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

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  • I certainly wouldn’t say it was incompetent and there is a good set of data points. Given the nature of what the study is attempting to correlate, not explaining what limitations were taken into account is a a significant limitation, IMHO. It is called out that there are limitations, but that it is essentially just a short footnote. (The full paper does a better job of calling out other studies and some contradictions.)

    This referenced study found the opposite and had a no (or weaker correlation) to cancer associated with SSBs: Khairan P, et al. Sugary drink consumption and the subsequent risk of gastric cancer: Khairan P, et al. Sugary drink consumption and the subsequent risk of gastric cancer: The Japan Public Health Center-based Prospective Study. Eur J Clin Nutr 2023;77:218-25.

    Without doing a comparative analysis of the studies, which would be interesting, I have open questions about what the key differences were. My first guess (without calling either study “wrong”) is that maybe risk factors were calculated differently?

    On the darker side, there is motivation for keying-in on a specific correlation and that cannot be ignored either. (Past grants, groups requesting the study, etc.) The original paper also sets itself up to be a marketing call-out for artificially sweetened beverages, unfortunately. (I am not saying that is the intent, but the wording aligns exactly with what vitamin water-type company would want to see. It made for a good Lemmy post title, at a minimum.)

    At the end of the day, they stated what they were looking for and presented what seems to be a clean analysis of that data. The limitations that were presented have the potential to be significant, however.


  • So my chance of developing gastric cancer doubles to 1.8% chance over my lifetime if I drink sugar-beverages every day… (This math wasn’t sponsored by a cancer testing company.)

    After you actually get the the study, there wasn’t any mention of other associated lifestyle behaviors that may contribute to the risk of gastric cancers. What sticks out to me is that people drinking one or more sugar-packed beverages per day likely have additional diet or lifestyle concerns.

    It’s not that I think the number crunching for the study was wrong or that the sample sizes were too small, it’s just that it was extremely focused on making a correlation for the sake of making a correlation.



  • I would try and light it outside, but with a long stick (like a wooden skewer). There is a high chance that those are O2 bubbles, if you were trying to make some Sodium Percarbonate which is a common additive to laundry detergent anyway… It’s supposed to be equal parts mix, but I suspect the excess of hydrogen peroxide is intentional as to have the best chance to convert all the sodium bicarb and still have plenty of liquid to soak something in. (Just a guess. Chemistry can be a weird science sometimes and I think there were a few reactions that could of happened here.)

    Consumer grade hydrogen peroxide is dirt cheap, and so is the baking soda. I dunno if you saved money and a made a more effective solution for what you are trying to accomplish. A spoonful or two of regular laundry detergent may have masked smells a little better. Dunno. I like science but I also like efficiency, so whatevers! (Experiments are fun.)


  • Flags have always been poorly standardized outside of system apps and tools. Generally, -u should equal --update (and depending on how the app was written, may warn for --up: “Did you mean --update?”) Single tick flags are generally combinable: -ua or -ls. I have seen long single tick flags somewhere, but can’t remember where. (Your -update example.) Various python libraries than handle flags have helped a ton with getting people to use the same patterns, so that is nice.

    You just summed up my first experience with systemd many years ago.

    systemctl != sysctl. Both somehow got wedged into the same index in my brain and took years for me to correct. On top of that, <service> <action> was reversed to <action> <service>. (Or was it the other way around?)

    I was convinced from my first experience with systemd that the person who wrote it was the purest form of evil. (It’s leveled out a bit over the years, so it’s tolerable to use these days. Still not a fan though.)



  • Shocked expressions, big red arrows pointing to nothing, titles based on shock, surprise or open-ended questions are videos I tend to avoid. I don’t particularly care to watch a video where the first emotion had is sympathy for desperation. (It makes you almost question the emotional state of most of the users that “the algorithm” tuned itself for, TBH. I say that only as an observation of scale when looking at the sheer numbers of viewers that YouTube has.)

    Sticking with the subtle stuff is just fine. A picture of the host smiling with an informative title and thumbnail is OK, and not very gag evoking.

    Blaming “the algorithm” for having to do that shit is likely a very real thing. However, I will religiously watch channels that produce good content first.

    Either way, I have conflicting views: A person has to earn a living, but when emotional exploitation is used in this way, I don’t know what to think. Is it really harmless? Not sure about that yet.





  • There absolutely is a darker side to Lemmy, but for the most part, many of those “legacy” instances have already been pruned from the federation that we are in now. (I suspect there are smaller, highly niche, “Lemmy” bubbles that even I wouldn’t want to go looking for that have never federated with the larger group. There are also various branches you can explore via instances that keep their doors mostly open.)

    On the surface, and depending on what you consider toxic, the misinformation campaigns that are run on Lemmy seem fairly normal, but can get fairly dark if you understand the sources and start to do broader geolocation estimation of some of the participants.

    There are still the occasional DDoS’s and the occasional CSAM posters, both of those are only a degree or two away from the really nasty shit.

    The biggest issue now, and probably will always be, is how easy it is to avoid bans. Some seriously troubled users have generated hundreds of accounts across multiple instances just to troll and appear to generate traffic to specific communities. (“you_emm” being one of the worst, but its posts are fairly easy to sniff out still. It will actively search for untagged mentions as well, hence, my obfuscation.)

    But for the most part, the bullshit is easy to filter out. When you stumble across a specific niche, they tend to niche themselves super hard, so beware. All-in-all, Lemmy is chill and fairly quiet which is why I still use it.


  • In most cases, I believe it’s a mix of hormones and traditionalism. Men have generally been more likely to seek grandeur by participating in violent activities, or, violent activities are demanded by their particular social group. Sometimes a mix of both.

    I think it also it boils down to how gender roles are taught by different cultures. If men are taught to be the risk takers, it only makes sense that boundaries and laws will get pushed more by men. After all, intentionally breaking a law may simply be viewed as a calculated risk and not as something that should never be done.

    Honestly speaking, it seems too easy of an answer to just blame male physiology. The social aspects of this can’t be ignore either.





  • There probably isn’t a way around removing the battery, after more thought.

    Eventually, unless the battery is properly managed, gas buildup may eventually win and turn it into a forbidden pillow. Controlled battery destruction/ventilation sounds like a fun, but lengthy science project for this problem, IMHO. Gasses need to escape the battery, but phone shouldn’t go boom in the process. Deep discharge + adding vent holes after may work in some way.

    Lithium batteries mainly explode and cause fires mostly because of any stored energy and gas buildup that deformes the battery causing a short circuit and thus, fire, to my knowledge. The lithium isn’t as reactive with water because it isn’t pure lithium? My knowledge is extremely limited on keeping lithium from exploding. (I think I remember videos of lithium batteries being unrolled that still explode in water, charge or not.)


  • It’s a sharpie, and I speculate it may have been specially for fabric (if there is such a thing), further adding to the preservation conundrum.

    But anything alcohol based (or is a substance that has molecules around the same size) would melt a sharpie really quick.

    You got me thinking about this differently now, specifically about different solvents that would have been in your spray primer. Acetone is common in epoxies and primers, and it will aggressively remove sharpies as well. (Water is also a solvent, and smaller than acetone or isopropyl, but something something polar/non-polar, or something. Sharpie ink is naturally hydrophobic anyway, but not completely.) Other, equally effective solvents exist to remove sharpie and also, well, act as a solvent for other uses.

    So, point being, you just eliminated what is likely to be a fairly large range of possible coating options to choose from, which is a good thing. (I completely forgot solvents are a huge thing to consider, as did a few others here.)




  • That was a combination of words I wouldn’t have ever thought could be in a single sentence, but yet, here we are.

    While not my preferred cup of tea, death metal shows and crowds are super wholesome, usually. My daughter is a big fan, so I got the honor of taking her around Dever to various dive bars so she could learn the ropes of these kinds of events. We both got to see Party Cannon in a super small venue, so that was fucking awesome! (I have since released her to find her own demise and she has only lost one fingernail and had to nurse one or two fairly serious bruises since. Neat.)

    I get it, and y’all are generally my kind of people. ;)