I had terrible cat allergies when I was a kid. Lived with cats in my 20s they mostly went away. Started dating a girl with a cat in my late 30s, they came back and went away again. Got a couple cats a couple years later, of a bread that's supposed to be "hypoallergenic" (bengals) and had my first asthma attack with strong allergies ever since.

Idk how it works but modern OTC allergy meds are stronk enough that I can kiss their sweet bellies whenever I want. Pic related.

https://i.imgur.com/Vxkx1kE.jpg

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I heard the balloon is carrying 1000lb of equipment.

A film canister on a parachute is a long ways away from that.

https://nationalpost.com/news/world/china-balloon-many-questions-about-suspected-spy-in-the-sky

>One official said the sensor package the balloon is carrying weighs as much as 1,000 pounds. The balloon is large enough and high enough in the air that the potential debris field could stretch for miles, with no control over where it would eventually land.

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There is a blind spot in the center of our vision where the optic nerve comes through to spread over the retina.

Another way to "see" the effect you notice is with the stars. When you look directly at a star it will disappear because it's over the blind spot on the retina.

Or, maybe the LED you noticed is large enough to surround this blind spot and something else is going on.

Kurzgesagt did a great video and follow up book about the immune system if anyone's interested. I highly recommend it: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Immune-Kurzgesagt-gorgeously-illustrated-immune/dp/1529360684

The video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXfEK8G8CUI&vl=en-GB

I've always been fascinated by immunology. You have the most powerful military in the world swimming inside you. It's truly awe-inspiring.

No, it’s a physiological difference in the structure of the eye.

The brain just fills in the gaps, just like it does with the blind spot.

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Not sure about importance of that compared to larger parasites. One famous ethical problems in science was that people were given infection of... I think it was pig roundworm in stomach. It cannot procreate in human. But the people lost their allergies. So now the ethical question was, do people participating experiment get to keep the worm that is beneficial to them. Anyway, one hypothesis is that allergies are due to lack of parasites when we have a system to fight against them.

No problem. There are definitely options for you. Off the top of my head, Kombucha is a big one. Fermented foods like kimchi and saurkraut. Miso is another one. Generally any good probiotic will need to be kept cold, though there are exceptions. Be wary of room temperature pill based ones, their efficacy is iffy.

Interestingly, age of female puberty has been steadily decreasing over the last century. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12319855/ https://vitalrecord.tamhsc.edu/decreasing-age-puberty/

This is probably due to increasing food consumption.

A skyhook on a high altitude plane / drone could easily capture it.

Bottom line is the US would rather use it as propaganda / a public spectacle than take it down. The US has had all important / classified military infrastructure hidden below ground since the prevalence of satellites.

If the US wanted to take it down they could have easily done so before it was over mainland USA. Even our older, declassified, radar arrays can detect baseball sized objects thousands of miles away. Presumably our latest Gen systems, meant to detect the launch of hypersonic weapons, could have detected it right when it was lifting off.

We used to have a 747 with a laser system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1

Toward the end of that article, it mentioned a lower power, higher altitude drone version to fly in 2021. Maybe the Chinese were hoping for a capability demo.

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I really appreciate the thorough response and taking the time thank you! Very interesting indeed and great to have a perspective that isn’t just the medias take.

What would be good sources worth trying for someone who doesn’t get on with the typical pro biotics which dairy based?

There are several things in biology that function as fuses. Sometimes, one fuse lights another; one benefit of having such a "fuse junction" is that it can serve as a checkpoint that can trigger several things.

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Be weary of generalities online. Gut biome is an interesting area of study, but we haven't done enough studies and what you hear are mostly small studies that get played up in the media like they are hard science when really they are just to help direct and improve further studies. They were never meant to set any guidelines or direct people to action. We aren't there yet, and with how different everyone's body is with this, it'll likely be a while before anything definitive is suggested to people.

So to answer your question, we don't know. Because gut biomes vary significantly from person to person and will even change over time, and we wouldn't know what you need or don't need or if you're fine as is, it would require a lot of work to try and figure out what might help you if you're having problems. You'd need testing done of a clinical environment.

If you are having gut issues though, consuming good live culture bacteria found in things like yogurt is beneficial. Greek yogurt is the one you hear about most because it has less sugar. This is a standard reccomendation for people going on antibiotics as they don't discriminate which bacteria they kill and putting ones we know help digestion back can reduce side effects of antibiotics.