I’ll bite. I had a brother with special needs pass away a year ago next week. He was born with cerebral palsy, was blind, nonverbal, totally dependent on caretakers (myself, my siblings and mother, his nurses) for literally everything since he didn’t have functionally-independent motor control. We were told he’d live to 10, and he lived to 29; he was a bundle of joy and loved going out when he could. People would stare and kids would ask questions, but we loved sharing his story and my brother liked when people were curious about it.
But, his health started declining in 2014. He had several close calls, and we told doctors each time to try their best with the circumstances they were given. On more than one occasion, his nurses or our mother would actually be with the doctors during hospital stays to assist with him since he was case they didn’t have much experience in and didn’t want to make his issues worse. That said, he had a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) since he had a trache, and was brittle enough to die from chest compressions.
I prepped for my brother’s death countless times over 8 years. We all did. When he passed, we were so obviously distraught. But we were also relieved, in a way, that he wasn’t in pain anymore in the end. We let out our emotions that had been stored for those years, and the grieving process is still continuing. We all put our lives on hold to help him, and he just became our lives; our goal simply was to make him comfortable and let him know he was loved, knowing we couldn’t realistically do more. We spent years watching him in pain, watching him gradually lose his fervor and personality.
If you read this far, thank you. Not really sure what else to say, I just want to share this since it’s occupied my mind a lot.
TLDR; Preparing for the worst outcomes, coupled with grief, over prolonged periods of time really disrupt your emotions and outlooks. Needless to say, my family became stronger proponents of state-assisted suicide after this experience. It couldn’t be granted to my brother, but maybe we can help people in the future that coupd really use it. People understand, but not nearly as many are truly empathetic because they can’t be - they’ve never been through a similar experience. I simply ask that people try to be sympathetic rather than to pass judgement on others.
The one cause that I’d champion over all others is the right to have access to assisted suicide.
It’s really a travesty how we tend to hide just how grisly dying (and in some cases living) can be, and how those who most go through it inherently lose their voices to advocate for others not suffering the same drawn out fate.
I’m sorry you had to watch as it dragged out.
My SO is a doctor and the cases that most upset them are not the healthy patients that die, but helplessly watching the unhealthy patients that are forced to drag on living because of various factors.
We’re getting much better at unnaturally prolonging life, and while that’s a good thing in some cases where it can change outcomes for the better, there’s a very dark side of it as well that’s gradually getting worse.
Know that it’s not a topic that only you are thinking about, even if it’s unfortunately a topic that is too rarely discussed in public.
I’m deeply sorry for your loss. I am a hospital chaplain, so I have been with families as their loved ones have died in settings like this. If you want to talk to someone, I’m here for you.
I can’t relate nor comprehend your loss. You are so thoughtful and brave to put this out there. Sending lots of love your way.
I understand the weird feeling of relief when someone dies. I know that sounds terrible. My situation was not yours, so I’m not directly comparing. One of my parents had long, slow cancer. Watching them waste away, choosing to fight a symptom or not, was draining and difficult. In one sense, I enjoyed all of those final moments and would give anything to have more. I miss them dearly. However, I’m glad they’re not suffering. It was difficult at the end. Their quality of life was not good.
Yeah my dad smoked a pack a day his entire life and had started getting a lot of issues with his lungs and health in general. He died of a heart attack not so long ago and while I did grieve him I still feel that’s the best way he could have died
If only it hadn’t happened on my sister’s birthday but that’s life for you
So, in the fine tradition of using bananas for scale…
Bananas are slightly more radioactive than the background, due to potassium-40 content. So an informal unit of radiation measure in educational settings is the ‘banana-equivalent-dose’, which is about 0.1 microsieverts.
My particle spectrometer saw first light today, and I figure that I could use a banana to calibrate it. Then I noticed that K-40 undergoes a rare (0.001%) decay to 40Ar, emitting a positron. So not only is a banana a decent around-the-house radioisotope source, it’s also an antimatter source.
Truly a remarkable and versatile fruit.
Sorry, I understood that.
banned
Nice – you wouldn’t happen to have any ideas on how to differentiate positron annihilation, from the continuous distribution of β− energies caused by the more common decay mode, using only a PIN photodiode? I’m a bit stumped on this point and suspect it’s not possible. I probably need to do gamma spectroscopy but would really rather not.
Reverse the polarity of the bussard collectors and push the antimatter from the warp core into space. Collect this with a big test tube.
the trickery is to detect two gammas emitted simultaneously in exactly opposite directions
Yeah, that’s going to be too hard. I only have two SiPMs (besides the current detector) and they are expensive. I figured I could maybe rely on the gamma from the annihilation energy being a quite different energy than the gammas from the more common electron-capture.
However you raise a good point that that would not be a very good demonstration of positron annihilation at all – just evidence that it’s not the other 2 decay modes (and it would take ages to collect that evidence besides). Ah well. Got plenty of other science I can do instead.
Probably I’ll tackle something easier like checking for radon decay products in petrol.
that’s how real commercial PET scanners work, so it’s not too hard to make it work
‘Not too hard’ is a bit of a spectrum I guess ;)
I mean yeah, in principle I could cram textbooks for a few months (I know EE and SE pretty well, but particle physics only very basic stuff), order parts made at the factories I know, and would probably succeed eventually. More realistically I’d have to hire a university prof as a consultant to save time.
What I am really unable to construct is a powerpoint presentation that justifies that expense and labor to management :P
Especially in a cost-driven market (my company is in Vietnam). Often the parts for these things are export-controlled too, that can be a real pain. I’ve gotten irate phone calls from the US DoD before over fairly innocent parts orders – it’s not super fun. I recall it was some generic diode, I must have stumbled on something with a military application I wasn’t aware of. The compliance paperwork ended up costing me hundreds of dollars for 20$ in parts, too.
Anyway, if it was something I could just tack on to ongoing research projects, I could maybe get away with it as a marketing expense. It’s for a STEM program. It’s hard enough to convince management to take the risk on a nuclear & quantum module as-is! I can mostly get away with it because the locally-manufactured beta-detectors cost like 20$ per classroom.
This is some seriously dangerous information to be feeding me bro.
Now… to find magnets able to contain the antimatter…
Bananas are not typically very high on the danger scale except in exotic (and universally embarrassing) circumstances.
In fact, that’s another thing we could use bananas for scale with. Probably driving to work is equivalent to several kilobananas worth of danger daily :)
Anyway, I think the positron should be about 44keV if that helps you calibrate your magnets. The typical banana should produce something on the order of a positron every 10 seconds (although I used much rounding for the sake of brevity). Most commercial positron sources e.g. used in hospital PET scanners, are many times stronger than that!
exotic (and universally embarrassing) circumstances.
As someone who tried to push a banana up their ass in uni - it doesn’t work.
I/O error.
I understood the joy.
I wouldn’t say nobody, but I would say the people that dominate the area I’m trying to volunteer and work in.
I work in a healing center where there are 29 women on staff and 1 man.
I cannot get these people to understand that as much as they want to push forward social movements, which I very much agree with, this must not come at the expense of men who are trying to heal.
I will literally have counselors co-facilitating with me, who want to make every point about how women are oppressed, pushed down in the workforce, face issues.
I’m not in denial of those, but no man coming into a healing environment to work on themselves, be vulnerable, and explore their own journey, needs to hear how much men are shitty.
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It’s insane, I even made a complaint to the director who of course is a woman, and she effectively denied that it was happening or could happen.
I told her I don’t even want people not to think these things, everybody who is in their own place of trauma has to get their shit off their chest.
All I wanted was a place where men didn’t have to hear this crap.
And that’s being incredibly neutral in my opinion because there are a lot of opportunities for men to talk about just how insane and shitty women can be. But I don’t want to talk about those things, I just want them to stop shit talking men especially their own clientele.
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putting out the fire of gender inequality with oil
its interesting how when people are a majority they dont see the irony in their actions.
There are many jobs that I don’t bother to apply for despite knowing I’d excel and enjoy it, simply because I’m male. Many people aren’t comfortable with males in certain roles. Obviously the reverse is true and disproportionate but most people seem to be oblivious that men are oppressed too.
That’s an excellent point and it’s one of these elephants in the room that people can’t see.
Does anybody wonder why there’s virtually no male kindergarten teachers? Convicted before the crime as if women have never acted inappropriately towards children?! I mean for fuck sakes my own mother sexually abused me.
If you’ve ever known any male nurses, they will tell you the stories of being outnumbered 30 to 1 at minimum, and then facing constant sexual harassment, abuse, and career suppression because of their gender.
And my own story, I work in a system of power, the healing sector, which is dominated by women. And as the one guy they’re trying to do the right thing and serve men, we face nothing but abuse. It is driving me out.
Exactly. You can see this on various aspects of life. Racism, sexism, etc. Many use them as excuse to throw out the baby with the bath water.
Maybe not nobody but most…
The freedom and control and depth and enjoyment in using Linux. I know, I know, shut up I’m answering the question.
There was a question here recently about partitioning, and that got me thinking about inodes and really wanting to understand how data storage works. I went on a deep dive and learnt so much. I feel like I have a real deep understanding of how my system works now.
People don’t understand how wonderful it is to have mastery over things. Most people are just consumers of a thing. I do my own motorbike and car maintenance, and I know where my limits are in terms of skill and equipment. It’s so satisfying, it brings a sense of joy and accomplishment to my life.
I’m baffled that people just… don’t do this kind of thing. Don’t learn about metabolic pathways or companion planting or do careful research and just impulse buy… Like… Life must suck for them. It must be so dam boring to live life like that.
So yeah, I don’t think many people understand that.
I completely agree. And I’ve thought about this before. I can’t know what is going on in people’s heads but a lot of people just… don’t care. They have fun watching TV and playing popular video games. I think a large portion of people just don’t like learning things. Like it just annoys them. That’s what I’ve been led to believe. Which also makes it hard to get people into something I’m into. They’ll see I’m massively excited about something and the thing I’m into looks cool, so they’ll ask about it. Then whatever it is, be it some tech thing, a niche game, enthusiast grade flashlights, literally anything, turns out to require learning something, they just get turned off of it immediately. If someone wants to get into something I’m doing, I’ve started prefacing it with “this is not straight forward, are you okay with a bit of learning?” to avoid the disappointment and wasting their time. Usually the answer is no.
I think you hit the nail on the head there. Most people must not like learning.
You’re implying that learning how to do well at a video game involves no mastery or learning. I don’t think that’s accurate for all games.
I’m not saying that about all video games, I was trying to say that people who don’t like learning tend to gravitate towards whatever video games are popular at the time and don’t necessarily form complex opinions about different types of games or their tastes. Anything below surface level enjoyment that would require learning would be too much. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There’s nothing wrong with just loading up whatever new call of duty or fifa or something and just relaxing.
I guess I didn’t elaborate enough on that, I just said “popular video game” which didn’t get my meaning across. In short, I was saying those people also don’t put a lot of thought or effort into what entertainment they consume because whatever is easiest and most popular is good enough, because they don’t care to dive into learning about anything else.
I’m also not saying these games don’t have complicated and high skill ceilings. Most do.
Ah that makes more sense. Well said then.
I absolutely agree with you. Just yesterday evening, a friend asked me for help with his laptop. He was going to throw it away because the Bluetooth broke and he couldn’t use his favorite mouse.
Start, Settings, Bluetooth, turn on. There, I just saved you six hundred bucks.
It takes time and effort though, and usually that time and effort is spent elsewhere, especially if you’re an adult with two jobs and two kids. When you don’t have to think to better your mastery of your surroundings, making good hardware/software choices becomes increasingly disparate
I am in 100% agreement with you. I’m kind of in the same mindset in figuring out my homelab setup. Still learning docker and how volumes work 😢 haha
I’m in academia but I like to tinker with tech. So when my students or co-workers are surprised that I know so much about tech and how to navigate around most computer systems and troubleshoot (Mac/Windows/Linux) they are perplexed. They ask why I didn’t major in tech. I tell them that I majored in what I loved (history) and play with tech as a hobby to relax.
It’s why I selfhost my own Lemmy server. Gives me something to do with my hobby, keeps me focused on what’s new in tech, makes me learn to keep up with docker, Linux, editing CRON tabs etc.
Hey, I’m going through the same thing! I just got all my hardware in for my new server and I’m learning docker stuff right now. When do some difficult troubleshooting I’ll think of the random lemming I passed in the night that is doing something similar.
I’m the kinda guy who’s aware of how cool Linux and system mastery can be, but also the kinda guy who’s too lazy to care enough about maintaining a dual boot Linux/Windows system so every other year I’ll install a new Linux distro I haven’t used before only to do nothing with it and delete that partition of my hard drive within a month.
Last week I installed Ubuntu!
People don’t understand how wonderful it is to have mastery over things.
I have so many areas of my life that I think in terms of a skill, one of which is Linux, which I’m using now. Another is coffee/espresso, cycling, writing, etc.
Basically all hobbies. But the point is that I can develop mastery at my own pace in so many different areas. Sometimes, it’s slow and methodical, like coffee: I’ll try something new maybe every weeks. And sometimes it’s breakneck speed, like Linux…just do a deep dive and come out knowing a bunch of new stuff.
I fucking love being alive.
For me, it’s homebrewing. I think this can keep my interest long enough to get through winter depression. That’s good enough.
Eh, time and effort is limited depending on what the matter at hand is. Sometimes, you are required to just impulse buy or not live at all.
… And yet, I know exactly what you mean. There’s a class of people who just live with a phone for nearly everything they do 14 hours of their daily life, day in day out, 12 months a year. No rest whatsoever. And yet, the moment they find any resistance anywhere in their life, not even on something related to the phone, they just. dont. google. They literally refuse to help themselves and will just do what they know and refuse to do or even concern themselves with better.
I’ve seen a 20-year-old who, when asked to give in their homework on Moodle, like normal people do, instead… wrote everything on a Mac’s Notes app, took a photo and then pestered people for the teacher’s phone number so they could send the shitty photo of their homework on a very popular chat application. When told that this was not going to count, they just shrugged and stopped caring. Again, they used technology daily. That was objectively the stupidest and laziest “functional” person I’ve ever met, a true sheep, and I fear ever becoming like them during onset of dementia.
Yeah. My appreciation for Linux has recently grown a lot. It just seems like the Web and tech companies really are going to shit.
I’m old enough that being free from ads and spying is far more important to me then anything windows can offer.
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How does a single person commit mass suicide?
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That’s called murder-suicide.
That’s murder-suicide, a mass suicide is where multiple people all commit suicide at the same time
Well she has mass.
There’s a Yo Momma joke in there sonewhere
Cybersecurity, as a profession, is a fool’s errand.
Dedicated security staff exist solely to teach real engineers how to do their job, and the fact that such personnel exist is a catastrophic failure in computer science curriculum
It often seems cyber sec staff write reports on what should be done with no understanding of why and this leads to them fretting over things that are not actual vulnerabilities.
200 vulnerabilities, 2-3 that might actually be exploitable, and no prioritization. But look at these metrics!
I don’t know if I am right but I am of the opinion that Cybersecurity should be considered a mastery branch on top of basic engineering skills. But it feels like there are so many Cybersecurity experts who do not understand enough about the underlying engineering concepts to be effective in their role.
That’s the real problem. Cyber security experts know bare minimum about coding, and coders can tell. Their knowledge only goes skin deep when you ask them to clarify an exploit, or to give a workaround. So coders usually tend to brush them off.
It should be a collaborative effort, security and coding, where security can fully understand what is being built and offer potential secure workarounds
My PhD thesis
This is actually something that people are intended to understand by design.
Same lmaoooo
I’m sure other people out there understand this, but like I’m such a sinkhole right now. I lost my job a few months ago, and I am trying so hard to get another one but its just not happening. I feel like I’m always hitting like 2nd or 3rd place in the lineup. The interviews go well, get call backs, then boom last minute they went with the other candidate. And everyone is telling me I’ll be okay cause they say I’m smart and have skills.
But it doesn’t matter, I’m broke, my medications running out, I’m tired, I have bills, everything hurts, I have no insurance, and I don’t want to be a leech and already my boyfriend has picked up the rent and stuff, but like he has his own bills.
I just don’t understand, why does shit have to keep happening, can’t it just settle for like 5 minutes so u can catch up. I feel like I haven’t been able to breath in years, and there is something that everyone else is in on that my autism doesn’t let me understand, and I’m just… idk anymore.
I’m bleh.
hug
🫂
I learned recently how the James Webb Space Telescope is not orbiting around Earth but literally orbiting around an empty point in space. I don’t think I even quite understand it, but it’s really cool
For everyone who immediately thinks ‘it’s most likely orbiting a point within the earth,’ here’s a diagram to help:
Have no idea how this works… there is no gravitational pull at the L2 point, it’s just an empty point in space 🤨.
There is gravitational pull, from both the Earth and the Sun. The JWST is orbiting the “earth-sun system” if you will.
So they solved the Three Body Problem?
It’s not really a three body problem. For that, the gravity of the JWST would have to affect the other two bodies, but its gravity is negligible.
JWST isn’t going in circles, it’s orbiting the sun. If you look at it relative to that, then it looks more like a sine wave rather than going in circles. However from the perspective of the earth, it looks like it’s going in circles
You’re tell me bro. I need to research this more.
Maybe gravitational push-pull between planets and moons… IDK, it might be some sweet spot they discovered where gravitational forces do weird things, lol 😂.
This. There’s 5 Legrange Points for every 2 body system. They’re specific points around the 2 bodys where the gravity “cancels out”. In this case the 2 body system is the Earth and the Sun. JWST is sitting a million miles from Earth at L2.
Dammit, I was feeling proud that my first thought on how this could work lined up with the explanation… But I had assumed L2 (didn’t stop to think about the label) was where I now see L1 to be. I can wrap my head around L1 just fine, but how the heck is L2 the same? Or the others for that matter? Gonna stare at this for a while…
If you understand gravity wells, think of L1/L2/L3 as the shape of a saddle. If you’re right in the middle of the saddle it’s a pretty stable orbit, but if you get too close to any of the edges you fall right out of it. L4 and L5 are like the peaks of a mountain.
Also worth pointing out that only L4 and L5 are stable, L1/L2/L3 are only metastable where they require a bit of maintenance to stay there.
Another fun fact about Legrange Points: There’s a group of asteroids called the Trojan Asteroids. There’s technically two groups of these since they’re stuck in L4 and L5 in the Sun/Jupiter system.
Yeah but it’s not at the L2 point, it’s spinning in a circle around L2.
Yes, my point exactly. There is no mass at the L2 point, so how can it spin around it.
Others explained it though, it makes sense now 👍.
PS: What are enbies 🤨?
A Lagrange point or whatever?
Now I got that ZZ Top intro ear-worm…
I think they did that on purpose
I’ve been dealing with this back pain under my right shoulder blade for like 6 years or so and I can’t seem to figure out what’s causing it or how to treat it. I think it’s called “rhomboid pain”. I’ve seen a doctor once and physical therapist twice and the best they can do is recommend I stretch and go get a massage. Yeah thanks guys. Totally haven’t tried any of that.
I’ve always had a bad posture but it’s been getting better yet the pain has gotten worse so I don’t think it’s that. I doubt it’s weight lifting either because I had been lifting for almost 10 years before the pain appeared and taking a break doesn’t make it better and lifting heavy doesn’t make it worse. I don’t think it’s mountain biking either because the pain started before I bought my bike. I also got a new bed, tried different pillows, tried sleeping on my back, pillow under my knees. Sleeping on both sides with a pillow between my legs. Nothing. Also it’s rarely bad in the mornings but rather on the evenings.
Well - it’s still early to say, but I have a new idea what might be causing it and I think this might actually be it. I think it’s because I switched from a desktop computer to laptop. It perfectly correlates with the time I started experiencing this pain. I now sit for hours and hours every day with my right hand extended to reach the trackpad. It has to be that. I now switched to mouse and a keyboard and let’s see if that makes a difference. Only been doing that for few days now but I have zero pain right now.
I have had chest discomfort for decades. I’m 46 and it started when I was about 25. Doctors never found anything. I’m lucky to have good benefits and have been going to masseuses for over 10 years.
A couple of years ago tried a new masseuse mentioned the tightness and she found a huge lump of scar tissue she massaged out. I’m still not perfect but I’m light-years better.
My point is, get a massage and never give up. You just need to find the right person to find it.
I was getting something similar a few months back and it’s funny you mention a laptop because I started using one around the time my pain appeared, I think I was a bad knot in my muscle, I helped it go away by lying down on a tennis ball and massaging it out, hope ya find some relief dude.
For anyone wanting to try this tennis ball thing, that might not give you enough of what you’re looking for. Lacrosse balls offer less resistance and more pressure
Dude, that’s exactly what it is. I get the exact same pain when I’m editing on my laptop. I swapped out for a trackball myself. I can type all day long because I can get things set up to eliminate that strain, but editing takes a lot more awkward movement using the trackpad.
I like a trackpad, they’re convenient as heck, but they just aren’t good for sustained use imo.
Yep. I even got this back when cleaners moved my mouse from in front of key keyboard spacebar to the right of the keypad, until I noticed what had happened.
I put my mouse between my body and the keyboard and it goes away.
Good luck!
Do you keep your wallet in your back pocket when sitting?
Nope. Thanks though.
rhomboid pain
I had this from having my shoulders curled in while working as well as sleeping on my side. I was picking fruit which requires lots of reaching. Try to be aware of keeping your shoulders square and get a friend to jam their elbow in there and grind it out.
Yeah I’m a side sleeper aswell and my bad posture includes shoulders curled in. I’ve been meaning to get one of those elastic things that’s supposed to pull my shoulders back. It’s interesting when sitting against a backrest or using a foam roller my shoulder blades don’t feel symmetrical. Like the right one is sticking out more.
I hope the new keyboard and mouse do the trick! I also was experiencing wrist/arm/shoulder pain after I started working primarily on a laptop. I got a split keyboard that i can angle in a more ergonomic manner, and that single change cleared my pain up. Repetitive stress injuries suck. and I hope you find relief with your new work setup.
It probably doesn’t help that I’m also literally sitting in front of my dining table on a shitty chair, but it’s not like I had some super ergonomic computer station before either. I really hope this helps because otherwise I’m out of ideas.
I would definitely suggest getting a good chair. Being able to adjust the height and stuff is really important, especiallyfor shoulder pain. Take a look at used gaming chairs and/or keep an eye out for recently discontinued models at brick-and-mortar office supply stores (mine was super cheap because they only had the floor model left).
Track pads suck, I hope this solve your problem
Converting a high resolution photo scanner into a large format digital camera
There’s a lot that goes into it and I’m still fairly early in the process but it is possible and has been done before
I already have some lenses that will cover the whole scanner bed, it’s mostly a question of power at this point
only thing i don’t understand about it is why are you dong this
Perhaps a huge sensor like that is good for night/astrophotography
Not so much really, it would be more capable for like landscapes and architecture due to the time frame it’d take pictures in
so you’re really trading long exposure time + large size for extremely high resolution, that’s pretty cool actually
Will that not just result in a terrible camera…? O.o
Surprisingly no
Such scanners can scan at incredibly high resolution
Hundreds of Megapixels in fact
The main thing the time it takes to scan the image is quite high, like 30 seconds or do
Edit: Here’s an example photo from someone who did what I’m talking about.
That’s actually pretty fascinating, thanks.
Please do update us on your progress! This is really fascinating
Once I finish it I’ll be sharing information about it and pictures it takes on multiple photography groups across Lemmy
A couple of weeks ago my wife and I got jiggy for the first time in five years. After our third kid she just went completely off it and we’ve been in a dead bedroom situation ever since, she told me how she felt and despite my frustration I understood and respected her wishes. A couple of weeks ago I just opened up about how I was feeling unloved and then blam! It happened out of nowhere. I was in a daze and couldn’t believe it. Now I’m scared it’s going to be five years before it happens again.
I know this is just a thread to vent, but I really want you to focus on the fact that communicating how you felt helped the situation so much. Please don’t wait 5 more years to try that again.
From the way I read his comment, Im sure he communicated plenty.
I have a distant sibling that I’ve been building a relationship with over long distance. Saw them in-person and realized that they have quite a few toxic traits from one of our narcissistic parents. I don’t know what to do now. I’m pretty traumatized from that parent and my sibling doesn’t see any of it as a negative. I don’t think I have the ability to open their eyes on it, either. I want the relationship I thought we had.
why doesn’t Radiohead put out an entire album of songs like pulk/pull revolving doors? they had a really unique and cohesive idm sound going and kinda dropped it to the side
Ok ok. Unexpected comment. Respect.
How it feels to never have had anyone in my life that I could just randomly call up and talk about happy and sad things with.
If you’re really set out on doing this I’d gladly make the call
