ragebutt

A lot of the people running the show still had a pretty decent amount of exposure to lead thanks to automotive fuels. Leaded gasoline didn’t start to get phased out of US fuel system until 1975 (phasing it out of regular octane) and wasn’t full phased out until 1996.

It was actually such a major source of lead exposure for children that it has led (ha) to a hypothesis that a sharp decline in crime rates beginning in the 1990s is directly attributable to the phaseout of leaded gasoline. Of course other things may have influenced this or even caused it like increased access to abortion services, social welfare programs, etc. it is also linked to higher cognitive functioning since then; new kids are more smarter

Elon musk left South Africa in 1989 and they didn’t phase it out until 2006. He had much more recent exposure though someone like Trump, born 1946, had much longer exposure (at least 29 years before the levels started to drop significantly)

fun fact: despite the above leaded gas still remains in the us. It is allowed for racing nonsense though nascar stopped using it in 2007 and F1 in 1992 said no more than 5mg/l of lead, and at this point they claim to use unleaded fuels.

BUT the big one is airline fuel. Every day constantly passing over all of us are thousands of airplanes spewing neurotoxic lead. And the crazy thing is lead in gasoline isn’t some magic thing; it’s an octane booster, an anti knocking agent. There are many other ways to achieve this, though ethanol is not suitable for planes. The reason planes still use lead is because of cost and the complexity of getting FAA approval of a potential alternative fuel. The incentive to do so is not that high because airplane fuel is ultimately a very small portion of total fuel sales.

A gigantic toxic nightmare above us and we tolerate it because it’s easy to just not think about it and it would potentially cost a little bit to not have fucking lead in our air

A sleep test if you have the resources (health insurance and such). Most common cause for apnea is obesity but there are other potential factors like issues with tonsils, sinuses, septum, turbinates, and/or adenoids that wouldn’t require a cpap but other things like surgical correction

Additionally lifestyle changes can make a huge impact especially if it is related to obesity

Nowadays you often can do sleep tests for things like apneas at home, you usually dont have to go to sleep centers. It can be worth it to make your dad aware of this. Ive had older clients who were very avoidant of sleep studies before they found this out because before a few years ago it was far more common that sleep studies were a much bigger pain in the ass. Youd have to go to the sleep center and sleep there, hooked up to a bunch of machines, uncomfortable bed, not necessarily on your sleep schedule. Now thats really just reserved for certain sleep issues like narcolepsy and severe insomnia

if you can’t get a sleep test and cpap the old school way to manage apneas was to sew a pocket to the back of a tshirt that held a tennis ball, which would force you to sleep on your side. Not ideal but better than dealing with the health impact of an apnea. Not to inspire fear but apneas are terrible for your health. They cause you to wake up briefly and return to sleep.

This happens fast enough for you to not remember and as a result the “cycle” of sleep is interrupted. If the apnea is severe this can happen many times per hour or even per minute, causing you to never get restorative sleep. You “sleep” all night but feel exhausted all the time because you never enter the deeper cycles. Luckily it’s not an immediate danger at all but after years or decades the effects compound just like having a consistent extreme lack of sleep would

There are hdmi mods for basically all pre hdmi consoles including n64 but they tend to be fairly pricey

N64 has pixelfx retrogem which has 2 models for 100 and 190 dollars, the more expensive model has 4k and additional scalers, the cheaper model is 720p

N64advanced v2 is open source, 4k output, and pricing depends on the group buy you can get in, 150-250

Highspeedido is on AliExpress, 720p output, and is 40-50

There’s also a few that aren’t sold anymore that you can sometimes find on ebay for $$$

we rebootin companies now

In this instance at least the regulatory process is simple though

Say what you mean, mean what you say.

We can maybe have some nuance over lifetime being the lifetime of the consumer buying it vs the lifetime of the company although that has to be carefully worded to prevent situations like this. But it’s probably somewhat fair that if your company completely fails the product is done. This should be clear that the company has to completely fail, not a “apple sells lifetime subscription and decides the product isn’t viable so they kill it” situation or “subsidiary company of google fails and google could easily partially refund the lifetime subscription fees as the parent company” situation

But I would argue it’s not as much about legal complexity here but about regulatory capture. There are really two forces on this issue: businesses looking to keep a lack of regulation and continue utilization of vague misleading language, and consumers that would benefit from regulation against said language.

The businesses are aligned, obviously have vast resources, can influence propaganda on the matter, and can lobby lawmakers directly.

The consumers are fragmented because of the propaganda and a lack of education on the issue, they don’t have strong representation among lawmakers, they don’t have resources, etc. they are scattered unless someone decides this specific issue is annoying enough to get up in arms about and make some kind of action network over, gathering people and support. While it is a serious problem there are just so many serious problems facing consumers and Americans right now, so why focus on this?

And thus, our regulatory bodies yet again fail us

Man I miss going on irc

I’m sure people still use irc but are there actually like active channels anymore or is it all just dead channels filled with idle people who have had mirc open out of habit for 30 years

Like when I go on soul seek chatrooms that’s all it is now. Ages ago they used to be constant discussion and now it’s like one person will say slurs once every day or two and then just nothing

That shouldn’t matter

If we had the most basic of regulatory practices over businesses in this country, especially the tech industry, this practice simply wouldn’t be allowed. Even the bullshit doublespeak “life of the product” version

Lifetime means lifetime. If you can’t honor that don’t offer it. If you go back on it you should be harshly penalized.

Looking at you t mobile, rolling stone magazine, filmora, Dropbox, salesforce, mcafee, etc

This should also include if you remove features from lifetime subscriptions and make them contingent on paid monthly subscriptions (looking at you adobe, Evernote, and probably plex in 3-5 years)

I mean to be clear I don’t do it. The only computer I run xp on is an old tektronik mainframe that only has lan access and needs proprietary software to work that only runs on xp

I don’t really count that though since i literally only use it for the one app that allows the logic analyzer and oscilloscope cards to work

I mean if you’re dead set on it you can get a lot of modern things running on windows xp, chromium browsers, dx10/11 games, discord, etc. it’s a nightmare and you’ll have a ton of headaches (especially with the dx10/11 stuff, apparently, I’ve never tried any of this) but it’s possible

Americans have put their lives on hold like 30 times in the past 25 years

As others have said you shouldn’t need to use chemical drain cleaners that often

When you do need to use them you basically just need sodium hydroxide (lye) which is produced by many manufacturers and is basically the same regardless of who makes it

If you get the food safe kind you can not only clean your drains, you can also make really good bagels and pretzels.

Cooool

I recently played through 2 and true colors. I have the lost records game too. I haven’t gotten dual exposure yet because I know if I’m patient enough it will be free