sewblue

sewblue , 7 days ago

@azonenberg @futurebird I work in infastructure, as an engineer.

The idea of plastic eating microbes frankly scares me. Great for microplastics in the environment an everything that means, but horrible for burried plastic infastructure.

Almost all gas pipe, mile for mile, installed since 1970 is plastic. Buried cables, both communications and power, coated in plastic. Extensive use from an engineering perspective of how inert plastic and how it doesn't decay. Far, far superior to steel for anything buried.

We are living on borrowed time once life figures out how to eat plastic. Houses will go boom from gas leaks and the internet and power will start to fall.

It will be a game changer, for sure.

sewblue , 6 days ago

@alice @neurovagrant not a PhD, but a principal mechanical engineer. And mom.

I work corporate so I can't post much directly about my work, but I do boost science stuff and math jokes.

sewblue , 13 days ago

@futurebird @semitones my bout with long covid might bring insights.

You'd get tired. They type of tired where you are just done - not exhaustion, but that combo where you just mentally and physically can't do anything. Like when you are sick and push too hard.

My LC basically turned off thee ability for my body to process sugar. If I struck to no carbs and what in ketosis, I had energy. But as soon as I snuck a cookie or two, I was bed or couch ridden for a bit. Until I got into ketosis. They boom energy again because my body would use fat, not sugar, for energy.

You'd basically feel you had the flu but without the fever and aches. Need to sit down then poof, energy gone and done.

sewblue , 15 days ago

@futurebird @KarlHeinzHasliP My daughter is severely dyslexic and goes to a specialized private school for it. Expense as hell but at 13 she is finally reading.

As a parent, the difference was amazing - a curriculum designed for her and her disability. For every kid there. They can toggle reading levels so each kid can engage in the same topic but not be forced to work through their disability. History isn't a reading lesson in disguise. Same with math.

I've seen what carefully crafted education can do.
How transformative it is.

And how modern schools are designed for the easy to teach. Kids like my daughter are almost intentionally pushed out. I must be a bad parent who didn't read to my kid enough. It is ok if they fail, learn to fake it, to cheat because they weren't taught to read. Because they were harder to teach and it cost too much.

Public education hasn't served my daughter. Still, it saddens me for the single standard deviation kids that their education may be as awful as it was for her.

sewblue , 18 days ago

@futurebird fun fact - turn of the 20th century women on the subway used to defend themselves with hat pins. Creeper grab your butt? Stick him with a hat pin.

The response was to ban hat pins.

Loosing your hat on the subway due to lack of hat pins likely goes back loooooong way.

sewblue , 22 days ago

@luckytran In my job as an engineer I am often forced to make up measurable, mandatory rules to deal with safety issues.

Use shoring when digging bellow 5 ft. Wear PPE.

An excavation 2 inches deeper than 5 feet is not unsafe. An excavation 2 inches shallower than the limit may be unsafe due to soil types. I really don't know until I see indicators.

Humans need rules if you want to ensure a level of consistency and a general level of safety.

Hands down the most successful rules I've ever developed are simple in concept. See this do this. Once you start taking the math or science into account you will loose the ability to enforce and any positive safety outcomes.

Simplicity is a necessity.

I don't make non-experts know soils to understand risk. I lower the limit by a foot universally and add engineering approval for exceptions.

Attacking the science is disingenuous. There is always room for professional arguments and uncertainty. It is attacking their authority to make decisions based on knowledge.

sewblue , 1 month ago

@TheVulgarTongue @histodons This one surprises me. Would have thought "to gut" was an old term. Maybe it was only just being applied to things that weren't animals being dressed for food?

sewblue , 1 month ago

@futurebird It is a power thing.

Oil is simply too profitable. Too easy to make crazy amounts of money straight from the earth, and with money comes power.

Phasing out CFCs was relatively easy. Alternatives had already been developed. You did not have nation states entirely dependent on the production of CFCs.

Going up against raw money and power is tougher than switching out a product line. It will change the world order.

sewblue , 1 month ago

@futurebird @martin_piper If a woman could take the throne in her own right she was (typically) educated.

Some counties, such as France I believe, prohibited women from taking the throne by law. Queens could only be consorts, not rulers, so French princesses weren't as well educated as a result.

So Europe was a mixed bag as far how much princesses were educated.

sewblue , 1 month ago

@TatianaIlyina It is going to take crop failures (hopefully not a large one) to get the powers that be to respond.

If you look at Dr John Snow and the history of sanitation in London, it wasn't "good science led to sanitation" like is normally presented. He published in 1854, and the "miasma" theory was still going strong. Board of Health reviewed the study and declared "miasma" the cause. It was "The Big Stink" of 1858, where everyone was miserable and the city stank like an open sewer for a week fearing miasma, to get funding for sewers and another 17 year to actually build them. It was never the actual, real science. At one point the handle got put back on that pump and people started dying again. .

We lucked into sanitation, we didn't science into it.

No one was earning money off cholera like oil earns money off carbon. We have a much harder lift this time.

That is why I think it will take crop failures. It is the fear that causes action, not the science.

sewblue , 2 months ago

@TheVulgarTongue @histodons little bo-peep has lost her sheep

sewblue , 2 months ago

@mostaurelius @bookstodon I'm an engineer and that "foundation" is one of the most unnerving things I've ever seen.

sewblue , 2 months ago

@TheVulgarTongue @histodons what does CANT mean in these definitions?

sewblue , 2 months ago

@Z_Zed_Zed @tomstewart @TheVulgarTongue @histodons And every now and then, one that makes some phrase make sense. Or one you had no idea used to be slang.

The "blind" part of a blind alley having a specific meaning being one!

sewblue , 2 months ago

@TheVulgarTongue @Z_Zed_Zed @tomstewart @histodons awww fudge.

Long winded too.

sewblue , 5 months ago

@rbreich Remember that the Koch Brother's company plead guilty in a criminal proceeding to violate the Clean Air act. They bypassed benzene cleaners to save money, then falsified documents to pretend they were in compliance. 4 employees went to prison. They dumped 91 tons of cancer causing benzene into the environment when they were only allowed 6 tons and covered it up.

As far as corporate personhood: Guilty. No responsibility. No remorse. No rehabilitation. Instead, they are trying to make it legal to do worse.

It is like a rich guy who basically drives a tank running a red light. Instead of owning up to it and driving safely, he has all the traffic lights in town removed so he can get around town without caring about who he hits.

Let Boeing be free of federal oversight! Screw pilot training, too expensive! No need to check for gas leaks in city streets. Forget about climate change.

sewblue , 3 days ago

@justafrog @futurebird Clothing was important back in the day to make lines of authority clear in an era before photographs were cheap and plentiful.

Now that most people would recognize royalty, Elon Musk or Biden due to mass media, there is no need for over the top clothing designed to intimidate.

You get the deference without needing the hoops or top hat. That is why everyone found it funny when Justin Timberlake didn't get let off of a DUI. He wasn't recognized so got no deference.

Judges have retained ceremonial clothing because most are an unknown bureaucrat that deals with the public directly. That authority needs to be immediately clear.

That these guys want to add additional pomp to their clothing speaks volumes about how they view themselves. The robe alone are not enough to make the peasants cower. Their clothing need to mark their authority over other judges as well.

They want crowns.

sewblue , 3 days ago

@futurebird @justafrog I think it depends. I've not read enough on the incident (other than hearing the jokes) but cops do have a huge amount of discretion in charging someone.

A cop flustered by fame might not be as rigorous in enforcement.

I've had cops pass me through DUI check points when I said I had a drink on the ferry. Young, pretty white chick in business clothes, 7 pm in the evening, while they weren't treating people of color with nearly as much courtesy, demanding papers and what not. Seizing cars for any reason they could. Came out later that they were abusing the DUI process to collect fees. Show me your papers! Kind of thing.

I stopped trusting cops and DUI enforcement after that experience. I was by no means drunk, but I should have been tested if they gave a shit.

sewblue , 3 days ago

@unixorn @futurebird @smellsofbikes @justafrog The car they drive is an indicator a asshole level too.

An expensive car is the same as an upper class garment then. Driving is fairly anonymous so the need to have a high status vehicle remains.

Giant pickup trucks are doing the same function as big hoop skirts did then. Take up space unnecessarily, make everyone around give way.

Hard to sit gracefully in a hoop skirt. Hard to park an oversized pick up truck. Enter a crowded room and people need to make way, enter a 4 way stop and bully your way through first.

I call big, ego driven trucks pretty pretty princess trucks because they are no different than a woman in a massive hoop skirt. Exactly the same impulse - wealth and a need for deference - is being communicated.

For both skirt and truck, the size indicates driver/wearer is a delicate flower and needs to be treated as such!