71
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by cheese_greater@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] ray@kbin.social 88 points 9 months ago

Just try not to swallow the fly. I've heard if it gets inside you, the only way to get rid of it is to swallow a spider

[-] tpihkal@lemmy.world 28 points 9 months ago

That's just straight up not true. Fly paper works just as well as spiders.

[-] SailorMoss@sh.itjust.works 5 points 9 months ago

Then how do you handle the fly paper? You can swallow a bird to handle the spider. No problem. But I know of no solution for fly paper.

[-] tpihkal@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

I'm still chewing on that one...

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[-] flambonkscious@sh.itjust.works 16 points 9 months ago

I don't know why she swallowed the fly...

[-] TheKrevFox@pawb.social 11 points 9 months ago

Perhaps she'll die

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone 5 points 9 months ago

Bro that cracked me up. Thanks so much

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] stoy@lemmy.zip 55 points 9 months ago

That depends on what score the judges gives the fly.

Below 5, drink away, he was holding his team back.

5-7, still no big loss, but showing improvement, so if you can remove the fly, he might perform better next time.

8-9, his team will take a big hit if you drink him, you should immadiately rescue him.

10, it is your duty to not only save him, and for the next 17 days you are responsible for acting as his bodyguard

[-] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Damn you, was just about to say I'd give him a 6.9 for obvious reasons

Edit: I-needa-9-downvotes-👎-and-~7~4upvoters-to-remove-upvotes ;)

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 47 points 9 months ago

Lol ... I was born and raised in northern Ontario. I'm indigenous and I've spent a lot of time in the northern wilderness which has lots and lots of swamp land and in the summer hosts billions of biting insects.

My parents were born in the bush so life out there was normal for us.

I remember spending summers out camping in July with clouds of black flies, mosquitoes, deer flies, midges and sand flies.... when we drank a cup of tea by the fire, you first had to skim off the drowning insects before taking a sip.

I think one fly in your wine is OK

[-] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 8 points 9 months ago

Just asking questions, just asking questions ;) Horseflies were the worst! I feel like I lost a part of me when they'd bite

[-] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 10 points 9 months ago

Which is why when you meet many old timer Indigenous person in northern Ontario, they're dressed in long pants and long sleeved clothing in the summer. The only time I wear tshirts or shorts is if there is a strong wind or I'm planning on jumping in the water some time soon. In the evening and especially at night, I'll cover up every inch of exposed skin.

It always amazes me when I have my southern friends visit me, sit around a fire at dusk in tank tops and shorts and complain about the bugs ... then slather on tons of insect repellent and complain about the chemicals they put on.

... all while I skim off the bugs from my drink and take a sip.

[-] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago

slather themsves

I've heard a dryer sheet works for this purpose, can u confirm + deny?

[-] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Lots of things work ... including dryer sheets ... but the problem is that you have to apply whatever product or diy trick or whatever you are using on every bit of your skin ... every piece of skin. If you have one spot the size of a penny of untreated skin anywhere on your body, the insects will find it and sting you there. The best way to do all this is to find a vat of insect repellent, swim in it for 10 seconds and come out. And even then, it only works for about half an hour or hour because your skin is constantly changing ... all that has to happen is you sweat a little bit, the repellent washes off and now you have an untreated section that the bugs will find.

It's a never ending battle and the bugs always win. Part of surviving in these conditions is to accept that you will get bitten ... you just minimize the bites and you learn to live with getting bitten.

There is research I've read that more and more people are becoming so accustomed to never wanting to be bitten that they spend their lives in a bubble away from biting insects that it becomes a severe problem when they do get bitten .... even to the point where they develop allergic reactions because they do such a good job avoiding it all.

I grew up in these conditions and I remember being a dumb kid running around the bush and being covered in welts all summer long and never thinking it was unusual.

As a teen, I remember a few summers with my friends where the mosquitos grew so thick and noisy at dusk that you could literally choke on them as they filled your nose and mouth.

Now as an adult, I minimize the number of bites but when I do get bitten (which is still fairly high) I don't really mind it all that much. You build a tolerance to them over time. Like anything uncomfortable and unavoidable in the world you learn to live with them.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] transientpunk@sh.itjust.works 37 points 9 months ago
load more comments (4 replies)
[-] ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world 21 points 9 months ago

It’s safe and it’s ok to do so. Whether it’s socially acceptable depends on whether you sing the “Shoo Fly! Don’t bother me!” song as a fun little kid’s song or if you do the whole 1860’s minstrel show version.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] mvirts@lemmy.world 18 points 9 months ago
[-] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

[I'm not available for comment on account of my ~~small~~ death]

[-] wahming@monyet.cc 5 points 9 months ago

Thanks for letting us know you got laid

load more comments (5 replies)
[-] AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world 17 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

For what it's worth, here's a study.

Do fruit flies carry any diseases? Fruit flies do not carry infectious agents on the inside of their bodies. They are not disease vectors. However, they can carry bacteria on the outside of their bodies and transmit them by contact with fruits or vegetables, which can cause disease when consumed.

Is it safe to eat food that has been touched by fruit flies? No, it is not safe. If food was touched by fruit flies, there may be bacteria that cause disease. The appropriate strategy is to remove the damaged area of the food or to dispose of it.

Can fruit flies be harmful to humans? Fruit flies are not harmful to humans. They do not bite or sting. They also don't have venom. However, when fruit flies wound ripe fruit or vegetables to lay eggs, bacteria can enter the food, and when humans consume it, they can get a disease.

What happens if you eat a fruit fly? There is no scientific evidence of diseases caused by eating a fruit fly. Also, there is no scientific evidence that eating the fruit fly's eggs can cause disease.

[-] Son_of_dad@lemmy.world 30 points 9 months ago

So this just told me that eating fruit flies will give you a disease, followed by a statement that there's no evidence that eating fruit flies will give you a disease

[-] match@pawb.social 15 points 9 months ago

studying with ChatGPT be like

[-] AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world 11 points 9 months ago

I think it's saying that you can eat the fruit fly, but not food the fruit fly has touched.

It's always worth remembering, though, that bacteria live on some foods more easily than others. I'd be surprised if most bacteria could live long in wine.

[-] ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 3 points 9 months ago

Is wine generally alcoholic enough to provide any sort of disinfectant property?

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] mycus@kbin.social 8 points 9 months ago

Just wash your flies before consumption.

[-] Jimmycrackcrack@lemmy.ml 3 points 9 months ago

It's the trouble with researching and reading around questions like these because you'll get a lot answers like this one that seem more sensible than others and even provide some pretty plausible sounding reasoning behind their conclusions but then proceed to either directly contradict themselves, or simply leave an obvious implicit contradiction unaddressed.

The issue I think is, if we take what's said as true (no telling if it is, but again, sounds pretty reasonabland plausible) it can't tell you much about the real likelihood that it will actually cause you real problems in real life. It seems entirely reasonable to believe that fruit flies may carry bacteria on the surface of their bodies and that that bacteria could be harmful and so reasonable for the author to include and thus not be giving dangerous advice just saying everything is safe don't worry about it. But it's also kind of useless what are the odds the particular bacteria is going to be harmful vs something your body can easily dispatch? How much bacteria would you need to ingest for it to be dangerous? Is there enough of it on one fruitfly to be problematic? If so, what about the surfaces of different foods? What about liquids? Including wine? What are the relative odds of all of these factors aligning just right to make you sick?

If you replace fruitfly in that text with just fly, I expect that would likely also be true. If you asked people can you eat cake that's had a fly on it you'll get a gamut of responses from people saying of course it's fine they do it all the time to people saying it'll definitely make you sick to a more nuanced response like this one, but I bring up the case of flies in particular because the fact is the odds are very good that you eat food a fly has been on all the time because they land on it and then fly away without any noticing. Sometimes people eat the food and get sick and the mechanism for how that happened might be exactly as described, but then again most of the time you eat a slice of cake from a display case and you're fine despite it likely having had many visitors on its surface during its time there.

Despite its seemingly contradictory way in which it's written, I think this is probably consistent, it provides a mechanism how a fruit fly could make you sick then goes on to say there's no evidence that fruit flies do make you sick, which is not surprising because attributing a case where someone got sick from ingesting bacteria to a fruit fly is going to be pretty difficult when there's so many mechanisms by which that could happen to you.

Frankly without providing some additional context to nail down how likely the proposed mechanism is to actually cause disease and in what specific circumstances that type of information is truthful yet misleading. Honestly, I'd drink it, but I can't honestly say I have any solid evidence that's definitely safe, only that it just seems so unlikely that it could represent a serious threat, whilst being capable of happening so easily yet not seeming to represent a major public health concern. It seems like if it really was that dangerous, human cohabitation in areas with any appreciable fruit fly population would be untenable.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] xmunk@sh.itjust.works 17 points 9 months ago

Probably fine... you might want to skip it if the fruit flies all died shortly after drinking it though.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] FelixMortane@lemmy.ca 13 points 9 months ago

Takes a lot more than that to keep me from my wine.

[-] HowMany@lemmy.ml 12 points 9 months ago

As long as it didn't drink the whole thing.

[-] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 10 points 9 months ago

His eyes were bigger than his thorax

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] eezeebee@lemmy.ca 12 points 9 months ago

If the fruit fly lived then the wine is safe to drink. If not, the wine may be poisoned.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 12 points 9 months ago

Depends, if you drink my glass of wine with my fruit fly in it we have issues.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] toomanypancakes@lemmy.world 11 points 9 months ago

Oh sure! After all, wine not?

[-] krellor@kbin.social 10 points 9 months ago
[-] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago

I wonder what "his" last five secs were like

[-] krellor@kbin.social 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

He probably screamed "witness me" to a shrine of Bacchus before diving in and died enthused with a divine spirit.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] Catsrules@lemmy.ml 9 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Depends if your vegan or not.

[-] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 8 points 9 months ago

Only if you get the fly to spit out what it drank. Can't let it get away with it!

[-] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

Right, unacceptable! Wine is not crumbz, harumph 😤

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 7 points 9 months ago

As long as you aren't vegan

[-] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Lol, this post's never gonna end ;)

[-] YeetPics@mander.xyz 7 points 9 months ago

Financially; yes

Morally; also yes

load more comments (3 replies)
[-] maniel@lemmy.ml 7 points 9 months ago

I'd chase it with a shot of vodka to disinfect your system for a good measure

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] Leeks@kbin.social 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Sure. It just means you got a drinking buddy!

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] Black_Gulaman@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 9 months ago

Depends, is there a garbage dump nearby?

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2023
71 points (84.5% liked)

Asklemmy

43465 readers
1903 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS