Chloramines are disinfectants used to treat drinking water. Chloramines are most commonly formed when ammonia is added to chlorine to treat drinking water.

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So, Terry Bernadino?

Currently playing MGSV on PC. I never got into the metal gear franchise because I wasn’t willing to keep up with the play stations. But it’s a surprisingly good game. A little fan-service here and there (cough, Quiet) but the gameplay is solid. I like how they tie achievements with in-game rewards, things like rescuing a certain prisoner unlocks a new type of weapon or something. It’s a good motivation to complete all the optional parts of the missions. And the missions are replayable, which gives you plenty of opportunity to get the best ratings and rewards.

Whether humanity will survive really is an open question. Despite all the rhetoric and protests and promises the annual CO2 emissions have continued to increase steadily. It’s wishful thinking to imagine that we are going to do anything about this before the consequences of our choices force our collective hand. Any report or scientific paper that includes a phrase like ‘there is still time’ is just not accepting the reality of the situation. A year ago James Hansen published Global Warming in the Pipeline where he wrote “Equilibrium global warming for today’s GHG amount is 10°C”. A 4–7 degree rise over 5000 years ended the last ice age, Ocean levels rose 400 feet. A 10 degree rise in a century or so would be way too fast for most species to adapt. It would inundate the majority of our most populated cities. I could go on, but I get depressed writing about this.

Nothing is ever 100% safe. Risk assessment is a big part of federal regulations. (See refs at JSTOR and NCBI) One of the key questions is what is the cost/benefit balance for a product. Kitchen knives are hazardous, but it’s very hard to cook without them, so they balance heavier on the benefit side despite the risks. Radithor is all risk and no benefit, so it was an easy decision to ban it.

The point ContrarianTrail was making is that there is some risk in nearly everything. People have died as a result of garden tools, cars, house pets, shaving, buckets, toothpicks, baseball, etc. Here’s a list. The part he left out is the cost/benefit analysis. I prefer pull cords on my blinds, and I find the new regulations annoying. But I guess some federal agency decided they aren’t so useful that it’s worth the risk to children. And it would be selfish to be all upset about it if it saves some child’s life.

I played Satisfactory for a while. Got a little past oil extraction and power generation. I think I was doing it wrong, though. I only made one actual factory, like with a floor and such, and it was one of those little templates you can design and make several of. Most of the stuff I built was just scattered about the map with miners and constructors and smelters just laying about everywhere and conveyer belts connecting them. It felt disorganized and, well, unsatisfying. The transport tube (the futurama style one) was fun, but most of the rest of it just felt like work. That and the fact that there was no provided reason to do any of it caused me to just lose interest after a while. I think the Christmas gift construction tree, where the last item required like 10,000 gifts collected was kind of discouraging too.

What keeps you motivated to improve, rebuild, and progress in the game? And what am I missing?

Although he was married briefly, and many years later his former wife was moved to state, peculiarly, that he was an “adequately excellent lover,” it is clear from all available evidence that sexuality, procreation, and the human body itself were among the things that scared him the most.

He was also frightened of invertebrates, marine life in general, temperatures below freezing, fat people, people of other races, race-mixing, slums, percussion instruments, caves, cellars, old age, great expanses of time, monumental architecture, non-Euclidean geometry, deserts, oceans, rats, dogs, the New England countryside, New York City, fungi and molds, viscous substances, medical experiments, dreams, brittle textures, gelatinous textures, the color gray, plant life of diverse sorts, memory lapses, old books, heredity, mists, gases, whistling, whispering—the things that did not frighten him would probably make a shorter list…. The things that did not scare him generally are absent from his work.

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Enshittification, once again. Cory Doctorow’s latest talk at DefCon about it was pretty good.

Subnautica. It’s not long but I enjoyed every minute of it. And the requirements for a ‘perfect game’ on steam aren’t too difficult.

And making heme is what they are proud of at impossible foods. https://impossiblefoods.com/heme

“Heme is what makes meat taste like meat. It’s an essential molecule found in every living plant and animal – most abundantly in animals – and something we’ve been eating and craving since the dawn of humanity. Here at Impossible Foods, our plant-based heme is made via fermentation of genetically engineered yeast, and safety-verified by America’s top food-safety experts and peer-reviewed academic journals. Watch more below.”

Adam Smith stands to speak as the ship rocks with the waves.

“The creation of wealth is what matters. If an industrious businessman wants to use available resources to create goods which he can then sell in the market he should be applauded for producing something of value. No one should be allowed to stifle industry.”

“But how can you not see what harm you are causing? By promoting this naked greed you endanger us all. Every day the planks of our ship grow thinner. And for what? So that some baron can collect more of our coin?”

“Tecumseh, you are a simple minded savage. The items for sale in the market today: toothpicks, wooden spoons, hair combs, if they didn’t have more value in that form then nobody would pay for them. The planks, the mast, and the deck boards of the ship must all have less value than the products made from them. The market has decided it is so.”

“This market is destroying the very foundation of our life. Even now the water is knee high in the bilge and rising faster than we can bail it out. We lived in harmony with the ship for years. But ever since you established the market your ‘businessmen’ have been tearing the ship apart. How can we continue to live if the ship is sinking?”

A loud crack as one of the spars snaps sending splinters raining down on the deck. Several well dressed passengers scramble to collect the pieces.

“You see, Tecumseh, even on a collapsing ship there is opportunity for profit. You can’t deny the genius of the market. And if the ship starts to sink the market will substitute another, better ship, as soon as it is profitable.”

“Sigh. Only when the last mast has snapped, the last plank has broken, and our ship is underwater will you realize that coin will not keep you afloat.”

Some things I’ve learned about the olympics from the NBC coverage in the US.

There really not much happening there most of the time. So they have to fill the time with shots of US gymnasts drinking from water bottles and sitting around in their chairs, or of US runners standing around in the hallway before the race.

I’ve heard rumors of other sports, but it seems the only ones that really are going on are the ones that US competitors are dominating.

The US is the best at everything. Other countries make mistakes, but US competitors are always flawless and in the front.

There is a lot of beach volleyball happening all the time.

It’s well established in the Star Wars universe that all you need to create gravity is a floor. Take, for example, any scene from within any of the space ships. Gravity is never a problem.

Of course, a deep chasm also seems to create gravity, as seen in the first movie when Luke and Leia swing from one ramp to another to escape the stormtroopers chasing them.

Regardless, it’s easy to see from the blueprints that the layout is stacked like your first image.

Edit: upon closer examination it turns out it’s both. The plans show three ‘concentric surface decks’ that apparently work like your second image. So I guess the answer is ‘it depends on where you are in the death star’, and, I guess, which way ‘down’ is where you are.

I can’t tell if this is simply saying that you have the right to self-defense, which is obvious and agreed upon pretty much everywhere in the US, or whether it’s saying that, since we’ve all agreed not to kill each other if those guys want to murder us then we have the right to murder them. If it’s the later then either you don’t understand irony or you don’t really care about the ‘social contract’.

It sometimes feels like folks on this community are looking forward to a cultural civil war just as much as the right-wing maga nuts.

I get that this is posted on the Antifascism community. But it seems more than a little bit bloodthirsty. And it feels to me like the folks in the comments calling out for hunting/murdering Nazis haven’t really thought that policy through to its logical conclusion. Maybe some are just fantasizing or virtue signaling, but assuming enough are willing to pick up a rifle and pull the trigger where does that lead us? Who decides whether someone is a Nazi? Do they have to be wearing a swastika? Is it enough to just express your contempt for a group that’s a US minority? How much contempt?

“That’s easy, just shoot the ones with swastikas”

Okay, so you show up to a flag waving Nazi rally and start shooting. They probably start shooting back. The cops get involved and shoot everybody (well maybe they don’t shoot some of the Nazis). Then what happens? Antifa gets officially labeled as a domestic terrorist organization. All the news outlets talk about how terrible the group is. The FBI starts looking into everyone subscribed to this community, etc.

“No, everyone knows Nazis are bad. We’d be supported not condemned.”

Alright, suppose somehow it’s a revolution and the left is rounding up Nazis and guillotining them with full support of cable news. At that point everyone says they aren’t a Nazi. How do you decide? This one talks like a racist, that one lives in an all-white neighborhood, that one is rich. You’re walking really close to the line of becoming fascists yourself. France went through a revolution like that about 150 years ago. There’s a good article about it on the anarchist library website. I think the takeaway is that a reign of terror is still a reign of terror even if the ‘good guys’ are in charge.

How about, instead of bloody murder, we expunge the Nazis from the police forces, establish a more socially just system of regulations in the US, and make sure anybody who acts like a Nazi gets punished for it by the state? Don’t you think that would be a more effective solution?

Hmm. Do I need to take a shower yet, or can I go another day?

Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale

Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don’t Create The Torment Nexus

Alex Blechman

Maybe a relationship will just come to you and maybe it won’t. A lot of the advice you get in these kind of threads is like ‘just be yourself’ or ‘don’t be desperate’ or ‘be comfortable on your own’ or whatever. None of that ever worked for me. I was never able to just be myself or be on my own without feeling lonely and desperate and that made me seem weird and off-putting to potential partners. Honestly it took recognizing my mental issues, getting serious about finding a solution to them, and working on them for a while before I was able to act like a normal human around someone I was attracted to. In the end what worked for me was a combination of Buddhist meditation and some kind of therapy. But everyone is different. YMMV.

On the other hand maybe you are perfectly comfortable in yourself, are handsome and charming, and have no trouble talking with women, but you just met some women with issues of their own. If so, just try to get out more and meet more people. In that case it’s a numbers game and eventually you’ll find the right one.

Ok, I’ll be that guy. Yes, the kid actually did win all these matches. Though it’s not clear whether the old guys were masters, grandmasters, or just old.