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Why vampires live forever

machielreyneke.com

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Re: Why vampires live forever

#181

Post by psychoslave »

fyrabanks wrote: post #30
OutOfHere wrote: post #12

The article misses the simplest technique: Just donate blood as often as possible. This results in a loss of cholesterol, other bad lipoproteins, excess iron in those who have it, and PFAS toxins. It is frequency-dependently associated with longevity. Whole blood donation avoids the plastic lining of plasma donations, with the latter undesirably transferring unwanted microplastics into the body. For those with suffic…

does this imply that you're just giving shitty blood to people that need life saving procedures?

That's more nuanced. The alternative is they get no blood and die.

If the blood don't contains long term detrimental pathogen, that's seems like an okayish tradeoff.

Re: Why vampires live forever

#182

Post by rbanffy »

vintermann wrote: post #179
rbanffy wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am deeply offended by someone associating Thiel with vampires. That idea is completely absurd. Vampires are famous for being handsome, interesting, elegant, well educated, and having impeccable taste for fashion. Thiel has none of these traits.

Vampires are famously metaphors for aristocrats. Zombies are metaphors for the "common horde". I wonder if there's a monster metaphor for the "noveau riche", people with all the money and none of the style. Can't think of one.

I'd bet on some sort of dragon teenager. Dragons are hoarders and measure success by how much gold they are sitting on. They are insecure, obsessed with being perceived as powerful, and sometimes like to pretend to be aristocracy, without possessing the heritage. Often crass and tacky, they also burn what they can't own.

Old dragons probably would be wiser, and more aware of their character failings.

Re: Why vampires live forever

#183

Post by rbanffy »

dmonitor wrote: post #152
rbanffy wrote: post #121

As a member of a prominent Transylvanian family, I am appalled, and profoundly offended, by the idea of someone even as much as suspecting Peter Thiel could be a vampire. He might be an evil bloodsucking parasite, but he lacks the sophistication mortals have come to associate with vampires over the centuries. It's shocking, really, that some people might confuse him with one.

Vampires are parasites. They're only as polite as they need to be to extract resources from potential hosts. The facade of sophistication only lasts as long as it needs to

> Vampires are parasites.

A parasite has a long-term abusive relationship with the organism they feed from, much like Thiel. Vampires don't.

Please stop with the anti-vampire propaganda.

Re: Why vampires live forever

#184

Post by rbanffy »

margalabargala wrote: post #172
dmonitor wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vampires are parasites. They're only as polite as they need to be to extract resources from potential hosts. The facade of sophistication only lasts as long as it needs to

Depends on the canon. Plenty show vampires being sophisticated among themselves as well. Highly recommend reading/watching Interview With The Vampire. The recent TV show was excellent.

Exactly. Vampires are actually the good guys.

Re: Why vampires live forever

#185

Post by rbanffy »

jhanschoo wrote: post #161
rbanffy wrote: post #121

As a member of a prominent Transylvanian family, I am appalled, and profoundly offended, by the idea of someone even as much as suspecting Peter Thiel could be a vampire. He might be an evil bloodsucking parasite, but he lacks the sophistication mortals have come to associate with vampires over the centuries. It's shocking, really, that some people might confuse him with one.

It's OK, we understand that they're the difficult ones that never really cared for the family rules.

No sane vampire would turn a billionaire tech bro into one.

Re: Why vampires live forever

#186

Post by hobofan »

sgt101 wrote: post #97

The novels Blindsight & Echopraxis by Peter Watts have a nice vampire sub-plot... basically his world has vampires which have been revived from the fossil record. They are posited to have gone extinct in recent times, but before then were human's key predator, keeping our populations strongly in check and then having to hibernate for decades to allow the breeding to provide new meat! He's super interested in brain di…

The Darren Shan novels also have a lot of interesting vampire world-building, with in parts a similar dillema of vampires losing their dominant position in the food chain due to humans advancing technology, and different sects in the vampire society having different approaches of how to tackle it.

Re: Why vampires live forever

#187

Post by delecti »

maleldil wrote: post #157
RajT88 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2 months for whole blood IIRC. You can do every 2 weeks for platelets, but I am not sure if that removes the crud or not. There's other donations with varying frequency (red, plasma, etc.).

I'm assuming this is in the US? I'm curious why it's 2 months there but 3 or 4 (men/women) in the UK.

More vampires further north, so most people have less extra blood?

But more seriously, it seems like 2 months is enough for most people, but not everyone. So it just comes down to whether you want to turn some people away at donation time because their iron is too low, or make everyone wait a bit longer between regular donations.

Re: Why vampires live forever

#188

Post by sgt101 »

Baeocystin wrote: post #128
vict7 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have not read Echopraxis yet, but I thoroughly enjoyed Blindsight. Some very thought-provoking concepts in that book. The idea that vampires needed to take “anti-Euclideans” and the way the ship was constructed to avoid generating right angles were some great details.

Just a heads up, don't go in to Echopraxia expecting it to feel like Blindsight. When I first read it, I was actually pretty disappointed overall, and a few of my friends had similar reactions. Over a couple of years a few re-reads, though, I've come to enjoy it perhaps even more that Blindsight, but in a completely different way. It fills out a lot of the posits opened in the first novel, without coming to specific…

It's the world builder, odd that it comes second but if it had come first then most people would have been put off! I liked that the main character was the least super empowered of any of the characters though.

Re: Why vampires live forever

#190

Post by mrguyorama »

throwaway173738 wrote: post #171
mrguyorama wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that it is an explicit belief of most jewish groups that God put these "clever" gimmicks into the rules on purpose, God wants you to look for them and be rewarded for looking for them, and God thinks the way jewish people debate about rules is awesome, and that "clever" workarounds are just the best. Contrast this with my Catholic tradition which insists that if I get cheeky with God I should expect…

If there is a god and we are made in its image, would it be better to be clever or better to be compliant?

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oven_of_Akhnai

I don't actually have education in the jewish faith, so I am likely overindexing on this story, but Jewish God wants his people to possibly think differently from him.

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