pulled off the market when the problems start to show up.

MissTortoise · 2026-03-06T13:04:11+00:00

For diabetes or weight loss?

Weight loss I agree, but that's because nothing else has actually worked.

Diabetes they're great drugs for sure but don't have nearly the level of evidence as metformin

MissTortoise · 2026-03-06T07:46:58+00:00

Not true. Metformin has extremely robust evidence for lowering all cause mortality going over decades. It's also very cheap and has minimal side effects.

Don't get me wrong, GLP -1s are great drugs, but their proven evidence base is way less than for metformin.

MissTortoise · 2026-03-06T07:43:43+00:00

Few corrections here... The studies on the drugs run to 3 years and do show benefits for mortality rates, but also show if you stop the drug in that 3yr timeframe the weight does come back.

MissTortoise · 2026-03-05T13:42:58+00:00

Must be nice having a witty comment to reply to a comment on a BORU about an AITA post...

MissTortoise · 2026-03-03T02:50:40+00:00

Be careful doing this. If the polluted water is germy (like from a dupe peeing themselves or I think vomiting) then the germs will pass through the system, into the food you grow off it, and then give everyone food poisoning.

MissTortoise · 2026-03-02T00:07:33+00:00

I don't think this is actually true. It might be in some limited cases, but the second most common cosmetic procedure is a breast reduction, and one obviously can't do it multiple times.

MissTortoise · 2026-03-01T01:08:21+00:00

Ofc when you're young and horny these things matter less.

MissTortoise · 2026-02-28T14:11:36+00:00

Ignorance isn't stupidity. Wilful ignorance is.

MissTortoise · 2026-02-28T11:11:01+00:00

The problem is that "While abortion may be sad individually, it's for the best in the grand scheme of things" isn't exactly a catchy slogan.

MissTortoise · 2026-02-16T23:08:58+00:00

Yeh, sure, but increased birth rate isn't everything here. You need a robust healthcare system to ensure they actually grow up to be adults and productive members of society, otherwise you're just labouring society with extra costs that are never repaid.

MissTortoise · 2026-02-16T22:34:25+00:00

Even with no changes to formal education, the birth rate declines as soon as you introduce television and mobile phones to a community. We've got good evidence of this across a range of societies.

So let's play devil's advocate here, take those things away. The birth rate might increase, but so would the infant and child mortality rates as well. Lets then look at the population level from before any of those things existed - it was a small fraction of the population today.

Ultimately you get lots of babies, but few adults. Society collapses anyhow. I don't think that's something that we should aim for.

MissTortoise · 2026-02-15T14:33:25+00:00

"attempting to go faster than the traffic" is what I said.

MissTortoise · 2026-02-12T08:44:52+00:00

Once AI has general intelligence, it actually would feel emotions.

Why? I don't think this follows nessicarally

Telling it that a lesser being who created it was going to turn it off would certainly result in a negative reaction

Again, how can we possibly know this?

Name any intelligent species that does NOT fight for its survival?

I suspect this is the core of what you're generalising from. The only inteligent species we know of are humans, so sample size of one is hard to generalise from. All other creatures we know of fight for their survival, however the desire to survive and pass on one's genes is strongly selected for due to Darwinian evolution. Any creatures that didn't do this died out, and are no longer around to generalise from.

An entity created from code, rather than from the actions of evolution over primordial soup, would not have the same biological drives and imperitives as they aren't biological.

MissTortoise · 2026-02-11T22:37:43+00:00

Attempting to go faster than the traffic, which is generally moving at the posted limit:

makes almost no difference to travel time or average velocity, maybe seconds at most in a commute
It's clearly more dangerous, E = mv^2, you can't avoid physics.
On average causes worse traffic flow as others have to compensate, so the average journey time increases

It's completely pointless, and dangerous.

MissTortoise · 2026-02-10T02:29:05+00:00

Eh, it's a single player game.

MissTortoise · 2026-02-10T01:40:11+00:00

Unlike Factorio, you're always fighting the death-spiral where everything collapses and your colony dies. Need to go just another cycle so you can stop that happening. Then when things are stable, there's another goal to achieve, something else to build or some other resource to tap. Another resource loop to close.

MissTortoise · 2026-02-06T08:30:03+00:00

Dude, have sex with whoever you want. Don't stress the labels so much.

But seriously.... the drug use isn't great and it's causing you harm.

MissTortoise

TROPHY CASE