bingo.

see, this is going to drive me nuts - we know how to do this. this is revolutionary. i want it done. i'm not good at settling.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/154405910608500504

this is a better idea, and it doesn't strike me as that hard.

1. generate ameloblasts from stem cells in a lab.

2. crispr them to not die so fucking fast.

3. transplant them into diseased teeth.

you should then be able to generate enamel, like any other cell.

what's the hold up?

do i have to do it fucking for you? or what?

Four weeks after transplantation of EOE cells combined with dental pulp cells in scaffolds, several phenomena related to amelogenesis were distinguished in the implants [2]. In the most mature structures, enamel was readily found in the implants. Furthermore, amelogenin immunoreactivity was detected in tall columnar epithelial cells on the surface of the dentin or enamel, indicating that the tissue-engineered enamel contains well-developed ameloblasts. Together, these results indicate that the subcultured EOE cells have the potential to generate enamel.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4226000/

see, i don't know how close to reality this is.

because we still don't have fusion. no, really.

i want to wait. but, if i wait too long, i lose the tooth. it's near the back, at least. but, what's the right gamble?

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/8/eaaw9569

vaccines tend to have a low mortality rate.

but, so does covid.

and, i've been through this a few times - in my risk category, and especially in the risk category of young children, covid may be so harmless that getting a vaccine may end up being a more risky proposition than catching the virus.

well.

if the virus has a 1 in a million chance of killing you in your age and health category, and the vaccine has a 1 in 100,000 chance, the vaccine is more dangerous.

(ed: note that the unwanted editor tried to replace vaccine with virus. twice. idiots.)

relatively safe, perhaps - but still more dangerous.

and, i'm not one to take foolish risks. 

it would really be useful to me to know if i've already gotten this thing before they roll out the vaccines. because i'm not bothering anyways, but if i already have antibodies...

you'll tell me the antibodies will wear off, and i'll tell you that's not how it works. most weak viruses move to the "stored as memory" phase. it's really sort of mysterious how your body seems to know what the bad ones are, but it does.

and, if your body will forget the acquired antibodies, it will forget the vaccine, too, anyways. a vaccine won't be more effective than natural antibodies. so, that would suggest you'd need to be vaccinated every few months to maintain protection - and that may end up being true for some categories of people. but, what it means is that healthy, young people should just fight it off.

so, if the government could prioritize allowing antibody testing through ohip....

it would tell me if i've already had it or not, anyways. and, that's far more useful to me than anything else you could do for me - it's unlikely that i'll get vaccinated regardless, but i'm hardly going to volunteer to get vaccinated until i've had an antibody test, first.

i seem to have picked something up again, but i keep getting stuffy noses, and it never seems to be covid.

i might be the only person on the continent catching the flu, instead.

but, maybe it's because i've got antibodies....

but, if i raise the ph of my mouth, will my words be less acidic?

i wouldn't count on it.

not any more than using soap in my mouth is going to correct my language.

i'm going to need to experiment, but this is what i'm doing right now, and we'll see if i think i need to bring in stannous fluoride or not

before eating:

- brush with dish soap (ammonia lauryl sulfate) on a soft brush. this is a high ph solution and a surfactant that should be highly effective at killing bacteria and neutralizing acids, even if it doesn't have stuff like fluoride in it.

- use a medium toothbrush with a novamin & sodium fluoride solution on the face of the teeth. i can and should still brush hard away from the gums.

- drink a lot of water

this seems to create extremely clean feeling teeth, enough that i'm wondering if i shouldn't emulate it after eating.

after eating:

- should i use dish soap again?

- use a soft brush with a novamin & sodium fluoride solution. this is intended to brush food off, mostly.

- swoosh with baking soda to reduce the ph

- drink a lot of water

let's hope that at least kills anything living in there, first. then, i can figure out if i think i can undo any decay - and, like i say, there is one tooth that looks bad - or not.

no response from the dentist. i'll call tomorrow.

i should point out that i also got some baking soda. not baking soda toothpaste - just baking soda.

i'm going to get in the habit of swooshing with it. the idea is that, hopefully, it will raise the ph in my mouth a bit.

i'm sure i got it at the trumbullplex in detroit in early december, 2019.

https://nationalpost.com/news/world/coronavirus-silently-infecting-americans-before-first-cases-emerged-in-wuhan-cdc-study

the dish soap is really cleaning up some stains, though - which is both clarifying how healthy most of my teeth actually are and verifying that i have at least one cavity. it might just be the one, though. it's not totally clear.

if he has to drill that one tooth, i think it's time to let him do it.

"but, it's not designed for teeth"

exactly.

the colgate uses xanthan gum as a thickener, and this is apparently amylase-resistant.

Xanthan products are amylase resistant, so unlike starch, the enzyme has no effect on the xanthan molecule,

https://dysphagiacafe.com/2018/07/22/xanthan-v-starch-advantages-clear/

the sensodyne uses carbomer, which doesn't seem to be made of sugar at all.

sensodyne > colgate >>> crest

so, i might have to order a sensodyne product to get some stannous fluoride.

the crest pro-health is going in the trash.

and, check this out:

κ-Carrageenan was degraded by hydrolysis using commercial α-amylase (4000 U/mg).....The carrageenan-derived oligosaccharide content of the product and the yield were 96.5% and 92.6% (w/w), respectively.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24750735/

yeah.

this is astounding.

throw this shit out.

Pure LA can be obtained by conversion of calcium lactate to zinc lactate using sulphate or zinc carbonate, and zinc lactate is recrystallized and dissolved in water. Subsequently, zinc is precipitated as zinc sulfide using a solution of hydrogen sulfide (Trindade 2002). LA solution is clarified with coal, filtered, and vacuum evaporated. Zinc salt is the most suitable for this operation because it crystallizes better than any other lactate (Pereira 1991).

https://bioresources.cnr.ncsu.edu/resources/separation-and-purification-technologies-for-lactic-acid-a-brief-review/

so, the zinc separates from the lactic acid when dissolved in water - and is chosen because it dissolves the most easily. the industrial process then needs to remove the zinc to get pure lactic acid, but that's not important in the context of putting the stuff in your mouth.

crest is trying to ruin your teeth.

and, this is the product with the "dentists recommend" seal on it.

remarkable.

and, people wonder why there's so much skepticism about dentistry out there....

there's not an obvious way to file a police report of this nature online. so, what i did was send out some emails to the cops i've dealt with previously.

listen - this woman tried to send me to jail. i've caught her in a lie. i want her charged, if i can do it.

if i can get some kind of response from the police first, great. if i can't, i'll get the report through a foia and take it to the justice, myself.

Hello Jessica,

Thank you for your question about the fluoride concentration in our raw water, which is measured at 0.1 to 0.15 mg/L in Windsor. 

so, my .1 estimate was reasonable.

i'll average that out, though, to .125, when i do it.

if i drink enough water, then, i could get that up to 20-25%. that could be worse. 

what happened was that she responded on friday to the tribunal, but didn't include me in the recipient list. she indicated that ryan is a real person, and she's not representing him.

that's proof that she filed a false report.

so, i sent a form 10 to the tribunal to amend that information to the file. i also forwarded that information to the recipient list in the divisional court case and asked them for a response, and if that altered their approach to the case. she literally just admitted to lying to the cops, and that lie was the basis of the arrest. that should have a dramatic effect on how they respond further, if they're operating rationally.

i need to now figure out how to react to the information regarding the false report. i'll send an email, first.

i've got the email out to the cda, as well:

i recently picked up a tube of this stuff, on the realization that i could benefit from some stannous fluoride. this product comes with some hefty advertising, including your endorsement.

but, after looking through the ingredients list, there are two confusing ingredients, and i'm wondering if you could help clarify.

1) zinc lactate. this is a salt produced by attaching zinc to lactic acid. i understand that zinc has some proposed antibacterial benefits. but, if one separates zinc from zinc lactate to utilize those supposed antibacterial benefits (evidence for which is fairly weak), it leaves behind lactic acid. am i then correct in believing that this product will actually administer lactic acid to my teeth, and that zinc lactate is in truth a delivery mechanism for lactic acid?

2) carrageenan. this is a polysaccharide composed of a chain of galactose molecules. the amylase in your saliva should break this down into galactose. and, s. mutans eats galactose. am i then correct in deducing that the carrageenan in this product is a delivery mechanism for galactose?

do you think your endorsement is still justified?

j

wait.

there is a dude out there named ryan.

she filed a false report. straight up.

lol.

this crest stannous fluoride toothpaste - which has a canadian dental association sticker on it, and perhaps uniquely - contains:

- zinc lactate, which is zinc bonded to lactic acid. lactic acid is what the bacteria in your mouth produces that wears down your enamel.

- carrageenan, which is a polysaccharide - sugar.

neither of the other two toothpastes have these ingredients, although the colgate has xanthan gum, which is also a polysaccharide.

now, why would they put zinc lactate in toothpaste?

supposedly, it's primarily to fight bad breath. but, google isn't helping much.

take a look at this site here:

Our highly soluble, neutral-tasting lactates help reduce tartar and potentially even bad breath in oral health formulations: An ideal source of calcium.

http://www.corbion.com/biochemicals/personal-care/applications/oral-care

highly soluble lactates fight tartar? what?

it seems like the thing that may have some dental health benefit is the zinc, but it would need to be separated from the lactic acid, first. so, if the zinc is doing anything at all, you have to douse your teeth in lactic acid to get the benefits of it. great.

worse, free zinc reacts with water to steal the oxygen and produce free hydrogen - which is what produces acid, in all situations.

but, zinc lactate would appear to be poorly soluble in water:

https://www.cheric.org/PDF/KJChE/KC18/KC18-1-0133.pdf

...meaning it's probably not doing anything at all.

so, what's the conclusion, here? that if this did anything it would be terrible, but it's not actually doing anything, so i shouldn't worry about it? fuck.

and, what about these polysaccharides, the carrageenan and xanthan gum? they're what makes the toothpaste thick. but, it's sugar.

carageenan is a polysaccharide made up of repeating galactose molecules. your saliva will break the polysaccharide down into simple galactose molecules. s. mutans, the bacteria that causes cavities, eats galactose. what the fuck?

should i throw this shit out?

you know what i'm going to do? i'm going to send an email to the canadian dental association and see how they respond.

i've used it twice. i won't use it again until i get a clear response.

this is the crest pro-health advance.

people are freaking out about schools as vectors. and, yes - schools are vectors. you can flip the stats over all you want (you can argue that the total rate is low, for example - ignoring that it is relatively high), but the fact is that large amounts of the cases being found are being found at schools. in some areas, it seems to be the leading cause of spread.

but, so what?

see, the problem here isn't that they opened the schools, it's that they provided terrible expectations when doing so. the science underlying opening the schools was always that the virus has almost no effect on healthy children. nobody ever seriously argued that your kids weren't at high risk for exposure, they just consistently and carefully pointed out that it doesn't fucking matter if they are.

but, the government - in an attempt to calm people's nerves - sent out a lot of bad information, insisted it was "safe" and that people shouldn't worry about it. stay calm and keep shopping.

this has led to haphazard behaviour, such as people letting their kids interact with older people. but, the problem here is that people were led to believe that this is ok - not that the schools were kept open.

if people were told the truth - which is that schools are a high-spread environment and your kids are likely to get it within a few months, at least, if they go to school every day - then perhaps they would have taken proper precautions. 

so, yes - people are right to be concerned about schools, but only in the sense of ensuring that kids are kept away from the vulnerable, for a while. the social decision that was made is that it's more important to send healthy kids to school than it is to worry about the health of the very vulnerable. but, that was not communicated, and the problem here lies at the foot of the state for bad messaging around that, in telling people it was safe, instead.

we can still adjust.

keep your kids away from your parents. it's a few months. it's not that terrible.

this is a decent summary of the situation:

https://childcarecanada.org/documents/research-policy-practice/12/02/canada%E2%80%99s-history-never-was-national-child-care-program

Mr. Dryden had stipulated that the money must be put toward quality, regulated child care but Premier Bernard Lord had insisted on greater autonomy over how it was spent.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/dryden-achieves-10-child-care-agreements/article990610/

i don't expect this government to be nearly as discriminating, because they don't seem to be looking at it from the same perspective. for dryden - and generations of liberals before him - childcare was about the child. this government seems to see it more in terms of kitchen-table family-planning economics and what's best for corporate interests, and is interpreting it as a way to put more money in the pockets of families, while making corporate executives happy at the same time.

oh, and btw - your taxes will no doubt go up to pay for it.

...because it's a corporate subsidy, not a childcare system. and, taxpayers always pay for corporate subsidies, in the end.

the liberals used to be good at this, but they're just not anymore. it's terrible plan after terrible plan...

but, let's see what they come up with before i write it off completely.

my response to the budget is becoming boilerplate, as the liberals so often are themselves: the liberals tend to have a habit of announcing ideas rather than plans. it's quite frustrating.

canada was very close to enacting what looked like an excellent daycare system in the waning days of the paul martin administration, before it was torpedoed by a selfish, opportunistic, power-hungry jack layton, who saw an opening to put his own party into government by trying to shift the nature of the spectrum. he wanted an ndp-conservative matchup, with the liberals as third party, and he actually got it - for a while. but, the country didn't just have to endure ten years of catastrophic petro-dictatorship under stephen harper, but lost a wealth of excellent proposals in order to do it.

so, is freeland's proposal as good as ken dryden's?

it doesn't seem like it, but it's hard to say, because it's just a vague idea right now. how do you critique an idea? you can't. i haven't seen anything about ece, or the importance of preschool in a child's development. rather, it just seems like a plan to help women get rid of their kids, so they can more efficiently generate surplus value for shareholders. that's how this is being presented - not as a plan to help children maximize their potential, but as a plan to send women back to work.

but, i want to make the bounds clear - this plan should be judged against dryden's, and that is how i will judge it. if it does not meet those standards, i will reject it.

what am i expecting?

i'm expecting a subsidy program. i'm not expecting a childcare system.

so, i got my letter hand delivered to the owner of the store. i had to walk to the mall, get a 20 out, break it at the timmies, go to the library (which is around the corner from my house) to print it and then go back to the mall to give it to him. i was going to stop to eat first, but i decided i'd be better off just biking out to the metro to get soy milk, then biking around to get strawberries. 

strawberries are sometimes quite cheap here and are sometime too expensive to bother with. it depends on the time of year. this doesn't actually make sense, though, as essentially all strawberries sold here are from florida, california or mexico (with the vast majority from california), and the growing season there is mostly year-round. strawberries do grow locally, but the ones i see on the shelf are always very small - about the size of raspberries - and often white or even green. on top of that, they're often strangely expensive. rather, it seems like ontario exports most of it's quality strawberry production. again: i'd rather buy strawberries from local producers, but what can i do when the local farms ship them to the prairies and the local grocery stores buy them from california, except point out the stupidity of the situation?

it's probably just an excuse to drive the price up. if they ship them around, they can charge more and blame it on transportation costs. that's the kind of thing that needs to change.

for now, what i do when the price of strawberries goes up is buy them frozen instead because the price of frozen berries seems less subject to "market conditions". i looked everywhere and saw the same high price everywhere, except the place i looked first - which was only marginally overpriced. what i did was get enough of the mildly overpriced berries for a few days and a batch of the frozen ones for backup. i'm hoping that the price has come down a little by next week; if not, i'll get some more frozen ones.

i also got some canned anchovies, which took me a long time to find. i accidentally realized that i was looking in the wrong place - i thought they'd be with the tuna & sardines, on the shelf. it turns out that i actually had to go to the fish counter to get canned anchovies. weird. this is just to try it; i don't know if i'll like it or nor. i may want to get fresh ones in the end, if i decide this works. over the last few days, i also got some algal oil and some high fluoride toothpaste for the fruit bowl (i'm going to hold off on eating the toothpaste until i'm sure i can measure it properly) and some garlic, in addition to the anchovies, for the pasta bowl - which i'm going to need to put through an optimization process relatively soon.

so, the first thing i'm going to need to do, after i finish this crazy post i've been working on that splits the chart into four, is an update on the breakfast bowl. i should finish that thought first, though. i've been toying with doing a breakfast bowl update first, but i want to keep this a bit more linear. 

and, i collapsed again when i got in - this time for almost 8 hours of sleeping. that much sleep is unheard of for me, and something i'd prefer to avoid if i have any choice in the matter; i did not, last night.

i contacted the dentist this morning about cancelling the "fillings" and booking a cleaning instead, and his receptionist actually gave me a ton of pushback on it. they said they'd schedule the fillings and the cleaning on the same day, which is setting me up to pay for a cancelled appointment, which set off a ton of red flags. why don't they want me to get a cleaning and then look at my teeth and think about it, to the point that they're willing to try and manipulate me into paying for a service that isn't rendered?

i had to threaten to book at another office before i got the receptionist to agree to confer with the dentist. this is all very bad news in terms of transparency and consumer choice; this is my body, and i make the decisions, not the dentist. the receptionist shouldn't have to ask the doctor for permission to cancel an appointment; that's absurd. i need to be able to request services on demand based on what i want, not be told what to do by an "expert" based on "what's good for me". that's fascistic-type thinking. we live in a democracy....

so, are they trying to drill into stains, again? it looks like it...but what do i do, now? i've been to three crooked, authoritarian dentists, now, that all want to tell me what to do instead of listening to what i want. am i going to go to ten more and deal with the same despotic behaviour over and over?

i need my teeth cleaned, at least. if they won't do it, i'll call somebody else, and be more assertive and upfront about it, next time. 

so, i'm in, now, for a few days, at least. let's hope i can finally finish that post in a day or two.

the nobel prize is handed out in norway, and the people making policies live in beijing, brussels and washington - all relatively northern climates. without doing the math, or really understanding the science, it's easy enough to think that 4 degrees won't be that bad, if you live in northern europe. after all, if you take the average temperature in london and add four degrees, that's just better weather? right?

it's for this reason that it's important to avoid separating the politics from the science.

four degrees might be manageable - if you're sentencing half the world to death.