
Bees That Live on Human Tears - BobbyVsTheDevil
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/04/18/the-bees-that-live-on-human-tears/
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gwern
If you want to be further creeped out, check out the photos in
[https://www.gwern.net/docs/biology/2018-banziger.pdf](https://www.gwern.net/docs/biology/2018-banziger.pdf)

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RandomInteger4
This reminds me of when I was like 10-12 years old or so and woke up to a bee
biting around my tear duct. I thought it stung me. I remember I was dreaming
about taking off my shirt for some reason and then feeling some sort of pain,
which woke me up. Couldn't open my eye until they gave me antihistamines or
something at the hospital where they told me it wasn't a sting, but it was a
bite.

The source was from holes we had in the walls where the cable came in from
outside (My dad isn't an expert, so he just drilled a hole in the wall). They
ate through the caulk and got into my room. Guessing they were attracted to
all the cologne I was spraying, because I was entering that phase of life and
just sort of overusing it.

All that being said, I think they were yellow jackets rather than bees, so
feel free to throw my story in the story basket.

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basetop
It's interesting how 3 of the top articles are essentially stories I read on
social media before.

This and "Was There a Civilization on Earth Before Humans?" and "Surprisingly
little evidence for usual wisdom about teeth" are all stories I read on reddit
or watched on youtube before.

It seems like traditional media and social media are "merging".

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startedYearsAgo
You aren't imagining things. Pseudonymous and anonymous channels have actually
been lagging behind the large walled garden corporate social media platforms
for about two years now. Maybe more.

It used to be that the unfiltered image boards were at the forefront of
emerging trends and defining or producing cultural shifts.

What happened is that the sheer volume of the walled gardens has grown each
year as older people who know better have aged out. The replacements from
younger age brackets are all piling into corporate social platforms. Kids have
developed tactics to deal with close quarter snooping from parents and
immediate authority figures.

Large platforms now inflate as the volume of internet users drains out of
participating with offbeat services.

Also Trump and the alt-right have had chilling effects of the reputation of
using random websites and anonymous participation. It now feels very wrong to
more people. Whereas previously it felt neither right nor wrong to lurk as a
spectator and cheer or boo as desired.

This affects places like HN which will become stale as younger users gloss
over the glory of koans about the AI lab that never really produced AI.

HN activity will decay even if money will keep HN alive as a startup investor
corner. But the winds are blowing. Kids aren't leaving corporate platforms as
predicted. They don't know how create competitors or whether that's possible.

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whatshisface
Is the author suggesting that bees have been inhabiting tear ducts for
thousands of years, or have they just scanned across thousands of death-
related cultural artifacts in order to find a few that involved bees?

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codycraven
This article seems to really be stretching to hopefully hop on the hype train
of a recent newsworthy event without any citations that are actually similar.

Tears turning to bees is far different than bees entering an eye socket and
feeding on tears.

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notfed
"Once I began looking for tears linked with bees, I found them everywhere"

I suspect this to be a case of confirmation bias. Besides, bee stings hurt,
which I would suspect is why there are so many hits.

