minre576

Whenever I read mice papers (papers using mice as the model organism, commonly doing transgenics) I just imagine Trump's voice going "that's right, we are making TRANSGENDER mice, these are very, very bad people, terrible people, and they are injecting and mutilating the mice". this is just how I cheer myself up nowadays.

(unrelated) At some point, I have to admit that part of the reason I enjoy genetics is actually because I like looking at the fucked-up mutants people made. Distorted organs, duplicated or deleted segments, enlargement or reduction, fusion of distinct tissues, and many many dead babies/embryos. The concept of "model organisms" all just fascinates me. These animals are viewed as the most convenient possibly living system which contains the biological components of interest that simulates human system the closest. The medical field do not view them as stand-alone interesting creatures, they are models of humans; and only the parts of them that resembles people the most will be looked at. We do terrible things to them so that we can understand pathology and mechanisms to help our sick and injured. You may create nightmares beyond imagination on the mice while promising a brighter future for mankind (so that funding will keep pouring in, allowing you to make even more weird things). It's no wonder out of all the fields in biology, the public are probably the most frightened about transgenics, and it's laughable to look at some of the older depictions of genetic modification in sci-fi and other popular media. Laughable not because the concern isn't valid, it's more -- "Oh buddy, you ain't seen nothing yet."

This woman from the same building and I were talking about food habits. She's a master student in math. She apparently has never turned on the stove after 6 years of living away form home. She drinks 11 six-pack Diet Coke per week, and feel strongly against Diet Pepsi. She admits to eating only frozen mangos for a year and a half (the rest of the macro came from peanut butter and protein shakes). I think I was simply too shocked by the way she sustain her physical form that I forgot my manners and acted rudely. I immediately started calling it unacceptable once she started saying that she doesn't like rice, but later on it turns out that she hates all starchy food. I think that hating all starches equally is more acceptable than specifically despising rice.

I contemplated about whether she may be autistic after having this conversation. My distain towards raw vegetables seems like nothing in the face of this level of particularity towards food. She reminds me of a high school friend that would only eat icing sugar, chocolate eggs, occasionally pizza, and often times only energy drink for lunch. Then I realize my friend's and her situation isn't really the face of a spoiled North American child, despite what I have always joked about with ethnic friends (that North Americans have been living in urban centres and eating processed food for too long that they forgot what real food taste like, and has therefore forgot human emotions).

The historical materialist will say that the material reality of North American (NA) working class people shapes the way they eat. The saddest food culture generated by long work hours, lack of social programs with the complete alienation between food producers and food consumers for several generations in NA. People survive childhood and the worst of the hungers. To save money, cheaper convenience store food are preferred over sandwiches (and hot meals completely out of the question). Caffeine's mild effects to suppress hunger is even better, therefore the diabolical amounts of energy drinks, coke, pop soda alike. If they never grew up eating hot meals, but rather the handful of sad choices of school cafeterias, and the parents never prepared meals regularly, how could she have ever learned to love food?

Is it really important to love food at all really? I was always taught that eating properly is a huge part of taking care of myself. But if everything is full of carcinogenic, preservatives, and micro plastic in the first place, does it really matter much if I get them from lunchables, frozen dinner, burritos, dumplings, or a salad? In a world that values nothing but your productivity, maybe she thinks I am the one who eats weird. After all, a simple breakfast by Chinese standard can take from 1 hr to a whole day to prepare. I will be incredibly sad if I can only eat frozen mangos and protein shakes though. I will lose the last fibre of self-respect and spiral into depression.

My school has surveys for prof reviewings. There's this prof that I absolutely adore but cannot ace her exam despite draining the last bit of life in me. So I developed a weird par asocial relationship with her over the semester and wrote in the survey: I have nightmares about you refusing to be friends with me.
Hopefully that wasn't too weird. I think that was a little too weird since the survey is anonymous. I felt especially bad because she had been harassed by students that got bad grade in her class (probably for the first time in their lives), and threatened her life, which she then had to call the cops for because seriously wtf is wrong with people.

But yeah, don't death threat the prof and don't be weird like me.

What is this early 2000 stuff


https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV11L411B7yH/?share_source=copy_web&vd_source=834a36bdb90a713f6611955f2edb2693