gon [he]

Thanks for the reply.

That sounds… Not great, let’s say!

I wasn’t aware of all that o.o I was aware of January 6th, which was very absurd, actually. I had almost completely forgotten about it, though.

the democrats are as weak and unpopular as ever, unwilling to mount the type of popular reform, and build and run a political machine, that could take it from them, even as their succession fight might be the last chance before the fix is in too tight.

There’s this thing people say, you know: “the other party” is evil, “my party” is stupid. Not saying you’re a Democrat, necessarily, though I suppose you may not really have a choice in the matter, considering you seem to want to avoid the Republican takeover. Reasonably.

I mean, what can I say?! Support the policies you believe in and support the candidates that espouse them; Firmly reject and argue against the policies that will harm the country. Is there anything else?

I’m not American, and frankly American politics aren’t exactly what I’m most worried about or interested in at any given time… Sorry for my ignorance.

All I’ve heard about is that there was some gerrymandering thing going on with trying to make new red districts, namely in Texas, while the Democrats retaliated by trying to make some new blue districts, namely in California. Surely that’s not what you mean? Seems to be that they’re trying to stack the horrendous system Americans have in their favour, but I wouldn’t call that rigging elections. Do you maybe mean the thing with voter registration and needing an ID to vote?

If there is some rigging going on, I would actually be interested to know LOL I remember hearing about the voting machines being rigged, but I thought that was a Republican conspiracy.

The US is fixing their elections? I feel I would’ve heard of this…

Tech gives them new tools to control the populations.

Well, this is certainly a concern, at least.

Well, I don’t know your life, so I can’t really say… If that is the case, however, that’s truly a shame.

In my case, it’s hard to say. At my age, my parents were living extremely frugally, though, admittedly, so am I. I have some better things lined up, though, working on my education and such… I hope to surpass my parents in terms of life quality, eventually.

Thanks for sharing. I liked this video quite a bit.

I do think some sort of feudalism is approaching, but I don’t think it’ll be quite as described (90% serfs and such).

I believe there is simply too much equality, right now, to the point that a lot of what could happen to lead to such a system won’t happen for fear of immense social repercussions.

The Western world is still mostly democracies. People will vote for extremists in extreme situations, and extremists will act in extreme ways, including causing wars and destruction for a lot of people. Stability and normalcy won’t be attained by techno-feudalism. It will be a constant fight. The middle-class is already too large to allow large swaths of itself to be reduced to serfs.

That being said, I don’t necessarily doubt that it will continue to shrink, slowly, and that the lower class will continue to be squeezed for all they’re worth.

Related: what “subscriptions” (recurring payments) do you pay for?

I pay rent (which includes water, internet, and light bills), a public transport pass (not strictly necessary, but it makes it more affordable), university tuition (PhD), and food. My parents actually cover my cheap phone plan (it’s like 5€/month, I think). They also cover half my rent, because they have the money and insisted on it. They’re both public school teachers, by the way, in case reading this you’re thinking that I’m some sort of lordling.

That’s not quite what cancer is.

Cancer is when a cell’s DNA is damaged and it starts behaving badly. Monstrously huge generalization, but that part is right. But the key is that the damaged DNA results in uncontrolled cell division (mitosis)! That’s what causes cancerous tumors. It’s not really that the cells stop doing their job, though they do stop doing their job, but it’s mostly that they grow uncontrollably and destroy the surrounding tissue.

That being said, yes, we could fix some genes. However, cancer is hugely complex. It’s not really one thing, even; It’s just what we call the outcome of a very unfortunate sequence of DNA damage. Some specific kinds of cancer, maybe, could be helped with this.

Maybe we can help prevent cancer by changing some genes, in particular cases, even. But curing cancer, at least thru CRISPR gene editing, doesn’t seem, to me, to be viable.

Oh, and about the telomeres! That’s not all that aging is, for one, and the way it works isn’t even totally clear. It’s just not that simple!