I aim to be more human. I aim to be less apathetic as a human. Apathy grows, like a tree, and I aim to prune my own.

Username does not check out.

  • 7 Posts
  • 925 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

help-circle

  • Honestly it’s so difficult to get done as it is that they don’t even need to outlaw. It’s virtually unobtainable for most women unless they already have “enough” kids, whatever that means to a specific doctor, or they travel to find a willing doctor.

    It took me 8 years to get it done because I’ve never reproduced (childfree by choice). And I’m one of the easier stories. I got it done at 27, in 2015, and while some doctors are more willing now, most aren’t. Especially in conservative areas.

    All they have to do is keep making doctors scared to offer proper reproductive care, make it risky and they stop going into that field. You don’t need to make it illegal, just impossible. Rich white people will still be able to choose, so they don’t care.

    I had to deal with a whole bunch of people asking me hypothetical questions. What if you regret it? (what if I regret having them?), what about your future partner? (If they are right for me they also don’t want kids, and I don’t plan to get married anyway). What if you change your mind? (I will adopt if that happens. I don’t believe sharing my junk genetics is important, and the chances of issues are high anyway since I’m also broken, and there are plenty of not-infant kids who need homes if I get maternal, but kids under 5 aren’t my jam and probably never will be, and I’m probably too negligent to raise them right anyway). Ultimately they couldn’t argue with my logic but it took years of finding the right doctors getting the right consultations, etc.









  • In that case, I’d recommend the sanding, then a wipe down with bleach for the algae, then primer impregnated with a fungicide like Zinsser mold blocking primer (just an epa-approved example, but decent place to start). It’ll form a barrier between the raw degraded plastic and the paint (so anything existing won’t continue to grow), as well as helping prevent molds from growing in the new paint layers.

    Just wait for a really dry day to do it (much as you can, you know, or if you have a garage you can run a dehumidifier in that may work too), and let the paint dry for a long time between coats to prevent any moisture trapping.




  • I’m distro hopping because Ubuntu was perfect for me in basically every way, but I don’t want to be locked to a closed distro…

    I haven’t found anything I like yet, and I don’t have the skills (or motivation) to make core Debian feel the same.

    I’ll probably end up back on Ubuntu, at least for my server machine… it just worked the way I wanted it to, and the ui was lovely for me. Plus it’s stable enough that I can just keep it up indefinitely without issue.


  • Probably best option is to sand it, prime it, and repaint it. Use a UV resistant paint made for plastic or UV resistant top coat, and should be good for several more years.

    The green black gunk is probably algae, maybe with mildew (guessing you live somewhere that gets humid, or at least takes a while to dry from dew) so feel free to wipe it down with bleach or a fungicide after sanding but before you paint it.




  • I think Mozilla has something like this as well (also a subscription).

    I’m of the opinion that, at this point, one of the best infosec things a company could do is include a subscription like this (assuming they are safe and work as intended) for all employees as part of their compensation package, much the way they sometimes provide financial consulting services or gym memberships. Maybe one of the providers will start offering enterprise packages.

    If we could purge large quantities of data on employees, it would be that much harder to use social engineering for hacking. As a bonus, if enough people got themselves purged, it would entirely disrupt the data harvesting and selling models, potentially making them worthless. That would be a huge win.

    But I don’t think many people are going to pay for it themselves. They just won’t care that much. So as a work perk, it incentivizes them to use it by being free.

    I’m not in IT or anything, but my close friend is in security, so it’s something I consider quite a bit.

    Edit to add: obviously I’d rather see it illegal to collect data and sell it and all but that’s not going to happen any time soon, and this could be a lot faster. And if it becomes a business expense, businesses might just push for legislation…



  • So I’m not a biologist either but I’m going to speculate on the temp thing. (Somewhat educated speculation - science of all varieties is my jam)

    Basically my hypothesis is that between insulation and size, they aren’t capable of losing heat fast enough to fall below their baseline temp, but any old temp would probably have worked fine, as long as their fats stay liquid (and for all I know that’s 36C, but that seems highly unlikely - you’d want to be several degrees warmer in case of emergency, else you’d get stiff and die for sure).

    They have a nice layer of fat for insulation and that’s all well and good, but they are massively huge and a lot more spherical than most animals. So, they have a small surface area to volume ratio, and lose heat slower as a result. And because they are huge, and muscle twitch is heat generating (to say nothing of leaky heat-producing brown fat, idk if they have this, but most mammals seem to for thermoregulation), they likely produce a gob of heat internally just existing. Much like we believe the larger dinosaurs were endothermic due to sheer size (and some evidence from their bone structure).

    Side note - Imagine how many calories it would take to maintain basal metabolic rate when you are losing that heat to 4C water at literally all times. It takes us about 1500-2000 calories for this function and we only lose heat to air that’s relatively close to our body temp.

    I did a super quick scan of melting points of various fats, and while without knowing exact compositions of whale blubber idk the melting point, a surprising amount of the animal fats we use for cooking melt around 25-40C, with most large terrestrial animals (cow, pig, deer, etc.) falling between 32-40C (goose fat was the 25C).

    If their composition hadn’t worked, though, they could have evolved a polyunsaturated fat (like fish oil) with a lower melting point.

    Anyway, thanks for coming to my ted talk ;)


  • Plus side for squick thoughts, probably not that warm. The ocean is quite cold and things lose heat 25 times faster in water than air, so it would likely cool down considerably between being…… extruded…? And consumed.

    Then again, I don’t know a whales body temp to start with, so there might be a lot of heat to lose. Idk if that’s better or worse…