• 15 Posts
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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • Thanks for the info!

    You might notice some artifacts on the left of the frame

    I didn’t, but you went and made me look! You totally could have gotten away with that! :D

    scan it with my olympus OM-1

    Oh! Can you you share or show what your setup is for that? I have a bunch of negatives and chrome I would love to digitize. I bought a 1200dpi film scanner some years ago but I’m unhappy with the results. Also, it doesn’t have 120 carrier, only 35mm.

    And heeeelllll YES Darktable!


  • Do you know any EMTs? I do, and it sounds like you might also. In the US at least, this seems the opposite direction of what OP is asking. Long hours, low pay when amortized over hours on call, high stress, but potentially great personal satisfaction. Also potential career track to other first responder/medical roles, which can be another plus, e.g. wilderness SAR, marine emergency SAR, trauma nurse*, etc.

    If I have any of that wrong, I sincerely would enjoy additional context and discourse.

    *A close friend from high school went the EMT->trauma nurse route. He has the temperament for it and absolutely rocks it. He is doing waaaaay better financially and spiritually than most of our social circle. His hours aren’t consistent per se, 3 days on, 3 days off plus any additional shifts he wants. He could have retired about 5 years ago, but loves the work too much.




  • The fundamentals are always going to be the same:

    • Develop marketable skills
    • Build out your professional network
    • Develop ace communication skills, written and verbal; this pays dividends everywhere in life
    • Strive to be either in the top ~15%* of what you do or bring a diverse set of skills to the table so that you can perform multiple roles; however, the latter tends to be an entirely different kind of job
    • Be punctual
    • Always continue with your professional development
    • Be the kind of person with whom you would like to work

    *This is not as hard as it sounds. Consider Sturgeon’s Law (“90% of everything is shit”) and how much people phone it in; it’s pretty easy to stand out in most fields.

    More specifically, I suggest “durable” career fields such as the trades (plumber, electrician, lineperson, crane operator, cement truck operator, etc). I mentor and tutor some high school and college students. There’s a lot of career uncertainty for the the foreseeable future, and the trades are not going anywhere. I generally suggest “do what pays the most and chaps your ass the least;” this is just a guideline and the kind of thing you need to figure out what your inflection point is. Whatever the fuck you do, avoid debt like it’s the plague.

    Unless you land a proper apprenticeship, expect some serious long days for a few years, e.g. working full time and schooling/studying full time. Maybe you’ll get away with a less arduous journey, but if you’re mentally prepared to go full-tilt then you’ll be pleasantly surprised if the journey is easier.

    Empathy by way of anecdote: I was a DJ and nightclub manager. I was surprised when I hit 25 and was somehow still alive. I decided to take this life stuff seriously and saw that there was most likely no path towards serious financial security. I went back to college for audio engineering, working full time and going to school full time. I did audio engineering for about five years. While audio engineering was cool, I thought it would be even cooler to write the software tools for audio. So I poured myself into independent study, using my nights and weekends to learn programming. And once I was comfortable with programming, I went back to college again for software engineering, again full time school + work. The journey was hard, but I was a senior software engineer within 8 years, manager and principal roles another 4 years after that. However, I never got a job writing audio software; it’s been all medical and financial software. “How do you make the gods laugh? Make plans.” So have a vision, but be flexible and open to opportunities.

    Honestly, if I could have another go at it, I would have chosen marine electrician. Travel, boats + ships, technical + creative field, and get to pick and choose jobs I want to do.

    Woo warning ahead: there are qualitative aspects to the journey. Know what you want, rather than what you are avoiding. If you don’t know where you want to go, you are going to end up somewhere else. But something cool happens when you know what you want, know it in your bones, and commit to taking the steps. The universe delivers. Maybe not the exact thing you wanted, but some form of it.


  • *Bike cargo gear has always been the part of cycling that nobody really gets excited about. *

    Speak for yourself, buddy. I obsess over this stuff.

    Racks, panniers, and baskets exist to haul things, and most of them look exactly like what they are, brackets and platforms bolted on as an afterthought.

    That is the consequence of careless planning and sloppy installation. Even when things need to be fabricobbled on with adapters, the overall design can be sexy if done with intention and attention.

    I love a good modular cargo system, but this system falls down on so many levels.

    • Overpriced, but fine, whatever. That is to be expected when putting form over function. This overall system is redolent of cheap headphones that come with cat ears glued on top, stick-on faux hood scoops, and those stupid eyelashes over headlights.
    • The front light is passing through a lens and is enclosed in a housing. There is going to be spill and backscatter of the light, reducing the efficacy of the light and affecting the rider’s night vision. Also, passing light through an additional lens for aesthetic purposes only? I highly doubt they used optical glass for that front lens. Also, good modern bicycle headlights have side illumination. This system blocks that.
    • The exigence they are pushing is that bicycle cargo is some kind of afterthought. You know what really makes it look like an afterthought? Using clamp-on adapters for everything instead of braze-ons. And even then, systems such as Old Man Mountain and BarYak can still look like they belong there.
    • What’s with the width of the mirrors? Those are almost as narrow as my head. My mirror is mounted on my glasses. In order see the car lane, my mirror is set about 1.5 inches outboard of my head. Those mirrors? Most people will be looking at their torso or too far to the sides.
    • i didn’t even complete the video because I just couldn’t take any more. But modular racks… Cool. Except there are a ton of modular standards already out there. MIK and Rixen+Kaul leap to mind. These have years of real-world testing and a ton of products. But go ahead, guys. Go your own way.





  • I have a minor hand washing compulsion, but it’s not a germophobia thing. While I would prefer everyone wash their hands after using the bathroom, it doesn’t gross me out like some other things, like nose-picking.

    Lots of excreta aerosolize or otherwise get everywhere. While hand washing is a low bar to improving hygiene, shit is literally everywhere. Want to see something scary (depending on your squeamishness)? Get a 350nm UV flashlight and check out your home. Hell, try it right after you do a deep clean.








  • He made a step, perhaps a bit too long in a mistaken direction, but understanding didn’t and won’t stop with him. How everyone reacted to his theory was also part of the fault.

    These are excellent points and spot on. We’re all looking for the silver bullet and elevator pitch, even those of us who know better. “Oh, just stop eating fatty meat, eggs, and salt!” Except it’s way more complex than that. To Keys’ credit, he also highlighted the importance of weight management/obesity, cardiovascular health, and “regular” exercise. The definition of “regular” of course keeps getting modified.

    Too much fat is still bad.

    Agreed, although too much of anything is bad. “The toxicity is in the dose.” Keys pushed replacing saturated fats with PUFAs, which became a whole different problem with industrial PUFAs becoming the norm. Industrial PUFAs are high in Omega-6 EFA while being low in Omega-3 EFA. Humans don’t actually need any digestible carbohydrates to survive, but we very much need fats and protein to live. Nutritional research has merely been negotiating on where the borders are.

    But it doesn’t make the harm of cholesterol moot. Or do you now want to ignore the other data yourself?

    We worry too much about exogenous cholesterol, when endogenous cholesterol is the real problem. Cholesterol is a lot like that joke about the guy looking for his keys in the middle of the street. “Did you lose your keys around here?” “No, but this is where the light is.” Cholesterol, especially back when nutrition policy was being set, was what we could easily measure, and that was a correlation that science pursued. Epidemiological studies are notoriously tricky, sometimes just a step above anecdote. And to discuss these things in any serious detail requires a couple book-feet of text, most of it being contextual qualification.

    Regarding the importance of cholesterol as a risk indicator: What’s probably closer to the truth is balance of HDL to LDL and cholesterol to HDL, with triglycerides being a case-by-case basis. If I recall correctly >500mg/dL being the absolute level for concern and interventions, with >200mg/dL being considered abnormally high.

    I think in the end, we all have to find what works for us at our given point in life. Because no silver bullet and there’s no way to discuss these things simply and quickly.


  • But ya know what has been proven to contribute to heart disease, atherosclerosis, dyslipidemia, NAFLD, hyperinsulimia/Type 2 diabetes, and chronic inflammation? Refined carbohydrates (Taubes, Lustig, et al).

    I kinda understand the downvotes because we’ve had 50+ years of saturated fat fearmongering. But when you start digging into this long running, test-in-production experiment on human diet and health, it’s hard to avoid conspiratorial thinking.