But it does influence people, if only subconsciously.

The point of it isn’t to say “look at this weak old man, he could never have committed these acts”.

It’s to hopefully sway a jury into thinking that they’re so old they’re not a threat, and maybe create a deadlock. Then, if that fails, then to hopefully garner a lighter sentence, for much the same reason, that they’re no longer a threat.

It is bullshit, neither of the two you used as examples had any mobility issues before arrest, and any that they might have developed afterwards wood not be as severe as they made it look. Mind you, the stress, the physical demands of processing, the extra travel and such could cause someone to have extra problems. My crippled ass could barely walk to the car on my cane after the last time I got called for jury duty. There’s a lot of walking around on concrete floors and sitting in horrible seats at courthouses. It’ll fuck your back up.

But you aren’t going from walking without a cane to needing a walker in the amount of time that passed. Not without a damn big reason.

But think about it, when you see some old dude hobbling along, is your first thought really going to be “I bet they’re faking it”? Even if you know they are faking it, that image of a weak person plays on prejudices of thought that damn near everyone has. Look at the idiots that scream about “boomers” this and “boomers” that, like everyone over a certain age is flawed. We all have prejudices of thought, assumptions, and it’s damn near impossible to completely control them and ignore what our eyes see.

You might achieve that when it’s fresh in your mind, but the next time you go to the store and see some old lady on a cane, are you really going to be thinking about how she could be doing yoga and pulled a muscle; or are you going to be thinking about how that poor old lady is in rough shape because she’s old, and that’s all you can see until/unless you stop and think about it? Most people, they never see an old person as a threat.

Man, I barely have any gray in my beard, and I’m a fucking sasquatch. I’ve still got arms bigger than some people’s thighs, and just by me using a cane (and I need one, if I want to not fall when my leg gives out), people react very different than when I’m leaned up against a wall with my cane strapped across my back. On cane, they just look away as fast as they can. With it not in use, I get suspicious looks, and adults hurrying away, and the occasional security person asking why I’m just standing against the wall.

I’ve seen it hundreds of times when I’m out with people from my disability support group. You let my buddy Spider get out of his scooter, and him being a small guy with a twisted spine on a cane is still not going to have people walking around him the way they do with the scooter. They’ll give him more room, but not the same. The guys and gals that have less visible disabilities have their own issues with people treating them different when they’re using a mobility aid compared to when they aren’t.

It’s a thing. We all build up these links in our heads, associations with things we’ve experienced that we use to evaluate new things. Ignoring those etched in patterns is hard, even when you’re aware of it.

It’s not going to work perfectly, or every time, but it does happen

I mean, that happens. Bomb makers die when they screw up. The guys that make fireworks sometimes do, and they work under very strict guidelines.

But, even with the kind of home brew, low speed stuff that you can do in your garage, it’s still very dangerous. Shit, you fuck up making some stuff, and even if it doesn’t explode, you can end up in the hospital.

Even dumb shit like dry ice bombs can mess you up bad.

And it isn’t like experience is a guarantee of safety because experience can lead to complacency. And that’s when people really fuck up.

The kind of people that are making bombs as insurgents though, they tend to have a “recipe” of sorts, a way of building their preferred device. That methodology tends to be highly reproducible. They’ll have their supplies, and tools all set up to minimize fuckery. The same thing, built the same way every time, you tend to have less chance of making simple mistakes.

It’s hard to describe how to maximize safety without describing how to build a device, and fuck that noise. But the key is to be precise, and follow the same steps every time.

Now, the pros, like the dudes doing demolition, or mining, they’re usually dealing with stable supplies. They don’t really make bombs in the way I think you mean, though it’s effectively the same methodology to prevent error. You have a plan, you stick to it, and you don’t deviate from safety standards.

If you go digging through old newspapers and such, there’s all kinds of idiots getting hurt trying to blow shit up in their back yard (sometimes literally in their back yard, not even somewhere away from other people). We had an idiot that tried to mix up some gunpowder and metal shavings to make his own fireworks this summer. Took off his hand, and last I heard was still needing surgeries from where he fucked up his face. No idea what he was doing exactly, but it’s an example of idiots idioting and bad things ensuing.

You mean like a cuirass?

You made a mistake.

You engaged with someone that wasn’t asking in good faith. The idea itself is so stupid that snagging engaging with it isn’t worth the time and effort.

The only useful response to that question is “are you really that stupid, or do you think I am?”

Eh, I am an asshole.

Friends are hard to make. It’s even harder to find good friends. The key is to move through life open to the possibilities as they come.

Given enough time, and the willingness to be a friend, regardless of whether or not it works out at any given time, you’ll find people. Might take years, might get lucky at any time.

No bullshit, the real secret to having friends is being one. You’ll meet people at work, at stores, at events, wherever. If you comport yourself as the kind of person you would like to have as a friend, it is inevitable that you’ll meet someone that wants that kind of friend too. From there, you do your best, and let them do their best, and see where it goes.

It can be harder the more unusual you’re desired friend traits are. But that’s not the point.

It’s okay to “fake it til you make it”, btw. If you want a friend that’s compassionate, but you’re more of a stiff individual that isn’t moved by others, you might need to learn compassion by faking it. But as long as you’re acting with compassion, you’ll eventually either learn it for real, or become so good at mimicking compassion that it becomes the same thing. And that’s true for almost any trait. Hard to fake raw intelligence, or being tall, but stuff that’s behavioral? Absolutely possible to pick it up as you go along.

Be the kind of person you want in your life

Well, the problem is that the kind of brace you’d want has to be shaped by hand right now.

3d printing will likely get there eventually, but turning out a chest/back brace that’s not only effective but wearable is as much an art as anything else.

I’m not sure where someone without training would get started. Orthotists and prosthetists are specialists; orthotics is a master’s program, and that’s the kind of endeavor your desired brace is.

It’s doable for sure; though whether it’s practical to recreate the decades of research and experimentation that led to where orthotics is today is a different issue.

Iirc, you’d start with thermoplastics, I can’t recall the ones that are used. But they’re shaped by mold, taken from the patient directly, then adjusted during fittings so that there’s no/less issues with long term use. And you can’t just skip the kind of shaping needed. Afaik, nobody is printing orthotics yet. Casts, yes, though that’s fairly new; but those are short term use, so don’t require the same kind of fitting.

I’ve seen, and been present during fittings for, braces for scoliosis, which is going to be similar to the kind of orthotic you’d need.

If you decide to go the home brew route, you’d want to start with a plaster cast of your torso. Best way to go, so you can have a solid form to shape whatever material you go with.

TPU was a common material back when I was still a caregiver, though that has been over a decade ago now, so it may have been supplanted by other thermoplastics.

Carbon fiber was starting to be used back then, but it tends to be too rigid for applications like a torso piece. Maybe with enough foam in between you and the rigid parts, but at that point, why not just go with something less expensive, and more flexible? Iirc, CF was being used for things like leg and ankle orthotics where they’d be bearing weight and need the extra rigidity.

I know that there was CAD based modelling and fast prototyping being done for orthotics, but it was mainly useful in prosthetics, where they could make reproducible units that would then be customized.

Tbh, I would try finding an orthotist irl to meet with and brainstorm. Even if they can’t/won’t help you make your own gear, they’ll likely still warn you off of really bad ideas.

That’s at least in part because you say you have little interest in medical or anatomical study, and that’s what you need if you want your end device to do the job you want. You just can’t fine tune a torso brace without understanding the musculoskeletal system in that area, and what you’ll need to avoid doing.

Like, the curvature of the spine. It may seem like you could just mold your body and make the brace conform to that. But, if the goal is to give support to part of your body, the brace has to apply pressure to your body applying it at the wrong place, or in the wrong way could make things worse. So if you don’t have the time/interest/willingness to gain the level of understanding of anatomy to achieve that, you’ll be better off consulting with someone that already has that knowledge. It’s kinda like self surgery, there’s only so much you can do blind without causing problems worse than what you’re trying to fix.

Well, I had been taught about Munich and Ribbentrop in public school, both during standard history classes (though they were only mentioned in passing during US history, as part of the background of what happened before the U.S. joined in)

The famine, I didn’t hear about until maybe fifteen to twenty years ago. Can’t pin it down exactly because of shit that was going on in my life at the time, but it was something I read about in one of the books on ww2 that covered events outside of Europe and the Pacific theater.

And I’ve seen many a debate about the degree to which Great Britain was responsible for it.

But, I’d have to say that none of them are exactly high on the list of what the average person remembers about the era. Most people I’ve even mentioned Molotov-Ribbentrop to had no idea what it is. They maybe remember hearing the words in school, but didn’t pay enough attention to link them to anything. The Munich agreement is pretty much unfamiliar to anyone that didn’t have an interest in ww2 beyond high school history. And the famine is outside of what most people that do have an interest care about. The only books I have on the subject of ww2 don’t mention the famine at all.

Ww2 is far enough in the past now that most of us no longer know anyone that fought in the war. It’s passed into the kind of history that’s “dead”. Even though we all, everywhere still live with the ripples in world events that started then, it might as well be aztec history as far as the typical person here in the US is concerned. Even my generation, that had grandparents that were alive during the war, or fought in the war, the interest is largely no greater than surface level.

And I’m not sure that the details like the two pacts really do matter now. They’re not anything that affects us still, unlike a lot of of events of the war. IMO, the famine is more important since it was a much broader event. Depending on how you look at it, the famine shaped a lot of events for India as a whole in ways that neither agreement did for Europe.

In general, it isn’t about waiting for prices to drop, though that’s definitely a part. It’s more about avoiding early adoption, imo. Waiting until there’s some degree of information about the game that isn’t marketing, then deciding.

The goal is to make sure the game is stable, that it’s something you actually want to play, and avoiding hype based playing. If the price drops, or there’s a sale, that’s icing on the cake.

In the case of visual novels, I don’t really think it applies. The only thing you’ll really avoid by waiting is any bugs that need fixing, and they aren’t prone to a lot of bugs that break the enjoyment of the story. It does happen, but it isn’t like the usual mobile game bugfest at launches.

Eh, disgusting is subjective, but there’s never only one person with a given opinion, particularly when it comes to food.

Uncooked meat can actually be delicious though, so it’s kind of a double subjective lol.

While it isn’t anything I have regularly, I tend to favor some steal cuts “blue”, which is essentially uncooked at all in the middle. Steak tartare is uncooked. Sashimi exists, and is amazing. Then there’s stuff like ceviche that’s not truly raw, but isn’t cooked with heat.

The list of raw meat foods could keep going, it’s not an uncommon thing.

Beyond that, you can’t really go by photographs for whether or not something actually matches visually. Raw meat and cured meats often do look similar in color, but not in texture. Not that color really matches, but it’s usually close enough to fool the eye depending on lighting and the film/sensor.

Again though, whether or not a pile of raw meat would be disgusting is indeed something that you’ll find plenty of people on either side of. And you’d likely find people that see this picture and think it looks raw, at least at first glance (it really doesn’t once you pay attention to the variations in color across the slices).

There really isn’t much in the way of empirical evidence regarding this. It would be difficult to set up studies and experiments to even get to get that evidence.

So, you’re stuck with anecdotal info.

On that level, absolutely. I did health care as my main job from 92 until 2008. Nurse’s assistant.

During that time, my two biggest patient bases were geriatric and hospice. People that were dying, in other words.

The patients that had no dementia lasted longer than the ones that did, in terms of time from needing an NA to keep them cared for to time of death. The ones that had a goal, a thing they wanted to see happen, or to do, absolutely did better not only in terms of time, but in how they managed their life until they died.

Something as nebulous as “will”, that we don’t even have a way to quantify at all is difficult to impossible to credit with anything at all. But we know that the mind and body influence each other. But I am convinced that we have some ability to maintain our lives to some degree in extremis. The only question is how much, and how much of that is individual.

Looking back at all of it, things blur, but there were so many patients with terminal cancer that just didn’t die while moving towards a goal, that died within days of that goal being met. And it really didn’t matter what that goal was. Could be something as minor as seeing crocuses bloom again, to something like seeing their child married or graduated. But it happened so fucking often it’s a little scary.

I can answer for my wife! She said three folded, when it’s our normal tp, Charmin. Two extra for other brands.

That’s all it takes with her configuration to be dry. I’ll vote on the comments, but since she gave more than a number, and it was variable, figured that might help too.

Fwiw, I make sure to give things an extra squeeze with a few pieces myself. Not a fan of late drips in my drawers. Pee, shake, paper & gentle squeeze. Then wash hands.

Yeah, Don comes up with some really interesting stuff. To the point that even if I can’t provide a response, I’m happy to see their name.

Ahhh, I don’t know about sea lioning, I’ve never seen you doing it.

That’s where you have someone “just asking questions”, and pretending not to know anything about the matter, while they’re pushing an agenda.

You’d have to ask a mod if that’s the part of rule 5 they’re dinging you for, but if you’ve been doing it, the comments are getting removed before I’ve seen them.

The other part of rule 5 is rage baiting, where you post something inflammatory just to get people riled up. Again, not something I’ve seen guy actually do, but I can understand how someone might read some posts that way.

We’ve interacted a decent amount over the last few months, and you do have a different way of presenting questions, and a different way of thinking, I wouldn’t interpret your posts or comments as trolling. You’re consistent, you engage in a friendly manner, and don’t go over the top when someone gives you a little grief. But, again, I may not be seeing everything.

My advice? Avoid politics entirely. Unless I miss my guess, that’s where you’re running into issues.

Brobdingnagian.

It’s a very big word that means very big.

It comes from Gulliver’s travels. The Brobdingnagians are giants, 12 times the height of humans. The word isn’t limited to that scale, but it’s definitely for things that are unusually large compared to us.

It’s the literal opposite of Lilliputian, which is from the better known race from “Travels” that are 1/12 our size.

It’s my absolute favorite word. Not just because it’s a literary reference but it’s fun to say. Brob ding nag ian. It just burbles off the tongue like a drunken stream stumbling among the rocks of its bed. And, it’s a big word that means big, which is just fun wordplay. Like the phobia of big words, hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, which was inevitable as soon as the idea of a phobia of big words was conceived.

My perversion level is 69.

I mean, if you don’t mind solar cell production also taking a hit, yeah.

It isn’t going to doom the world or anything, but if the mines aren’t recoverable in a fairly short amount of time, it will put a major crimp in solar deployment. That includes driving up the price (which, unless we’re willing to kick off a revolution, is a major factor in a capitalist system) of solar right when it’s really starting to be so much cheaper than fossil fuels that it can be a big shift for energy.

Short term, it isn’t going to do anything at all. Even a few months would be a blip. But if the mines take much longer than that, it’s a big problem for everyone.

And, as an added problem, you’ve got the people that do the work now displaced. They’ll only be able to just sit idle for so long before they have to move on to other jobs, likely well away from the area. So you have a talent drain involved that can ripple out just as badly as the production drop for solar.

I don’t think anyone legitimately gives a fuck about the semiconductor makers taking a hit financially (well, assuming it doesn’t fuck the rest of us down the road too), but the “tech” industry isn’t just companies churning out the next GPU model or AI scam.

Yup, mine are drm free.

That’s what she said

Yup. Totally real. It’s all essentially public information to begin with. You have to have an address for taxes, and deeds need names on them. So there’s a certain degree of information that’s going to be available to pretty much everyone, if they go looking.

Phone books were useful at one point, though less so for individuals. They’re still useful for local businesses.

I love the reference :)

But, since this is a bit of a writing prompt rather than something that can be answered factually, allow me some self indulgence to cook something up. I don’t plan to edit it beyond spelling and typos, it’ll be freeform.

Back in the primordial nothing, so dark and empty that darkness was scared of that dark, non-existence was boring.

The formless void took a good look at itself in the mirror that was it’s own non existent backside in what may be the greatest act of solipsism in history, and said “I need a friend”.

This thought echoed throughout itself, and a ripple failed to spread through the nothingness by turning it into something that could ripple. Thus was regular darkness born.

Darkness and nothingness looked at each other. There was nothing to see, so they decided to grope each other instead. This led, as often is the case, to a lot of disappointment and some degree of carnal juices splattering.

Those juices took root, growing in the dark and the void, binding them together for eternity. The fruit of those twining vines of dark matter jizz created matter.

And, as you know, matter matters. Matter seeks other matter, and the vine flowered. It pollinated itself, creating an infinite array of fruit. Those fruit were what we might call gods. Forces like gravity, electricity, nuclear interactions, essences of the things that would later become storm and sun and moon and furtive masturbation under a blanket so your mom can’t catch you, all the things we eventually worshiped.

Those original fruits were as incestuous as their forebears, banging off of each other until the first light arose from the darkness that birthed all.

Then they looked at themselves and realized they needed a bloody bath because you can’t spend infinite moments of non-time fornicating without getting a little messy.

Thus, they decided to organize the previously idle matter into clouds and juggle them until the bits stuck together.

Stars were born. Stars exploded and reformed into more stars, and planets.

All those explosions generated the kind of places where oceans could form.

By that time, the early gods had kept fornicating until there were more gods than any universe needs, and they were all quite filthy.

So they went to the various water bearing planets and bathed. And had orgies.

What they didn’t realize is that all the grime, jizz, and raw creative forces would turn the waters of some worlds into the nastiest, but most fertile soup ever imagined.

Those little jizz particles clung to each other, forming ever longer chains. Eventually, those chains met other chains and settled down to start families. Those families were the first cellular life forms.

Everything has been downhill since.