I’ll start by saying I’m not a doctor. This is my layman’s understanding.

Historically, vaccines have been samples of either weakened or dead viruses. Through trial and error, we’ve been able to determine how to weaken or kill these viruses, then inject them into ourselves in the hopes that our immune system can learn to recognize and kill the virus. This has worked really well for a long time, but it’s costly and can be difficult to scale. For example, horses have very strong immune systems. It’s quite common to inject a virus that hurts humans into a horse, then harvest the horse’s blood to acquire the material needed to produce a vaccine. The horse’s immune system learns how to kill the virus, and we can use the to teach our immune systems.

mRNA vaccines take a whole different approach. They kind of co-opt the mechanism that viruses use to replicate.

First, let’s tall about what RNA is. You might know that DNA is used to produce proteins, and proteins are the tools that life uses to do… stuff. Almost everything, really. Thing is, DNA is stored safely inside cells’ nuclei, but protein production happens outside the nuclei, in ribosomes. So if DNA is needed to produce proteins, but DNA can’t be moved to the protein production center, how do? Our cells can produce another molecule called RNA. It’s basically half of DNA. Since you can derive one half of DNA from the other, it essentially carries the same information. Inside the nuclei, RNA is produced based on your DNA. That RNA is then moved to the protein production center to be used as the blueprint for protein production. Voila! Your cells have proteins now and can do stuff.

What did that have to do with viruses? But first, how do viruses work? Funny thing: at their core, viruses are kind of like protein missiles with an RNA payload. (This is why people argue that viruses aren’t really alive.) Viruses pierce your cells and inject their RNA into your cells. That RNA provides the blueprints to produce more RNA and the protein module, effectively, a copy of the virus. The viruses uses your cells’ infrastructure to reproduce.

With me so far? Here’s where it gets cool.

What if we could capture a virus’ RNA? What if we could then isolate just enough of the RNA blueprint to get some part of the protein missile, without the payload? And then what if we could get so specific that we could make sure that part of the protein missile is something your immune system could learn to recognize and kill? Lastly, what if we could package this harmless but recognizable part of the virus in a manner that your cells could mass manufacture it?

This is mRNA, the “m” standing for “messenger.” mRNA vaccines basically give your cells the blueprint to produce a recognizable part of a virus that won’t hurt you. Your cells then produce that virus part, and your immune system learns how to recognize and kill the virus based on that part.

The best part? We can do this fast. No need for trial and error on how to weaken viruses. No need to manage livestock like horses specifically to harvest their immune system material. The COVID vaccine was an mRNA vaccine. I haven’t actually checked the numbers, but I’m very confident that the COVID vaccine R&D was the fastest humanity has ever had for any vaccine. We’d been researching and experimenting with mRNA vaccines already, but they weren’t yet approved for medical use. For good reason, medicines go through a huge amount of testing before we start injecting ourselves with magic feel-good juice. Given the emergency that COVID was, most countries fast-tracked their approval process for the COVID mRNA vaccine. In the long run, this may actually have been a benefit, as we’ve learned a lot about how to produce these types of vaccines rapidly, at scale and even update them for new variants of a virus.

So yeah, mRNA vaccines are super fucking cool. They’re also a remarkably clever innovation, copying an idea from viruses and adapting it to a way to kill viruses. Theoretically, future vaccines should be produced faster, be better targeted, and have fewer side effects.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk? 😅

But that’s an arbitrary distinction. You could also argue, “what’s the difference between a vaccine and medicine?” Or “what’s the difference between medicine and physical medical treatment?” mRNA vaccines involve more innovation and impact than bloodletting via leeches.

But I won’t respond to that line of thought anymore because you didn’t answer my question.

You can choose to answer my question or just not reply. Do you know what the differences are between traditional vaccines and mRNA vaccines?

Are you familiar with the differences between traditional vaccines and mRNA vaccines in terms of production?

I live in Korea. How do you define “loyal to workers?”

It makes me so happy that people are offering advice to help. It gives me hope despite all the madness going on in the world. “Look for the helpers,” right?

But yeah, OP. Get some regular exercise, even if it’s not intense. Eat well, avoid processed snacks and soda and such. Drink more water. Spend time on yourself to relax and have fun, even if only a little time. Call an old friend, if you’re lucky enough to have one. Sleep on a regular schedule with at least 7 hours, ideally 8. This stuff should help, at least a little

Most importantly, know that we’re rooting for you <3

Sorry for the delay, busy days.

Yeah, fake postings are total bullshit. I still don’t understand the motivation for them.

As for having jobs up for months, I can understand that when a role has very specific needs. But if the roles specific needs haven’t been made clear in the job description, then yeah, that’s total bullshit

My job postings are usually up for two to three months, and the rejection rate is maybe around 80-90% for the resume review stage at the beginning. I’d like to think the job descriptions are clear, but that’s subjective. But do those sound like reasonable numbers to you, though? What do you think is reasonable? (Like I said, I want these opinions for my improvement)

Unfortunately, I haven’t hired for a service job, so I don’t have a complete perspective here. You mention “one of the first to apply.” For an imaginary job that requires no background, what do you think would be good reasons to reject a candidate or choose one over another?

I love this. Thank you for fighting back by educating <3

“Life sciences” teacher in middle school at a Christian school told us evolution was impossible because genetic mutations only cause a loss of information. Sneaky assholes

Got it. Okay, that makes much more sense. Nothing new there for me, then.

When you say companies shouldn’t be “this selective,” what are you referencing that they’re being too selective about? If I’m being more picky than I need to be, I should stop, so I’m eager to learn something here

Can you share what kinds of questions you’re asking? Or at least generic versions of them?

100% this

And the same thinking applies to interviews, but that’s very difficult. My leadership sometimes gets surprised about how much I help interviewees, and I have to clarify to them that I don’t care about how good they are at interviewing. I care how good they are at the job.

Unfortunately, this makes my interviews super long, but we have arguably the best engineering team in the company.

Our new CTO was very skeptical of our long interviews and ordered us to shorten them. Fortunately, we had one scheduled already. He sat in on it and is no longer worried about our long interviews. He understood the value once he was able to see where the candidate stumbled and excelled in our … simulations? of the work. We try to simulate certain tasks in the interview, especially collaborative ones, to see how they would actually do the work. It’s really hard for us as interviewers to prepare and run, but it’s proven highly effective so far

All of this. When I tell people I meet that we don’t do coding tests, we instead do tiny assignments, they often get quite excited. It also seems to be way, way more effective

Do you have any qualifiers for that? Like “with sufficient time to learn” or something? Is there some kind of personal development that you think could enable that?

In my understanding, asking a chef to be a doctor or a software engineer to be an artist often doesn’t work great.

How selective do you think is appropriate?

To be clear: I’m a hiring manager for some specialized stuff. I’m genuinely curious about your perspective because I hope it can help how I do that work. I’m not trying to argue with you or prove you wrong or anything.

You assume the actors in the system act in good faith and that the system’s incentives are well designed. It is not.

What kinds of people want to join the organization responsible for keeping foreigners out? How many of those groups are racists that don’t actually care about the citizenship part? How do you measure the success of this organization?

When you start asking these kinds of questions, you start to see the cracks. Additionally, when you look at US immigration policies compared to other developed countries, they’re quite harsh. I emigrated to Korea. It’s quite easy if I have a college education and some work experience. I benefit Korea’s economy. My Korean friends who want to go to the US have a totally different experience.

Additionally, you need to look at the US’s history with regards to race. See the Japanese internment camps of WW2 or the fire bombing of Tulsa, OK. We don’t necessarily distinguish between actual citizens and foreigners.

You can also look at how illegal immigration is managed in the US. Look at Ron DeSantis in Florida. He spooked illegal immigrants in Florida with his crackdown on immigration. The orange farmers started panicking because there were no workers. The oranges were rotting. Did DeSantis prop up the orange industry and encourage them to hire Americans? The good faith act? Fuck no! He rolled back the crackdown, and the illegal immigrants continued to be used for basically slave labor. America doesn’t want legal immigration. They just want a group with no rights to beat the shit out of when they’re feeling bad and to use for labor that citizens don’t want to do.

Your argument of people behaving in good faith with regards to immigration doesn’t have a lot of evidence to support it when looking at history.

The right thing to do would be to pursue immigration reform first, give time for current illegal immigrants to become legal, crackdown on the employers of illegal immigrants, and then start enforcing immigration law more strongly. But surprise! It ain’t happening.

Of course, my comment assumes you’re trying to argue in good faith, which also may be naive. Let’s see

How are you defining “normal?”

I think the main thing is that Korea’s government still has some fear of its people, which is very, very important. Enough stupid moves and millions of citizens can be on your doorstep (see Park Geunhe).

Yes, there’s a bunch of corruption. Yes, working culture blows. Yes, birth rates have been tanking for a reason (but reversed recently?!).

But there’s a reason those soldiers heading to the parliament building had no ammo except one guy in a squad with less lethal rounds. There’s a reason the martial law was ended so quickly. There’s a reason Yoon is actually getting his on a reasonable timescale.

In Korea, once you hit that tipping point of people realizing you’re a dick, you’re gonna have a real bad time.

My initials are BJB.

I was in jazz band in high school. We were doing a joint thing with the choir, so everyone was running around moving stuff to make space. My parents had bought me a nice music bag with my initials on a plate on the front of it. Someone held up my music bag asking who owned it. I figured they just wanted to let the owner know where it was being moved to, so I spoke up… “Hah, your initials are BJ!”

Hence, my name became blowjob. The completionists called me Blowjob Betty (I’m male) to get that last initial in, too. At the time, I was quite quiet and took myself maybe a little too seriously. This ended that.

One day, I was at my buddy’s place, and he called me “Beege,” saying he didn’t want to say “Bee and Jay,” as it was too long. At that point, I said fuck it. My name is Beege. Let’s go.

Over time, my friends added an article because why the fuck not.

Over 20 years later, and it’s still my name. It actually taught me to not take myself so seriously. Although, one interviewer at a job had a really hard time keeping it together when HR told her my nickname without catching the meaning. She and I are good friends now.

In any case, I always get a slight chuckle inside when people hesitate slightly after introducing myself. I’m great at keeping a deadpan face about it now, too

I might have laughed out loud on a silent bus. But worth it

Not necessarily. You don’t know why they’re making that claim.

I live in Korea, where the letter of the labor laws are quite strong. However, they’re not enforced. Workers don’t sue companies because they’re either afraid to rock the boat due to cultural norms or afraid they will develop a reputation and become unhirable.

Korea and China are very distinct cultures, but there are key facets that are common between them. Confucian (or at least neo-Confucian in Korea) values prioritize maintaining the peace and deferring to authority. This is one of several factors that causes Koreans to endure intense working hours, and I’m more willing to believe Chinese folks overwork a lot due to the few shared values.

My ideas are similar to a couple of other comments, but maybe I’ll phrase them in a way that unites them and is easy to understand. Let’s see.

American exceptionalism is deeply ingrained in culture and associated with patriotism. See reciting the pledge of allegiance in schools. This includes the concept of the American dream: working hard = good life.

I’m not sure if the US was ever like that, but it’s certainly not like that now. The key thing is that it’s becoming more evident if you pay attention. There’s a rift between people paying attention and people not paying attention. The people paying attention have discarded the American dream and maybe even exceptionalism, but those not paying attention have not. Additionally/alternatively, people may see different reasons for the American dream no longer being valid.

So you kind of have 2 + N camps. One camp still believes in American exceptionalism and the American dream and gets pissed that other people are seemingly trying to change/ruin it. One camp believes these concepts are dead and blames on various systems that need changing. (More on that later.) N camps believe these concepts are dead because of <insert media bias here>, e.g. blacks, Muslims, communists, foreigners, pick your poison. Sadly, this last group is the most visible because they’re the most rage-inducing.

So the first and last sets mentioned above provide pretty clear reasons for anger: either frustrations at what should be fellow Americans in solidarity or bigots. The systems people also have a reason to be angry: the systems are well entrenched via various methods, and it’s unclear how to start untangling the mess. Some blame billionaires. Some blame politics. Some blame both. But even if there’s agreement about which problem is the highest priority, people get frustrated about conflict around potential solutions or the general inability to acquire focus on solutions due to the sheer number of them.

Combine all of this with an economic squeeze on standard of living, the rage-bait nature of social media and mainstream media, psychological negative bias, and just general (unfortunate) virtuous cycles, and you get a recipe for an ever growing angry society.

The people with the most ability to fix this have no incentive to. The people in power benefit from the current system. An angry and divided population is easier to manipulate and control. It also helps that the US is very geographically large, making physical threats less of an issue (except for CEO assassinations, I guess).

Lastly, the internet fucks us. Research shows (normally I’d cite sources, but I gotta get back to work in a minute. Internet points to whomever can find the source and share) that the social media echo chambers aren’t actually the problem. People can be very open to new ideas depending on the presentation and the source. We already had echo chances of geography before the internet, and people were generally more trusting of the people physically nearby, even if their ideas differed. The problem is the anonymity of the internet, the volume of conflicting/unfamiliar ideas, and the way they’re presented (e.g. rage-bait). Given that Americans are spending more time on the internet, they’re exposed to more seemingly madness from crazy strangers and sometimes associate even the people around them with those crazy online strangers. We group them into these tribes and define them as the enemy. When we start recognizing that these people could be our neighbors, societal trust plummets. When you can’t trust the people around you, how are you supposed to relax and feel safe? If you feel like you’re always in psychological or physical danger, won’t you be more prone to anger and defensiveness?

We weren’t ready for the internet

Actionable, yes, but it’s lacking specificity. What phrases or concepts in the post were condescending?(Not saying I agree or disagree, but I’m a fan of making feedback more effective.) Ideal feedback should also have examples of an improved version of the behavior, if possible.