this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2026
400 points (95.7% liked)
memes
22517 readers
2558 users here now
Community rules
1. Be civil
No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour
2. No politics
This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world
3. No recent reposts
Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month
4. No bots
No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins
5. No Spam/Ads/AI Slop
No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live. We also consider AI slop to be spam in this community and is subject to removal.
A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
Sister communities
- !tenforward@lemmy.world : Star Trek memes, chat and shitposts
- !lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world : Lemmy Shitposts, anything and everything goes.
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world : Linux themed memes
- !comicstrips@lemmy.world : for those who love comic stories.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Lemmy is just awful about reacting only to the headlines, especially with popsci reporting. The above referenced work is kick ass - converting one of the most common garbage plastics into sugar with a bioengineered yeast is cool as hell. sure it's a headline born of the petite dystopia we live in, but it's a really optimistic breakthrough and not at all a dystopian thing in itself.
That's pretty much normal all over the internet. It's a bad human behaviour heavily exploited via attention economics, of course such bad traits get reinforced. Staying in one place and thinking gets disincentivised (you might even put down your phone! Outrageous!!) and outright punished through dark patterns and antifeatures, faster scrolling and high frequency interaction with populistic takes is being rewarded with shiny stuff on your profile, Karma, hearts, stars etc.
In this instance people are talking about "the article" and there isn't even an article LOL. Lots of lemmers devoutly believe they're better than the rest of the world - whether it's because of their ethical purity or neurodivergence or whatever.
I remember seeing the youtuber NileRed doing similar experiments:
Making grape soda from disposable vinyl gloves.
https://youtu.be/zFZ5jQ0yuNA
Turning paint thinner into cherry soda
https://youtu.be/NIVkBs7oWDI
Making hotsauce from plastic gloves
https://youtu.be/1B3Xi5L6siI
My first thought was "Hey we're one step closer to Star Trek replicators." :D
Yep, a lot of people jumping to conclusions from the get go. And I agree, bioengineering is really cool stuff.