this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2024
134 points (99.3% liked)

Asklemmy

43896 readers
1090 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 63 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (21 children)

Microbiology can be so much fun!

Streptococcus pyogenes causes a flesh-eating disease (necrotizing fasciitis). This species of bacteria releases toxins that kill living tissue, so you better make sure that paper cut doesn’t get infected.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis is famous for a bunch of different pandemics over the centuries. If you thought covid was fun, imagine coughing up blood.

Clostridium botulinum is special, because it produces a very spicy toxin, so you don’t even have to ingest any living cells or spores of C. botulinum to get killed by it. If you do, you can even have your very own toxin factory inside you.

Vibrio cholerae is another classic responsible for numerous pandemics. This one is a bit different, because it involves lethal amounts of diarrhea.

Oh, and the scary bit? There are people who don’t believe bacteria or viruses exist. They actively oppose taking measures against these things. Humans can be truly horrifying at times.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 3 weeks ago (19 children)

"Lethal amounts of diarrhea" has now entered second place on my Worst Nightmares list. Thanks for that...

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

You can't leave us hanging, what's 1st place on your list?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Reincarnation, which has now been reinforced by no. 2 (pun not intended, but welcomed).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Well, how about reincarnation coupled with eternal lethal diarrhea?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Well... if it means I'd die of lethal diarrhea immediately after being reincarnated, I guess it could be worse! Like having to live 6-7 decades with the knowledge that I may or may not, at one point, contract lethal diarrhea, and that I'll just keep on coming back to this particular reverse-roulette wheel over and over and over again, being forced to play the odds on an infinite canvas of probabilities. You know what they say, the anxiety's always worse than the thing-in-itself!

load more comments (17 replies)
load more comments (18 replies)