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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 7th, 2023

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  • While you are correct that it will likely be expensive, it is important to note that Descovy is an existing PreP pill that Gilead makes. So the cost of the new shot is yet to be determined, but the company has been criticized for the cost of their current PreP medication option.

    It is also important to note that anyone with insurance in the United States will pay nothing, as the Affordable Care Act requires insurance to cover all PreP medications at no cost to patients. The pricing will only affect those who have no insurance at all, which makes this criticism all the more important to help this new medication reach those who would be the worst affected if they were to contract HIV.







  • I do have the family plan actually, I forgot about that!

    And I do occasionally. Certain live albums and more niche stuff can be hard to find, and one hit wonders can be tricky depending on the genre and time the song is from. The song I’m Blue by Eiffel 65 is only available in a longer club mix and not the radio edit, for example.

    I will say that, in my experience, it has a slightly larger selection than Spotify for classic stuff and different versions of the same song (covers, remakes, remixes, etc). For example, my husband was very excited that they had the whole readout of How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Boris Karloff (in two parts, but still) because they used to play it on certain radio stations every year around Christmas. On Spotify I was only ever able to find the same version of the song from several different albums of Christmas mixes.




  • Yes I did. Mentioning the existence of a cashew product does not prove the claim that vegans are the reason for the increase in demand. Maybe you should read the sections that talk about the largest increases in demand, the largest markets for cashew products, and maybe look at the demographics of the countries that lead in demand.

    Edit: Here are the major points for anyone who can’t access the pages or is too lazy to read, btw:

    From the first source: An increasing number of cashew-infused product manufacturers have attracted young and old consumers with the launch of new and innovative products, such as cashew-butter yogurt in the United States and roasted spice-coated cashew kernels in India. However, the application of cashew kernels in consumers’ diets has been steady in South America, with multinational manufacturers penetrating the market with assorted cashew products, suiting the healthier diet regime across the country.

    Asia-Pacific is the largest consumer of cashew nuts in the world. In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the use of cashew nuts in regular diets and healthy ready-to-eat snacks. The rising number of manufacturers producing innovative cashew-based consumables has taken both young and geriatric consumers by stride. For example, roasted and spice-coated cashew nuts that appeal to the local palate were introduced in India. The demand for cashews in Asia has persistently increased as the imports for shelled cashews increased exponentially by over 700% from 4,321 metric tons in 2017 to 30,688 metric tons in 2021 in China, with Vietnam being the major import partner according to the ITC trade map. China leads the region in cashew import, followed by Japan, Thailand, and India, respectively.

    From the second source, which talks specifically about the sales trends of processes cashew products, which are what vegans are being solely blamed for the increase in demand of in the article OP posted:

    Based on product type, coated or flavored cashew is expected to be the leading product type in the global processed cashew market. Consumers’ preference to eat salted cashew or various flavors is fueling the growth in the segment.

    Processed cashew are widely used in the food and beverages industry in various products such as protein bars and powder, cereals and muesli, dairy products, beverages, bakeries & confectionery. Amongst all, bakery & confectionery holds a dominant market share in this segment as processed cashews are widely used in cookies and biscuits.

    In other words, while there has been an increase in some products made with cashews that are solely eaten by vegans, the vast majority of demand and the vast majority of the increase in that demand comes from traditional uses and traditional markets, not from vegan dairy alternatives.



  • Interesting. I have not had any issues using their engine even with the issue with Bing’s API, but you are correct that they use Bing’s index. Given that there are only four indexes to choose from, that isn’t too surprising.

    I actually switched to them when I saw that DuckDuckGo was about to start providing ‘AI assisted results’. I wanted to ensure I was using an engine that actually respected my privacy and didn’t harvest my data for slop.

    Anecdotally, I can confirm that the results I get from SwissCows are very different and usually better than the ones I got from DDG. So I wonder how much of Bing’s API they use.






  • Obviously this is a joke, but there used to be an important reason we kept the flags wrinkled like that: it meant that you never knew who had bought a flag at a Pride event and who brought one they owned.

    This meant that people who were ‘caught’ at an event by friends or family they weren’t out to, they could say they just bought the flag to support the cause. It also meant there was no way to tell who had been there longer than others.


  • I tried to read this, as someone with PTSD, and I couldn’t get through the article. It has far too many grammar mistakes, the pacing is clunky at best, and the language used is incredibly vague. The article also doesn’t list an actual author, just the company that published it. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was AI written.

    Regardless, while I have found some help in cannabis for things like sleep and muscle relaxation, I would be hesitant to recommend it to people with PTSD. Cannabis is proven to cause or worsen anxiety and panic in a decent portion of the population, with the worst affected being people who already struggle with anxiety.

    That may change as we are able to study it more, but right now I don’t think it is responsible to suggest that weed can help PTSD when there is a big risk of someone self medicating and ending up worse than when they started.


  • This is correct, and it isn’t just associated with acids. It’s because of an effect called ‘freezing point depression’, which is the same reason salt lowers the freezing point of water while raising its boiling point.

    There are a few explanations as to why this happens, with the easiest being this: if you add something that can’t freeze to something that can, then the whole thing will need to lose more energy to allow the whole mass to solidify because the un-freezing stuff physically interferes with the attempts of the freezing stuff to bind together.

    However, there is also the additional aspect of vapor pressure, which comes into play when adding things that can freeze to another thing that also freezes, but at a different temperature. I don’t really understand that at all, so I will pull from the Wikipedia article on it:

    The freezing point is the temperature at which the liquid solvent and solid solvent are at equilibrium, so that their vapor pressures are equal. When a non-volatile solute is added to a volatile liquid solvent, the solution vapour pressure will be lower than that of the pure solvent. As a result, the solid will reach equilibrium with the solution at a lower temperature than with the pure solvent. This explanation in terms of vapor pressure is equivalent to the argument based on chemical potential, since the chemical potential of a vapor is logarithmically related to pressure. All of the colligative properties result from a lowering of the chemical potential of the solvent in the presence of a solute. This lowering is an entropy effect. The greater randomness of the solution (as compared to the pure solvent) acts in opposition to freezing, so that a lower temperature must be reached, over a broader range, before equilibrium between the liquid solution and solid solution phases is achieved. Melting point determinations are commonly exploited in organic chemistry to aid in identifying substances and to ascertain their purity.

    So, TL;DR is that chemistry is weird, things react weird at the molecular level because of energy states, and that is what allows us to make ice cream!


  • Hmm, that is a question that more relies on your particular hair color and skin tone.

    What you could try first is a clear brow and lash mascara, which has no color but lengthens/widens the look of the hair you already have. Unless you way overdo it, it should blend pretty well.

    Otherwise, I would just pick the closest color match and try it out. E.l.f is not pricey, and they routinely have sales, so it will only cost $2-3 to try an item out. If you like it, it will last a long time, so you are getting a great deal, but if you don’t, then it isn’t a huge waste.

    Other than that, I would recommend just starting with a small amount, and only do it on one ‘side’ of your brow at a time. In other words, only use the makeup on the top or bottom of the brow, not both. Which one would work better for you depends on your style and the look you are going for. You can also use a makeup brush, small comb or q tip to ‘brush’ your brows immediately after applying to help de-clump the individual hairs in your brows.

    I know that all of this sounds very vague, but it really is a trial and error process to figure out what works for you. Following tutorials can help for general styling tips, but everyone’s face and hair is different, so what works for one person may not work for you.