Just A Thought

@anishmoonka @theNOBSdentist You're going to be put out of business by a stick

Researchers at the University of Bergen ran a study comparing 213 Sudanese men. Half brushed their teeth with a chewed tree root. Half used a regular plastic toothbrush. The tree root group came out with healthier gums and less plaque. That stick is called a miswak. The WHO has been quietly recommending it since 1986. In 2011, scientists at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute finally cracked the chemistry. The active ingredient is benzyl isothiocyanate, a natural plant defense compound from the same family of sulfur molecules that give cabbage and mustard their sharp bite. The compound punches through the outer wall of bacteria that cause gum disease. From there, it dismantles the chemistry that keeps the bacteria alive. The Karolinska team isolated it by running root extracts through a chemical analyzer that identifies individual molecules. The stick comes from the Salvadora persica tree, which grows in dry parts of Africa, the Middle East, and India. Inside the wood you also find natural fluoride, a gentle abrasive called silica that polishes off plaque, sulfur compounds, and tannins that tighten gum tissue. A separate team at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg ran another trial. They soaked the sticks in a fluoride solution. The fluoride left in the test group’s saliva came out higher than what people got from regular fluoride toothpaste. A more recent systematic review pulled together a stack of randomized trials. Miswak on its own controlled plaque about as well as a regular toothbrush. Used alongside the toothbrush, it actually beat brushing alone on both plaque and gum inflammation scores. The Princess Nourah University trial from 2024 complicates that. Over two weeks, the miswak group’s plaque held steady while the toothbrush group’s dropped further. And gums in the miswak group got noticeably worse for people who sawed at their teeth too hard. Aggressive horizontal scrubbing tears at the soft tissue along the gum line. One stick costs under 10 cents in the regions where the tree grows, and a single twig lasts for weeks. In sub-Saharan Africa, herbal toothpastes built around miswak and neem (another bitter chewing-stick tree) made up over a quarter of toothpaste sales in 2023. The honest caveat is that Western dental literature treats the miswak as an add-on rather than a replacement, mostly because reaching the back molars with a stick is awkward. Used correctly, with soft perpendicular brushing along the gum line and no aggressive sawing, it does what a toothbrush does and adds a low-grade antibiotic on top. For most of human dental history, this is what cleaning your teeth looked like.

@anymanfitness The argument I think to be had is how much needs to be in the 401K before you start putting money other places

The "401k's are scams" people are strange. You can access it via the Rule of 55. You can access it via 72t. 72t specifically allows you to just simply take it out at any time, any age, and pay taxes on it, you just have to take out the same amount each year to avoid penalty.

@rossiadam You got a new giant puppy to play with

Cattle loose on my property and I can’t find a neighboring farmer that will claim them. Anyone want to buy some steak cheap????

@mikepat711 @JustMyTesla After you put on sunglasses, absolutely not

@JustMyTesla Am I though

They say Tesla will never deliver autonomy but this is my life every day so you can’t really blame me for thinking you’re an idiot.

@LadDilgard @dr_umenze @MattWallace888 Mean words equal higher bail

@dr_umenze @MattWallace888 So racial slurs justifies the higher bond? Or do they justify him being assaulted? Explain how that’s relevant

Chudthebuilder: Defends himself by shooting an evil career criminal in the arm while being brutally beaten on the ground by said stalker. Bond set at 1.25 million. 125k NON-REFUNDABLE required to not spend the next year in jail. Karmelo Anthony: Brings a knife to a school track meet, likely with premeditated intentions. Stabs a kid TO DEATH in the heart after allegedly provoking a confrontation first. Bond set at just 250k. Only 25k non-refundable required… and he has been living in luxury in his parents’ mansion while the young corpse of his victim rots in a small wooden box.

@dr_umenze @MattWallace888 Pretty sure free speech still applies

@MattWallace888 You conveniently omitted the fact that he randomly used racial slurs at people. Imagine he had an actual job and went to work daily, he would be at home with his family. That said, we need to look beyond skin colour. It’s tiring.

@scotus_wire This seems good

🚨 The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that federal law does not shield freight brokers from state negligence lawsuits when they hire unsafe trucking companies.

@MsMelChen I would argue it's not even ass kissing. It's empirically true. He has done amazing things for China. We might not agree with it but China is way more prosperous now than before

Everyone who is up in arms about Trump "kissing Xi's ass" needs to understand that this is realpolitik and dealmaking. Trump is, by a mile, the most aggressive president America has had against the CCP in modern history. No one else imposed sweeping tariffs on Chinese goods, banned Huawei from domestic networks, put the entire CCP military-linked ecosystem on the entity list, restricted semiconductor exports, strengthened the Quad, and publicly called out China's currency manipulation, IP theft, forced tech transfers, and South China Sea aggression the way he did. Pre-presidency Trump was blunt. If you recall, as a candidate, he often complained about how "China was screwing us over." Literally in 2016 on the campaign trail, he said that "China is raping us." You need to understand that this posture completely shattered what was bipartisan elite consensus at the time - which was that more engagement with China on economic terms would liberalize and democratize China (ethnocentric projection once again), and that as China became more integrated into the global system, they would act more and more like responsible stakeholders. Every President since Nixon pushed closer economic integration while ignoring the OBVIOUS signs. This was especially supercharged under Bush, Clinton and Obama (but not Biden). And yet at the time, the mainstream media painted him as a xenophobe for this kind of rhetoric. It wasn't even a subtext - they directly alluded to how Trump was being racist against the Chinese for calling out their unfair trade practices. Once in office, Trump refined it into a strategy that actually moved the needle while dialing back his strong rhetoric. The personal flattery - calling Xi a "great leader," talking up respect for China, saying they'll have a "fantastic future together," is all Machiavellian Art of the Deal stuff. Flattery costs nothing and makes the other guy more willing to give ground without looking like he's folding domestically. The CCP's entire system is built on the leader's prestige. Publicly humiliating Xi or treating him like a subordinate would make him dig in, rally nationalists, and push him to retaliate harder just to save face. I don't actually think Trump knows about Chinese "honor culture" and the obsession with mianzi (face), but for whatever reason, Trump instinctively understands authoritarian psychology and how to work with it. The problem is that intellectual types, especially those steeped in liberal internationalist frameworks, tend to struggle with parsing the difference between rhetoric vs. revealed preferences. They're hard-wired to overweight the former. They treat diplomatic language as a window into the soul, as if it maps directly onto intent rather than as front-facing tool of statecraft. China weaponizes this brilliantly. It's a lesson everyone should've learned by now. With Trump, ignore the optics and ignore what he says. Just look at his actions, and look at his results.

@cybrtrkguy I haven't checked mine at 130k. Probably should though

I have never replaced the brakes on my 105k mile Model Y. I should take a look and see how they’re holding up

@Tea4gunsSC2 @RodneyR58127664 @amazon @WhiteHouse @POTUS I guess we should up skill Americans. Time to kick the foreigners out of American schools. And actually allow them access to the jobs

@Musing_Thinking @RodneyR58127664 @amazon @WhiteHouse @POTUS If you notice that's about 80% of the workforce that's not qualified. For s*** an engineering or it

. @Amazon dodged estimated $33,444,346 (10,167*0.0765*43,000) payroll taxes hiring #F1visa OPT instead of #AmericanGrads, resulting in lost #SocialSecurity/#Medicare tax revenue @WhiteHouse @POTUS. x.com/RodneyR5812766…

@GBNT1952 Absolutely

Would you be okay with tariffs or a flat federal sales tax to fund the government if it ended federal income tax?

@ChaosTheory47 @GBNT1952 👀 I must have slept through that lesson

@Musing_Thinking @GBNT1952 Yes they do.

Remember when Shawn Ryan was in the US Navy and didn’t even know why the US Navy was created nor what the Barbary Wars were until like a week ago? Yeah…

@johnkonrad @SECNAV @HungCao_VA Bethlehem steel is reopening?

Can’t say what. Can’t say why. Can’t give details. But within 24 hours of being briefed, @SECNAV @HungCao_VA cleared the single biggest bottleneck in U.S. shipbuilding. Should’ve been fixed years ago. Nobody else in the Pentagon grasped it. Nobody would give the top cover. BOOM. Believe It or Not!

@Talispetz @GiaMMacool Yeah I get it but my kids look like an exact copy of me

@Musing_Thinking @GiaMMacool This is why I would...

Men, get the DNA test. Do it discreetly. Trust, but verify. And if a woman objects to it, just remind yourself of the endless shit tests she runs every single day. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

@Tea4gunsSC2 @RodneyR58127664 @amazon @WhiteHouse @POTUS That's the price of being a foreigner in the American society. You pay for the retirement of the American citizens

@Musing_Thinking @RodneyR58127664 @amazon @WhiteHouse @POTUS Ohh, that's great foreigners paying into social security for funds they'll never get that's f****** theft

@EthanLevins2 We do have a habit of eliminating dictators

Trump has landed in China for the 2nd time in 10 months. Xi Jinping has not traveled to the U.S. China is the real superpower.

@surfranchvibes @j_grieshaber Latest updates on hardware 3. Seem to have make it worse. Before I used it all the time

@j_grieshaber I have never actually used it, do you use it often. I have a bad taste in my mouth from when hardware 3 got ASS. It really embarrassed me a couple times by aborting in the middle of the parking lot.

What is one feature in a Tesla vehicle that you treasure the most?

@surfranchvibes FSD and the what is around you map

@DrewVento @BernieSanders @AOC I'm fine with whoever solves this problem. We can give it to Bernie Sanders or we can give it to a Republican

Why tf is a wire fee $30 You’re literally just moving numbers in a database around, this is robbery. @BernieSanders @AOC fix this please