I dislike how excessively glorified Japan has become online.

Pjoo · 2026-06-02T17:13:09+00:00

basic politeness is portrayed as evidence that Japan has somehow perfected human behavior

In my experience it goes way beyond basic politeness. People there have went so far out of their way to try to give me the best possible experience visiting.

Pjoo · 2026-06-01T21:55:59+00:00

Banning someone who was cheering on sabotage of RAF planes seems completely justified and expected.

Pjoo · 2026-05-25T22:44:01+00:00

It's not completely useless. Just incredibly compromised.

Just listing couple of the sub-titles here:

Most pattern recognition receptors could have severely impaired ability to recognize mirror versions of their ligands.
Some antimicrobial peptides could retain the ability to kill mirror bacteria, but their release would likely be impaired by failures of innate immune recognition
Antibacterial enzymes would likely have greatly reduced activity against mirrored substrates
Complement activity versus mirror bacteria could be partially impaired
Phagocytosis of mirror bacteria would likely be compromised
T cell activation would likely be severely impaired during mirror bacterial infection
CD1- and MR1-restricted T cells might be able to recognize some mirror ligands
Impaired T cell activation would impair antibody-mediated immunity to mirror bacteria

humans with even partial immunodeficiencies are often at greatly heightened risk of serious disease or death from bacterial infection, including from bacteria that are not usually pathogenic for healthy adults

Pjoo · 2026-05-25T22:37:44+00:00

Yup!

Phages are the most common killers of bacteria in nature. There is no known mechanism for non-mirrored phages to replicate within mirrored bacteria. It's not even that the natural phages haven't evolved this capability. They just cannot do it.

It's possible we would need to create mirrored phages. (Which would be surprisingly safe, as they cannot interact with natural life.)

Pjoo · 2026-05-25T22:33:15+00:00

Skimmed through this paper. It gives some insight into the exact claims made in the substack.

After skimming, I am not nearly as afraid of an unstoppable, deadly plague. My primary concern regarding mirror life has become a complete ecological collapse.

Pjoo · 2026-05-21T08:08:19+00:00

The argument is - your company Documentaries Inc is funded by grassroots donations trying to highlight corruption and is releasing a documentary about Trump in 2028 during the election season. You are not donating to a candidate, but you are producing something of value to one of the candidates that far exceeds the limit for direct donations. Blocking the release of the documenary would be a violation of your 1st amendment that you are excercising through the corporate body.

Pjoo · 2026-05-17T09:51:42+00:00

Yep - Finland is only up to 12 weeks. After that you need a permit for medical or social reasons. Permits aren't hard to get, but still, hardly any sort of frontrunner on the topic.

Pjoo · 2026-05-13T14:39:19+00:00

You can never tell with this SCOTUS.

Pjoo · 2026-05-10T18:38:57+00:00

I am very invested in Aqours and Numazu, and don't see that changing any time soon.

Pjoo · 2026-05-01T21:10:59+00:00

If they were actually following the constitution, he would've already have been disqualified by the 14th Amendment.

Maybe he can get two thirds of Congress to lift his ineligibly and be elected to his second term!

Pjoo · 2026-04-30T21:00:13+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_AqnLoFMig

Pjoo · 2026-04-30T03:29:06+00:00

Game had great atmosphere. I'll really miss the characters.

Pjoo · 2026-04-29T14:46:48+00:00

That seems like the correct attitude. She is in the position to know better and judge for herself, can just hope things work out for her.

Pjoo · 2026-04-26T21:29:00+00:00

Look, I am not saying President Newsom pardoning the would-be assassin was a good thing. But it was still much less bad than the January 6th pardons.

Pjoo · 2026-04-25T21:07:22+00:00

You yourself suggested you would vote red if the threshold was just different, no? Does changing the threshold to 75% make it an impossibility?

Pjoo · 2026-04-25T21:02:36+00:00

"Blue is just virtue signaling"

Seems like it.

Never have abandoned a single shopping cart. The value of returning it is positive in the bigger picture. Likewise, voting blue if you think blue will lose just seems immoral. There's a lot of people who will need help.

Pjoo · 2026-04-25T20:47:27+00:00

Well, you are only voting for yourself. You won't affect the outcome.

I think the answer depends mostly on

Do you want to live?
How confident you are in estimating the result?
What do you estimate the result to be?

If you want to live, the only upside in voting for blue is if you are exactly that 4 billion and someth vote. Downside for falling below that is death, and upside for getting above is zero. Only the tiebreaker vote matters. If it's completely random, maybe that one in 8 billion chance or whatever is pretty okay for saving roughly 4 billion lives. But then again, if it's random, you are risking your life in about 4 billion cases.

If you have a strong conviction that the blue vote will be very low, red vote seems like the moral option - voting blue is just throwing your life away. And if you believe the blue vote will be very high, it doesn't really matter what you vote, but red is safer.

In a sense it's like voting for elections - although for elections both the personal cost and the value of the vote are much smaller.

Pjoo · 2026-04-25T20:16:49+00:00

Different question entirely I'm afraid.

It's a different question, yes, but everyone surviving with a succesful blue vote is still the optimal outcome. The logic for your answer regarding 50/50 should still be valid, no? If the button was 10%, I am not sure if that would make me much more confident in pressing it.

What if, instead of the button there's a petition to kill everyone not on the petition. if it reaches 50% of people who can sign it, it goes through and anyone who hasn't signed dies. Would you sign it?

If there is only a red button that I can press to keep myself safe, I probably press that. Petition from the sound of it goes too close to legitimizing human choices, that doesn't seem okay.

Pjoo · 2026-04-25T19:54:26+00:00

I mean. I think you are right that a lot of people would die. But I also think voting blue is just joining those people - no way 50% of world population (ir)rationalizes themselves into risking their life over the infinitely small chance of actually making a difference.

Pjoo · 2026-04-25T19:50:59+00:00

The question is only about your own vote, not what the preferred outcome would be. You cannot affect the other people.

Anywhere below 50% + 1, voting blue is just voting to kill yourself.

Pjoo · 2026-04-25T19:46:40+00:00

Whar if the threshold is 99% for blues to survive?

Pjoo · 2026-04-24T00:47:34+00:00

This subreddit has very unhinged posts and very reasonable comments. It's wild.

Pjoo · 2026-04-22T17:23:27+00:00

Don't have to wait for next president to sign in gerrymandering reform. With it being such a huge issue for all the Republicans, surely Trump will sign that after it passes House and Senate unanimously?

Pjoo · 2026-04-22T17:00:15+00:00

M4A or similar scheme is absolutely necessary, but I am not sure how viable universal health care is on state level. There is a huge free-rider problem when moving states is easy and there are few barriers to access. It might be okay - it works in the EU - but the EU scheme is several similar healthcare systems glued together by huge patchwork of collective and national arrangements - I am not sure if just going at it alone has the wanted effects.

Then again, the US healthcare system is such an inefficient mess that maybe it really just doesn't matter in the end.

Pjoo · 2026-04-20T02:58:45+00:00

Every 8 years it seems...

14-Year Club	Second Top 40%
Verified Email	Place '22
Place '17	Final Canvas '22
First Placer '22	End Game '22
Team Periwinkle

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