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Joined 2 months ago
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Cake day: April 24th, 2024

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  • In my personal experience, basically no insurance in America is worth anything.

    Nothing you would actually need insurance to cover ends up being covered, or, it covers a huge portion of an absurd cost which is only so absurd because of basically a corrupt cost inflation feedback loop between insurers and providers that you end up personally paying prices that are absurd to all but the very well off.

    It ends up just being further cost requirements to basically exist, which means if you are poor fuck you, die.

    Oh you want to challenge your insurance and force them to actually cover something?

    Hire a lawyer! Those are cheap!



  • Pack 100 of compsognathus (compsognathii?) says hello.

    Not sure how out of date the research is, but in the original Jurassic Park book, there are roaming packs of these things that overwhelm and kill people.

    Though the on screen scene of them killing people happens in the second movie, it actually takes place in the first book IIRC… anyway, they’re basically depicted as land piranhas.

    (Again, IIRC, Jurassic Park the book basically gets set in motion with a family of tourists being eviscerated by a pack of compys… but the first movie dropped this from the story, then when the second movie comes out they basically use this scene as the intro for that, but its on a different island and used to set off an entirely new story?)



  • Yeah, its infuriating that punk has become a suffix.

    There is nothing punk about steampunk, dieselpunk, atompunk. They are just fantasy technological scenarios / art styles.

    Cyberpunk has an both a recognizable aesthetic and a whole lot of political, social and philosophical views baked into it. You get the punks in cyberpunk as either a direct ideological opposition to the power of corporations, or as an indirect result of said corpos creating a hell world for 99% of people.

    There is nothing inherently rebellious about worlds or characters within worlds with more prevalent / advanced steam or diesel or nuclear power.

    Solarpunk arguably has some actual punk to it if you actually try to follow the idea of personally minimizing your fossil fuel usage, but mostly its a utopian or post-dystopian setting / art style.

    Its now like -gate being affixed to any kind of publicized controversy.

    Most people do not understand what Watergate even was and why it was so significant.




  • I’m from the wet side of the PNW and we have all of those as well, excepting possibly northern widows, I’ve not heard of those.

    I’ve spent weeks in cabins and lived in houses and apartments all over WA.

    Every single time I have ever seen a spider in a house or apartment, its been something that is totally harmless to humans.

    Out in the boonies? Sure, thats where you’ll actually run into some dangerous things.

    That being said, I’ve never lived in MN, perhaps dangerous spiders are a more serious threat in urban/suburban areas, and yeah, climate change fucks up everything.

    Something absolutely absurd started happening a few years ago, right in the middle of Seattle, like 2 blocks from a main road:

    Coyotes.

    I’ve seen coyotes out in the foothills occasionally, on trails far from cities, in the brush on the east side of the state.

    But… basically that heat wave a few years back, and wildfires and droughts managed to drive a population of coyotes into residential areas of Seattle, likely hunting the rabbits.

    That was pretty stunning to me.




  • Unless I am mistaken, aren’t basically every kind of Tarantula you can keep as a pet non venomous?

    I’m the kind of person that’ll take basically any kind of spider save a black widow and just put it outside while my gf is screaming at 115db to murder it and will then be angry with me for 3 days that I didn’t.

    Poor tarantula.

    Oh right, this ‘politician’ is an amazing argument for lowering housing costs such that people can afford studios instead of living with crazy ‘main character’ people like this.


  • Its possible they could last long enough for some kind of rescue mission, assuming they were in the cabin and not blown out into space.

    Fairly sure the payload bay does not have windows.

    Or they may have been able to rendezvous with the ISS and live there, assuming the damage was only to the shuttle bay.

    They’d certainly die if they attempted to re enter the atmosphere.

    Though, judging by how small the earth is… they seem to be significantly higher in earth orbit than any shuttle missions I am aware of?








  • This stems from the fact that, so far, the earliest dated written fragments we have from what is now the New Testament are some of the writings of Paul.

    Paul was not one of the Apostles EDIT: Disciples, and it seems possible that, after persecuting earlier, existing Christians, he could have basically had a stress induced psychotic break and hallucinated the vision of Jesus that he had, then converted.

    Thing is though, Christians would have to … you know exist and already be a real thing first, for that to make sense.

    It does explain why Paul does not mention some very key elements of the narrative of the Gospels: He just had not actually read about or heard of those parts yet.

    This creates some theological problems down the line, and some of those problems were ‘remedied’ by what a good deal of scholars and historians believe to be forgeries… chapters of the Bible that modern Christians attribute to Paul, but do not seem to actually have been written by Paul.

    It is also possible to some of the empty tomb accounts in some of the Gospels as similar kinds of trauma induced hallucinations.

    Mark famously originally just ends with an empty tomb, and nobody said anything about this because they were scared… and then the last bit of verses giving Mark a more satisfying ending have been shown to be added … decades later.


  • Gatorade and its electrolytes are better than water for recharging and rehydrating after or during significant physical activity.

    Basically, you are correct that an appropriate amount of salts helps you rehydrate more quickly.

    You know what is even better for most people, if your daily caloric intake is not at Olympic levels?

    Pedialyte. No where near as much sugar thrown in, more Vitamins, less carbs.

    This article goes into it a bit more:

    https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/pedialyte-vs-gatorade#bottom-line

    Basically, Gatorade’s additional sugar and carbs mean that it makes sense if you are highly active, have a considerably above average physique, or actively drinking it mid work out or other strenuous activity.

    For more average people, pedialyte probably makes more sense.

    Especially if you are going to pick one to replace water.