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Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: January 10th, 2024

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  • I think a perfect example of this is email. We used to pay for email; it came with our Internet service. Then they started offering free email services that would show banner ads in a webpage. Kind of annoying but good for people who didn’t have regular access to email in the dialup days, or eventually we realized it was convenient so we didn’t have to change our email everywhere each time we changed our ISP. Then Google started actually scanning our emails to give more relevant ads. They were less obtrusive, but we were giving up more, but we also got a lot more email storage in return and it seemed okay. Now most people use a free email for their primary. Our ISP (probably) still offers an email address with a small storage option, but who still uses that? People gradually gave it up without realizing what they gave up. Now it seems like you have to pay even more on top of your Internet access to actually get email privacy.


  • From the article:

    The disease is distinct from irritable bowel syndrome (or IBS) although some of the symptoms overlap.

    I also have IBS, although as a diagnosis it feels more like a catch-all for when there’s clearly a problem but they’ve ruled out more serious diseases like ulcerative colitis. I have other friends with the same diagnosis as me but very clearly different triggers, symptoms, and things that help, so it seems like we really have some different diseases. That said, I’ve seen some significant improvement in the past few years thanks to a combination of medicines. Not a cure, but less bad days and flare-ups often don’t last as long. I actually saw an as the other day for a completely different medication than any I currently take, so if you haven’t talked to your gastroenterologist about treatment options since before the pandemic it might be worth checking in.