Did you know that walking barefoot in the Southern US was how most people contracted hookworm? At is height an estimated 40% of the population in certain regions had the parasite which was know to cause a "mental haze". Some historians attribute the disease (again, contracted by walking barefoot outdoors) to have caused the stereotype of the "lazy slow southerner" [1].
Do you feel walking barefoot is worth the risk of catching this and other potentially hazardous diseases?
Are you walking on human feces a lot? Hook work was a problem because of a huge lack of sanitary conditions. Less about being barefoot. Would I walk around barefoot in my yard? Absolutely.
I live in a city and I cannot tell you how often I see dogshit on the sidewalk, like just in the middle of the sidewalk
the only neighborhoods where I don't see this are the ones where there's some nice retired older person who diligently cleans the shit up. but it's not like they bleach the spot, they just pick up most of the poop. so yeah, there's feces everywhere
Sad to here. I lively in a quiet remote place in the mountains and I usually only find fox shit, or occasional cat shit if anything. People here in Switzerland do usually care. And I got the same impression from _most_ our neighbour countries.
I walk my dog twice a day every day rain or shine. I've picked up his poop 100% of the time - as do most other members of my suburban community. Our parks and sidewalks are mostly dog poop free.
Having said that, I've observed four cases where dog poop is more likely left behind.
1. Small dogs - owners of small dogs seem far more likely to leave dog poop behind. Perhaps because they think the poop is itself small?
2. Older owners (often owners of small dogs, but not always) - seem to care less.
3. Off leash dogs in parks - will often poop at the far edges of parks while their owners chat. Edges of parks and near bushes are minefields.
4. Rainy days - people just want to get home, clean off their dog and be done. So they seem more likely leave poop behind.
it's not a person issue, it's a systems problem in the same way that desire paths reflect bad design. regular garbage receptacles maintained by the city with poop bags would solve this issue but there's not one for miles in my neighborhood. similarly, human waste would be similarly reduced if there were more public restrooms that are maintained as part of the public good
problem is that it requires municipalities and counties to take ownership and they don't give a shit and thus we get the shit we deserve
>but there's not one for miles in my neighborhood.
Pet owners should know to bring bags with them, as they are taking the pet out for it to shit somewhere other than their yard.
It's 100% an asshole pet owner problem. Owning a pet that is shitting somewhere other than your own yard means bringing bags on walks and being prepared to hold that shit filled bag in your hand for the rest of the walk until you can throw it away at home.
It can be partially mitigated by having trashcans and poop bag dispensers, but I've stepped in dog shit next to a poop bag dispenser. Because having trashcans and bags be available doesn't change asshole pet owner habits.
From being barefoot? I think it’s pretty low on the risk list. There is absolutely an animal hookworm but it does not have the some risk as human hookworm.
Sure if you eat the poop in your backyard you might get something so that is always important to think about!
I am still missing the point sorry. Infection risk from parasites is quite low via ingestion and even lower via skin. It’s quite low of a risk for ground vegetables and it’s why you want to rinse everything off to begin with. Non-zero but highly unlikely. Some eggs can last years but again washing your produce off is important.
But also, hookworm infections are known to suppress allergies and asthma, help inflammatory bowl disease, and improve insulin resistance in people with type 2 diabetes.
Just because your immune system is fighting for your life against a parasite and doesn't have time for side quests doesn't make contracting a parasite good for you
Just because you call something a parasite doesn't make it bad for you. It might be bad, or good, or some of both, or depend on other factors at different times.
If you count cells and genes instead of mass, every human hosts more non-human life than human. Call them parasites and delete them and die.
Given that you know these terms you must be aware we have invented different words for organisms that have mixed effects (positive and negative) on the host organism. Parasite, commensalist and symbiote. If you don't want folks who know these words to argue with you you should not use the wrong ones.
Feel free to explain how the labels change the facts. Examples of beneficial effects have already been cited from "scientific literature".
The argument was only to point out that just because labels are black & white doesn't mean life is black & white, and treating a label as reality is stupid.
No one went so far as to say "everyone should go get hookworm". That would also be a stupid thing to say, and more to the point: a stupid thing to think anyone was saying.
You can get most of the benefits of walking barefoot without the hookworm by wearing a good pair of barefoot shoes. I personally love my Xero Prios. If you want the full experience at the expense of looking like a freak, you can get those Vibram Five Fingers toe shoes.
Why would that give you the benefits of walking barefoot? If the point is to pick up bacteria, shoes are shoes. It doesn't matter if the toes are separated or not.
GP said the benefits of walking barefoot are "feels good, increases your connection to your surroundings, and slows you down."
In that context it seems like barefoot shoes would still work. They are essentially foot condoms, so you get most of the same sensation without the potential ickiness.
Those are other benefits but the literal topic at hand--and the reason going barefoot was brought up in the first place--is to have contact with the earth.
One could simply use ballet shoes, instead of that overpriced stuff. They come in different styles, colors, materials, are foldable(ususally), and can be considered disposable.
Those people were walking barefoot near an unsanitary latrine. Is there a lot of human feces where you might walk barefoot? If not, you don't really have to worry about hook worm.
How did the southern US solve this issue? They just started building their latrines deeper.
Even further off-topic, but I recommend you and the parent poster watch the Buffy episode Normal Again, and the 116 episodes before it. Not waking up, but also an example of the "none of this is real" idea.
I'm not sure if I'm entirely joking with this recommendation. For those who haven't watched - even for a show about a vampire slayer, it gets decreasingly plausible as the series go on (as do many long running shows). I remember being hit pretty hard when this episode suddenly offered a sensible explanation for everything, but a stone-cold path to get there.
Should I feel compelled to not offer spoilers on what is probably a joke recommendation anyway (117 episodes of a decades old TV show)?
Letting China or other foreign nations invent the next great technologies and then buying it from them sounds to me an lot like outsourcing R&D. The US already outsourced much of its manufacturing, if we outsource the R&D as well what jobs will remain in the US? Surely we cannot become a nation of middle managers.
Ah, i see the mistake. You read what I said as: it’s ok if they invent it because they’ll make it and sell it to us. What I was saying is the opposite. Even if we invent it we will ship production off to china and loose any control, expertise, and skill within a decade max.
Without building a foundation where we can both invent AND produce things at home, chasing invention is a loosing game.
Why would a terrorist want to plant a Bluetooth device on someone else's bag when all it would accomplish is a minor delay of one flight and would result in a prison sentence after security camera review??
Remember: Kim Jong-Un’s brother was not killed directly by North Korean goons. They hired two women they convinced they were working on a prank show to spray him with the poisons.
After reviewing the video tapes the police concluded that the women knew that they were handling poison - they kept their hands away from their body and immediately washed them after the attack.
Someone could have told them it was anything else that you wouldn't want on your body. Like, fart spray or whatever. A prank. That behavior doesn't really tell you anything conclusive, but I guess they just let anyone be a cop these days.
>> "All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaida, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies."
They were bragging that they could provoke this type of response as a result of having flown two planes into the World Trade Center and one into the Pentagon, killing thousands, and causing fear, panic, and self-sabotaging outsized reactions like pouring trillions into wars that accomplish nothing.
Getting a dozen of their operatives arrested for an idiotic prank that just resulted in a handful of planes being turned around would make them a laughingstock overnight.
I am baffled that we are even having this argument.
There’s evidence that not all people involved in 9/11 knew they were going to die. Yet, they were still used effectively.
Significantly less dedicated supporters are generally used as a funding source, but actual terrorist organizations have also used them for publicity events on the anniversary of attacks.
You are dodging the fact that getting a handful of planes to turn around is an act that induces frustration, annoyance, and insignificant costs at best. Not terror.
Terror is a tactic used by terrorist organizations, but it’s hardly the only thing they do.
“There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” Isn’t quite true, but publicity is inherently valuable to organizations dependent on outside donors. The Provos/IRA did similar things (attention grabbing and annoying) not just setting off bombs during the time of troubles.
The day that Americans open their newspapers to read that terrorist cells operating within our borders undertook a massive operation to plant Bluetooth devices on planes with the name BOMB is the day that Americans stop being concerned about terrorism form that group.
What do you mean by etching? Google does also it's own chip design with TPUs, data centers, and models but afaik only TSMC Intel and Samsung do the actual semiconductor fabrication
So that you don't accidentally run malware. MacOS is not iOS, you can run unsigned code if you really want to, but it will make you jump through a few hoops.
How is this better than trying to eliminate the problem between the keyboard and the computer? The user won't learn if the computer handholds them through everything.
Because the vast majority of users have no interest in learning how to safely vet apps and just want to easily use their computers and not worry about malware.
Full stop. I still talk to people every working day who don't realize that rebooting a computer is actually a real troubleshooting step. They seem to think it's bunk tech support mumbo jumbo rather than a genuinely useful step. It's 2026 and they're still surprised when that works.
> They seem to think it's bunk tech support mumbo jumbo
It indeed is. It's a way of coping with systems that are fundamentally illegible and unpredictable. If you have full rights over your machine and you're not running extremely shoddy software, you should never have to reboot your computer to make an issue go away. And rebooting your computer often guarantees that you'll never actually understand whatever issue is plaguing you.
Encouraging people to reboot their computers is promoting a fundamentally superstitious mode of engagement with machines that are generally reliable and predictable, instead of approaching them in terms of cause and effect. At best, it's the tired point-and-click sysadmin's workaround for not knowing what their system is doing.
Maybe for overwhelmed IT departments running half-baked operating systems loaded to the gills with invasive and meddlesome corporate spyware suites so inherently complex and complicated in their interactions with each other that the system itself is rendered more or less incomprehensible (even to the people administering it), just asking users to reboot is the right play to write in the tech support playbook. Maybe it's got the right ROI for a geek reluctantly roped into giving free tech support for a relative. But it's absolutely mumbo-jumbo and a sign that the "troubleshooter" is probably either ill-equipped to understand what's going on or just not interested.
Sure, if you have full rights. I run my computer for weeks at a time without rebooting. However, at my employer, where there is very little control, it’s a different story.
About two weeks ago, some Adobe Acrobat update introduced a hang that results in “Acrobat won’t open.” Open Task Manager and there’s four to eight stuck processes. Kill them and it works again most of the time, but once in ten it simply doesn’t recover.
Adobe acknowledged the issue to someone on my team. There’s no need for me to understand further; telling the user that a reboot will solve it is prudent advice. It’s on Adobe to fix it. You made assumptions about the environment where I tell people to reboot without understanding the conditions and I have an immediate real world case demonstrating why your statements don’t apply.
The user also shouldn't need to potentially suffer massive financial impacts from not being good enough at using a computer... Even more if it's a problem that can be solved by the computer itself as it's done already.
It's like you are saying that potentially dangerous tools shouldn't have safety guards whenever possible, with little impact for the common use of the tool. Kinda absurd to think that way... If some advanced use-cases require safety guards to be removed that's when the user should be trained enough to know the risks.
People want to use a computer for their tasks, the whole motto of Apple was to make technology accessible to normal people without requiring them to be tech-savvy, what you want goes in complete opposition to that mission.
Do you feel walking barefoot is worth the risk of catching this and other potentially hazardous diseases?
[1] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/how-a-worm-gave-the-so...
reply