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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)R
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2 yr. ago

  • Coal is dying as an investment but existing coal plants will likely run for a long while. Overall demand for energy is rising, the new demand is being met mostly with renewables, but there is a small amount of that increase that is being met by a small increase in coal usage. As renewable manufacture gets faster and more efficient I expect the coal growth will reverse, but it is all about when. If it happens quickly we have less apocalyptic damage. If it happens slowly then we will be more fucked.

    Solar is far and say the cheapest form of new energy to roll out. Wind is a not so close second. Coal is getting more expensive by the day. The only reason to roll out coal is insufficient production of solar and wind. It takes time to increase manufacturing capacity but we are getting there and we can do this.

  • I am reminded of hospital acquired infections being treated like car crashes or plane crashes.

    Car crashes kill massive numbers of people each year, just under 5 per 100,000 people per year here in Australia. That is way down and we are quite low globally, with the EU overall around 9 and 14 for the USA. We have taken fairly agressive steps to curb road deaths and made real progress, but a certain number of deaths is accepted as necessary. A crash is investigated for fault attribution and insurance but not for preventing a repeat.

    Plane crashes are totally different. If something caused a plane crash we figure it out, make a mitigation, and make it never happen again. Flying is one of the safest modes of transport and it keeps getting safer.

    In hospitals most of them had the car crash mentality for hospital acquired infections. A hospital putting in a plane crash mentality investigator for their Infection Prevention chair will have very different outcomes, especially over time. Someone got an infection from bad clean technique? Make it a checklist item. Someone still got another infection? Change gloving technique so that you wear two layers and only touch the outer gloves with clean inner gloves. Another case? Have a second staff member assist with your donning of PPE and going through the checklist. Each step reduces the risk, each mitigation makes everyone safer. Eventually you have so few infections it is hard to test new processes.

    For anyone wondering edgydoc.com is the site for the aforementioned doctor and he is a blast. But yeah, if you treat a consequence as a cost of doing business nothing changes. If you make failure an existential risk you can eliminate problems. Corporations are run by people. Those people should be accountable for the crimes of the company.

  • Done is success, you have to draw something bad to learn to draw something good, and based on how good that is you have drawn a lot of bad already, one more for your stack of lessons. Your proportionality is good, I would recommend looking at some art in a similar style you consider better and try to identify what makes it work, for example defining muscles using small lines that hint at a shape so the legs have more detail and are less blank, or making the limb portions different in length based on their relative perspective.

  • Thanks for the concern, it came across as genuine in your previous replies. I think people tend to get really locked in to having the right answer and then start to identify with their conclusion, making it part of who they are. It makes it very difficult for them to consider if there is something they are wrong about without feeling threatened. Having a good conversation like this is fairly rare online, so it has been good fun and quite enjoyable.

    The response was not unwarranted or redundant. The information I have today is just information I didn't have in the past, so if I am correct I am just there a little earlier than you. If I am not correct then I am off the right path and need to correct. Either way talking about it is good and helps to find errors in logic and evidence.

    I think that something as shitty as seizures can seem life ruining or horrible and sure, they suck, but I am very lucky to have a strong and capable partner who in the face of seizures looks for solutions and has hope for the future. My partner is the one who has to have the seizures, I just get to support them and learn what does or doesn't work. Also, their pupils sometimes do a bit of a crazy dance when one will dilate and constrict rapidly while the other slowly dilates, it looks absolutely insanely cool and while it sucks it is also really interesting, so at least there is that.

  • The carbs - fibre = true carbs is accurate in some countries, not in others. If the fibre is listed at the same level of indentation as the carbs it is already removed. If the fibre is listed indented under the carbs it is included in the total fibre number and the subtraction is needed.

    For example

    Carbohydrate

    •  
              Fibre
        

    Or

    Carbohydrates

    Fibre

    Fibre being critical is not the most well supported thing. There are definitely ways it could be useful, mostly by having bacteria break down the fibre into ketones which are then absorbed by the gut. This is useful because some of the ketones are quite powerfully anti inflammatory. That said, some people have gut issues like Crohn's disease which make them unable to have fibre safely pass through their gut.

    Biology is complicated, we are all stuck doing an experiment of one, but hopefully we can figure something out. I find it all fascinating but the most important thing to me is my partner currently can go whole days without a seizure. If I never understand how and why but I get to have that be the case then I am content.

  • Yeah, we need fats for sure. Our thinking at this point is to aim for saturated fats as much as possible, less than 5% polyunsaturated and less than 30% mono. That said, pork belly has a tonne of fat but a surprisingly large amount of mono. Also, it is delicious.

    The nuts and seeds are just not something we are doing at the moment. We will experiment with introducing small amounts of interest foods but I think seeds are largely out because of the various chemicals in the casing. Some beans may be OK after sprouting them because that takes the acid from the skin and recycles it into energy for the growing plant, but there is no similar disarming strategy for most seeds.

    As for fibre, adding fibre led to a fairly serious gut issue, think blood and pain. For now fibre is banned, not allowed in the food club. Given some time it may be tested again, but the last time showed me unspeakable horrors.

    I think the diet is currently robust enough for the next year. After that other things may be viable, but most likely it will be very small amounts and infrequently. If we do try fibre again it will probably be home ferments like pickles because the bacteria which break down the fibre are there in the food, so even if there is a problem with my partner digesting the fibre the bacteria there can help.

  • During the first day the rate dropped, halving by the end of the first day. On day 3 they dropped to a few per day. By the end of the week they were basically gone, though some are absent seizures and harder to catch without active monitoring.

    As for ongoing it has been very stable. Adding in anything like milk or cheese caused as spike in seizures along with massive carb cravings. The few accidental carb exposures have been fairly obviously bad because of the seizure spikes following.

    We don't use a Continuous Glucose Monitor but honestly, no pattern this obvious requires such detailed measurements. Add carbs, get seizures. Add dairy, get seizures. Butter is dodgy, maybe an issue, but seems to be at least not obviously an issue, we will try without to be sure.

    I joined in for solidarity at the start but honestly, it works for me too. I have pretty bad ADHD and cooking has always been really difficult to manage. So many different things happening at the same time with various timers, cutting foods, adding sauces, stirring, making sure it doesn't burn, and then magically some people just deliver it all hot at the same time. Absolute madness. Instead I fire up the BBQ or air fryer and cook the meat.

    I have noticed that my dandruff is way less, my skin doesn't flake, I can focus better (not as good as meds but maybe 30% of the way there). I also dropped body fat a bit and gained some muscle, but I need to do that for other reasons too. Overall it is not an awful diet. Eat meat, add fat. The only problem is eating enough, I frequently miss my target of 3000 kcal, but I am simply not hungry much of the time.

  • Yeah, it worked really well actually. It seems that their seizures are related to sugar metabolism in the brain and switching to a fasted state enabled the production and use of ketones instead of glucose. That leas to a reduction from seizures as much as twice an hour to one or less per day most of the time. Now we (solidarity and other benefits) eat a really simple diet of mostly simple cuts of meat cooked to medium-rare as well as chicken wings and butter. The butter maybe an issue though, so we are testing removing that too after the next long fast to see if we get better results.

    So down from ~30 seizures per day to maybe 1 seems like a fairly good fix and we just treat it like an allergy. No carbs, no fibre, no sugar alcohols, no artificial sweeteners, and soon maybe no butter either. Better thab seizures, good for overall health so far, and fairly sustainable. I may miss cheesecake but not as much as I don't miss my partner having seizures all day.

  • I've done 7 days on a fast, water only. My partner and I were testing if their seizures would stop without food and they did.

  • Yep, and by broadcasting the same message from many sources they can create the illusion of consensus because of the ten news sources you see 8 of them agree, 1 goes insanely far past those 8, and 1 disagrees with the other 9. The fact that only one station disagrees with the rest and presents reasonable facts makes them sound like the outlier and seem likely wrong, while the insane version makes the 8 in the middle sound normal.

  • Much as I feel genital mutilation is awful and should be a thing of the past this will unfortunately harm people on the way. The religious who believe circumsision is a good idea will keep doing so, but along the way women who are pregnant will have their only reasonable option for pain and fever relief stigmatised, ironically potentially increasing the rate of autism. There is some evidence that maternal fever may increase the likelihood of autism in the child, so not using paracetamol to control fever may increase the rate.

    Also, never side with Nazis. If they say the sky is blue you don't say you agree, you say that the sky is blue. They will always try to pull people in to agreeing with them and then change their opinion later and try to pull people along with them.

  • Yes, we have a good idea as to why. There are a few key factors involved starting with a shift away from full time employment and towards part time and gig work. This means that the number of people working full time jobs with the protections they provide has not gone up even though the population has gone up over that time. These workers are more precarious, experiencing less stable hours, unpredictable income, and easier firing processes. This makes people feel less secure and accept worse conditions. People with precarious employment may be less likely to report wage theft for example, which to be clear is more than all other types of theft combined.

  • I agree that this has gone on too long, like insanely way way way too long. This has been a genocide for decades but the international community has been very slow and weak in their reactions to anything from Israel and have allowed truly reprehensible things to go unpunished.

    As for the any day now thing, yeah, it is starting to have an impact. Pressure is building fairly rapidly compared to the past decades and now Israel is being ostracised in many spaces. People are refusing to participate if Israel is welcomed, just like what happened to SA. Israeli products are not being purchased, just like with SA. Recognition of this as a genocide has been increasing, just like the recognition or apartheid in SA. Statehood for Palestine is being recognised by a bunch more countries, including allies of the USA which has previously managed to protect Israel from this, and this is again similar to the kinds if political change around SA at the end of apartheid.

    Is this the same as SA? No. Are there similarities? Yes, absolutely. I'm not saying this is all good and any day now it will all flip. I am saying the likelihood of change within 6 months has never been as high as now.

  • Do you mean that ironically or literally?

    Tbh, if I didn't actually attach things to myself I would lose them. If I had a kid I would have a strap to connect them. When I take my cat for walkies we have a harness and lead which never leaves my hand. I have my keys set up to lock the front door from the outside so I cannot lock myself out without my keys.

    ADHD can suck, but with good tools and processes it is much more manageable.

  • I have ADHD so I get rid of most problems by literally tying things to myself. I have a second belt which goers over my pants and have a hip bag attached to it. In that I have the following;

    Disposable nitrile gloves (3-4 pairs)

    Hand sanitiser

    Power bank (10000mAh)

    USB C cable

    Thumb drives (one with kids shows, one with software, one blank)

    USB A to C adapter

    Wallet

    ID lanyard

    Emergency cash (not in wallet because if I lose my wallet I still have my cash)

    Tissues

    Aspirin, paracetamol, and ibuprofen

    Ritalin

    Plastic bags for rubbish

    Nasal inhaler (for blocked nose, long term issue)

    Car and house keys (attached on a clip, not inside)

    Then I have my pockets for phones (I have 2), wireless headphones, and anything else for the day.

    By keeping my keys attached I cannot get in the car without my belt bag.

  • Technically, yes, if you have access to the system, but it does mean you have to switch the storage from append only to read write, then pull out the original files, recompute the hashes from the time you did the modifications, and do all the rewriting as you go. For a continuous thing like this your security is only as good as the weakest link, so you could have a problem there, but publishing or sharing the hashes as you go could further protect in this situation. If others have the hashes and then some of them change we know there was a change of data. Add or change something and every hash from then on is different. Seems plausible to make it much better than take my word.

  • This is actually one of the very few reasonable use cases for block chain technology.

    You have a security camera on site. It takes recordings and sends them to a data centre which then appends the footage and uses various algorithms to make a much smaller block chain compatible summary, a small hash for each snippit of video. The hash is then mixed with the previous sum of all hashes and appended to the video. This means that after the fact modifying the video is effectively impossible. You would have to do it between the camera and the data centre, so yes, still possible, but doing it at a later date would be very hard. You could also make sure this data was stored in an append only form, say magnetic tape, which has physical measures to prevent access after the date of storage.

  • Glassing is not a solution. You drop a bomb and make sand into glass but you haven't actually changed the regime. You haven't changed who does and does not have power. You haven't changed who is considered human or less than. You haven't changed what the public of that country thinks. You haven't changed much of anything.

    Boycotting is effective. It worked on South Africa. It worked in many other cases. It needs critical mass. It needs a sufficient portion of the relevant population to participate. Anyone who could buy an Israeli product and does not because of what they are doing in Gaza is making change. Anyone who refuses to participate in international events because Israel is there is making change. Anyone who refuses to perform in Israel is making change.

    Saying "glass them" feels good, it feels cathartic and just and right. It is not right. It doesn't work. It is morally faulty. Glassing Israel or part thereof would be the beginning of a much larger war, killing many more people. It would escalate existing conflict into something somehow even larger. It is understandable you would want to say it, but it does not actually make the world better. Maybe there is nothing you personally can do to make the world better in this case, and if so that sucks. But you don't have to make the world worse because you can't make it better.

  • Lots of options, but the simplest is to lower the contrast and brightness values for your monitor. That will work on everything including images and video. You could also consider something like the redmode features of your OS and maybe even look at colour balance settings. If you take the curves and lower the highest bits you will selectively reduce brightness at the highest end without messing with less intense stuff too much. It looks a little weird but is easy enough to get used to.