And some just see those who militantly focus on attacking fellow individuals instead of the systems that are actually to blame (but which they otherwise support and/or benefit from, like capitalism, racism, and ableism) counterproductive, annoying, and hypocritical.
The militant vegans I have come across, and being vegan myself, it's a lot, far too many (E: to the point I actively avoid vegan spaces), are almost exclusively drowning in so much privilege, they can't see how ridiculous they're being in their bizarre militancy of policing other people's plates instead of the actual industries abusing animals (and humans, who these vegans rarely to never pay any thought to, not out loud or in their actions, anyway).
(before I even hit send: if you feel personally attacked by my comment - that's a sign for you to think about it with yourself and ideally do something about it, not try and prove me wrong, inevitably proving me 100% right)
It’s the privilege thing that gets me every time. Not everyone can participate in your exclusive food club and be healthy and fulfilled. Let people do the best they can with what they have.
I wonder if being within those circles, you’ve been exposed to certain ugliness on a more intimate level; with people who feel comfortable enough in their in-group to express their more radical thoughts. Anecdotally, I’ve known a few vegans but have never been lectured nor had views pushed on me.
Hell, the only time I ever hear about the radical, pushy vegan is when people complain about them. On the flip side, I’ve been exposed to meat eaters who seem to get offended when someone mentions the concept of veganism, as if someone else not eating animal products is somehow a trigger for them.
Again, all anecdotes here, I’m just figuring one’s exposure to the vocal minorities on either side of the conversation is where you run into the problems.
This is really easy to test in fairly small social groups. The next time you’re in a group ordering pizza, say you want cheese, because you don’t eat meat. Now watch everyone else order, or change their order to, double meat supreme with bacon. It’s almost like they can’t help themselves. It’s hilarious how easy you can change other people’s behavior.
There’s another factor here. People who are vegan, sober, poly, don’t drive, and any number of choices are breaking societal norms. Most people don’t even think about these things as choices. They do the default. Realizing that there’s a choice, and that this person decided not to do the default, puts people off. It makes them uncomfortable. They begin to question things they’ve never had to evaluate.
Do you remember when Sun Chips changed their chip bag material to a more environmentally friendly compostable material? People lost their minds. Why? Because the bag crinkled a lot. All of the boring late night talk shows made fun of Sun Chips bags. So, they switched it back to the old bags.
Moral of the story is that people don’t care if something is better for the environment if it inconveniences them now. If everything was in cans people would cry because they can’t close them or whatever. In fact, many items that were previously sold in cans are now plastic. Also, money… Cheaper to wrap water in plastic.
You can still buy Coca-cola in glass bottles if you look hard enough. But they are pricey.
I got laughed at on other platforms by older generations for even suggesting the notion of mild inconvenience to make future generations lives easier.
They don’t want us or them to have a better life, not even if it costs them nothing - but ESPECIALLY not if they have to do literally anything differently.
This is where I dispair about the future of walkable cities and trains. Can’t even get a section of the population to accept stopping to charge an EV every two hours for a whole 20 minutes during the road trip they take once a month, if that. How can we convince those people to bike or take trains?
I’ve given up trying to convince them. They’re a vocal minority. Who I talk to and work with are the quieter ones. I’ve found on posts and comment sections there are people who are asking honest questions and are receptive. Scroll past the chaff and you’ll find them. We have a new train opening in our city and I spent a couple hours explaining to people where parking was available, how to ride it, how to pay for fare, etc. People were genuinely excited to hear that people like me are riding it! A lot of it is just anxiety of never taking transit before, and not knowing how to get started.
I’m curious how much the environmental costs of shipping products in aluminum containers v. lighter plastic containers changes the equation.
I also tend to think that an even better solution would be to have the consumer be the one with the container, and shipping the product in bulk, to be dispensed as a bulk item at a retail location. E.g., the packaging for shipping is the tank that the truck is towing, rather than a trailer full of individual use bottles.
Besides convenience, I think a lot of container waste is also caused by our litigious society. If you pour milk into my container and I later sue you because it makes me sick, you might decide your best defense is to sell all milk in sealed containers. (And if someone poisons some containers, you’ll add tamper-proof layers.)
Capitalism could solve this no problem if we just taxed externalities. Don’t even have to hit every level of the supply chain, just a big tax on fossil carbon removed from the ground, and maybe another tax where it gets transformed into plastic (a sort of externality-added tax).
The market then decided what’s still worth making and what’s not, based on the total cost including the new taxes, weighed against how much people are willing to pay for the stuff.
It’s also worth noting that transport does not have a zero cost on the environment. It’s why we did away with glass, it’s so heavy it actually becomes carbon intensive to transport. Especially when you account for greater spoilage percentages (due to the glass being mishandled and breaking more often than alternatives). The equation isn’t as simple as it would seem. The true solution is less likely single use drink containers of any kind and more likely some sort of reusable bottle you carry around with you and could fill up.
We don’t have Sun Chips here so I’m not aware of this, but I’d be really curious to learn how much of that freakout was genuine and how much was engineered by entities with a vested interest in maintaining status quo.
Certainly loud, but I think the way forward should have been engineering a quieter version instead of going back to plastic. And in the meantime use idk… a bowl?
Edit: use a bowl, meaning put the crisps in the bowl when you open them if the noise bothers you
Not that it isn’t still junk food and horrible for you. HFCS might be a worse form of sugar, but in the end they’re still refined sugars. It’s worth noting that Mexico and the US have similar obesity rates. There are more factors than just beverages involved, but it is one.
At the time, I thought the Sun chips bag situation was hilarious. If I think back on it now, it’s really sad. Yes, the bag was significantly louder than the original bag. But I feel like we’re going to need to make some sacrifices as a society for the environment. And that seems like a really, really tiny sacrifice.
I’m a simple man. I see an SR-71 reference and I paste:
‘There were a lot of things we couldn’t do in an SR-71, but we were the fastest guys on the block and loved reminding our fellow aviators of this fact. People often asked us if, because of this fact, it was fun to fly the jet. Fun would not be the first word I would use to describe flying this plane. Intense, maybe. Even cerebral. But there was one day in our Sled experience when we would have to say that it was pure fun to be the fastest guys out there, at least for a moment.
It occurred when Walt and I were flying our final training sortie. We needed 100 hours in the jet to complete our training and attain Mission Ready status. Somewhere over Colorado we had passed the century mark. We had made the turn in Arizona and the jet was performing flawlessly. My gauges were wired in the front seat and we were starting to feel pretty good about ourselves, not only because we would soon be flying real missions but because we had gained a great deal of confidence in the plane in the past ten months. Ripping across the barren deserts 80,000 feet below us, I could already see the coast of California from the Arizona border. I was, finally, after many humbling months of simulators and study, ahead of the jet.
I was beginning to feel a bit sorry for Walter in the back seat. There he was, with no really good view of the incredible sights before us, tasked with monitoring four different radios. This was good practice for him for when we began flying real missions, when a priority transmission from headquarters could be vital. It had been difficult, too, for me to relinquish control of the radios, as during my entire flying career I had controlled my own transmissions. But it was part of the division of duties in this plane and I had adjusted to it. I still insisted on talking on the radio while we were on the ground, however. Walt was so good at many things, but he couldn’t match my expertise at sounding smooth on the radios, a skill that had been honed sharply with years in fighter squadrons where the slightest radio miscue was grounds for beheading. He understood that and allowed me that luxury.
Just to get a sense of what Walt had to contend with, I pulled the radio toggle switches and monitored the frequencies along with him. The predominant radio chatter was from Los Angeles Center, far below us, controlling daily traffic in their sector. While they had us on their scope (albeit briefly), we were in uncontrolled airspace and normally would not talk to them unless we needed to descend into their airspace.
We listened as the shaky voice of a lone Cessna pilot asked Center for a readout of his ground speed. Center replied: “November Charlie 175, I’m showing you at ninety knots on the ground.”
Now the thing to understand about Center controllers, was that whether they were talking to a rookie pilot in a Cessna, or to Air Force One, they always spoke in the exact same, calm, deep, professional, tone that made one feel important. I referred to it as the ” Houston Center voice.” I have always felt that after years of seeing documentaries on this country’s space program and listening to the calm and distinct voice of the Houston controllers, that all other controllers since then wanted to sound like that, and that they basically did. And it didn’t matter what sector of the country we would be flying in, it always seemed like the same guy was talking. Over the years that tone of voice had become somewhat of a comforting sound to pilots everywhere. Conversely, over the years, pilots always wanted to ensure that, when transmitting, they sounded like Chuck Yeager, or at least like John Wayne. Better to die than sound bad on the radios.
Just moments after the Cessna’s inquiry, a Twin Beech piped up on frequency, in a rather superior tone, asking for his ground speed. “I have you at one hundred and twenty-five knots of ground speed.” Boy, I thought, the Beechcraft really must think he is dazzling his Cessna brethren. Then out of the blue, a navy F-18 pilot out of NAS Lemoore came up on frequency. You knew right away it was a Navy jock because he sounded very cool on the radios. “Center, Dusty 52 ground speed check”. Before Center could reply, I’m thinking to myself, hey, Dusty 52 has a ground speed indicator in that million-dollar cockpit, so why is he asking Center for a readout? Then I got it, ol’ Dusty here is making sure that every bug smasher from Mount Whitney to the Mojave knows what true speed is. He’s the fastest dude in the valley today, and he just wants everyone to know how much fun he is having in his new Hornet. And the reply, always with that same, calm, voice, with more distinct alliteration than emotion: “Dusty 52, Center, we have you at 620 on the ground.”
And I thought to myself, is this a ripe situation, or what? As my hand instinctively reached for the mic button, I had to remind myself that Walt was in control of the radios. Still, I thought, it must be done – in mere seconds we’ll be out of the sector and the opportunity will be lost. That Hornet must die, and die now. I thought about all of our Sim training and how important it was that we developed well as a crew and knew that to jump in on the radios now would destroy the integrity of all that we had worked toward becoming. I was torn.
Somewhere, 13 miles above Arizona, there was a pilot screaming inside his space helmet. Then, I heard it. The click of the mic button from the back seat. That was the very moment that I knew Walter and I had become a crew. Very professionally, and with no emotion, Walter spoke: “Los Angeles Center, Aspen 20, can you give us a ground speed check?” There was no hesitation, and the replay came as if was an everyday request. “Aspen 20, I show you at one thousand eight hundred and forty-two knots, across the ground.”
I think it was the forty-two knots that I liked the best, so accurate and proud was Center to deliver that information without hesitation, and you just knew he was smiling. But the precise point at which I knew that Walt and I were going to be really good friends for a long time was when he keyed the mic once again to say, in his most fighter-pilot-like voice: “Ah, Center, much thanks, we’re showing closer to nineteen hundred on the money.”
For a moment Walter was a god. And we finally heard a little crack in the armor of the Houston Center voice, when L.A.came back with, “Roger that Aspen, Your equipment is probably more accurate than ours. You boys have a good one.”
It all had lasted for just moments, but in that short, memorable sprint across the southwest, the Navy had been flamed, all mortal airplanes on freq were forced to bow before the King of Speed, and more importantly, Walter and I had crossed the threshold of being a crew. A fine day’s work. We never heard another transmission on that frequency all the way to the coast.
For just one day, it truly was fun being the fastest guys out there.’
Ooh, and I’m the simple man that sees the SR-71 copypasta and posts the response:
There were a lot of things we couldn’t do in a Cessna 172, but we were some of the slowest guys on the block and loved reminding our fellow aviators of this fact. People often asked us if, because of this fact, it was fun to fly the 172. Fun would not be the first word I would use to describe flying this plane. Mundane, maybe. Even boring at times. But there was one day in our Cessna experience when we would have to say that it was pure fun to be some of the slowest guys out there, at least for a moment.
It occurred when my CFI and I were flying a training flight. We needed 40 hours in the plane to complete my training and attain PPL status. Somewhere over Colorado we had passed the 40 hour mark. We had made the turn back towards our home airport in a radius of a mile or two and the plane was performing flawlessly. My gauges were wired in the left seat and we were starting to feel pretty good about ourselves, not only because I would soon be flying as a true pilot, but because we had gained a great deal of confidence in the plane in the past ten months. Bumbling across the mountains 3,500 feet below us, I could only see about 8 miles across the ground. I was, finally, after many humbling months of training and study, ahead of the plane.
I was beginning to feel a bit sorry for my CFI in the right seat. There he was, with nothing to do except watch me and monitor two different radios. This wasn’t really good practice for him at all. He’d been doing it for years. It had been difficult for me to relinquish control of the radios, as during my this part of my flying career, I could handle it on my own. But it was part of the division of duties on this flight and I had adjusted to it. I still insisted on talking on the radio while we were on the ground, however. My CFI was so good at many things, but he couldn’t match my expertise at sounding awkward on the radios, a skill that had been roughly sharpened with years of listening to LiveATC.com where the slightest radio miscue was a daily occurrence. He understood that and allowed me that luxury.
Just to get a sense of what my CFI had to contend with, I pulled the radio toggle switches and monitored the frequencies along with him. The predominant radio chatter was from Denver Center, not far below us, controlling daily traffic in our sector. While they had us on their scope (for a good while, I might add), we were in uncontrolled airspace and normally would not talk to them unless we needed to climb into their airspace. We listened as the shaky voice of a lone SR-71 pilot asked Center for a readout of his ground speed. Center replied:”Aspen 20, I show you at one thousand eight hundred and forty-two knots, across the ground.” Now the thing to understand about Center controllers, was that whether they were talking to a rookie pilot in a Cessna, or to Air Force One, they always spoke in the exact same, calm, deep, professional, tone that made one feel important. I referred to it as the ” Houston Center voice.” I have always felt that after years of seeing documentaries on this country’s space program and listening to the calm and distinct voice of the Houston controllers, that all other controllers since then wanted to sound like that, and that they basically did. And it didn’t matter what sector of the country we would be flying in, it always seemed like the same guy was talking. Over the years that tone of voice had become somewhat of a comforting sound to pilots everywhere. Conversely, over the years, pilots always wanted to ensure that, when transmitting, they sounded like Chuck Yeager, or at least like John Wayne. Better to die than sound bad on the radios.
Just moments after the SR-71’s inquiry, an F-18 piped up on frequency, in a rather superior tone, asking for his ground speed. “Dusty 52, Center, we have you at 620 on the ground.” Boy, I thought, the F-18 really must think he is dazzling his SR-71 brethren. Then out of the blue, a Twin Beech pilot out of an airport outside of Denver came up on frequency. You knew right away it was a Twin Beech driver because he sounded very cool on the radios. “Center, Beechcraft 173-Delta-Charlie ground speed check”. Before Center could reply, I’m thinking to myself, hey, that Beech probably has a ground speed indicator in that multi-thousand-dollar cockpit, so why is he asking Center for a readout? Then I got it, ol’ Delta-Charlie here is making sure that every military jock from Mount Whitney to the Mojave knows what true speed is. He’s the slowest dude in the valley today, and he just wants everyone to know how much fun he is having in his new bug-smasher. And the reply, always with that same, calm, voice, with more distinct alliteration than emotion: “173-Delta-Charlie, Center, we have you at 90 knots on the ground.” And I thought to myself, is this a ripe situation, or what? As my hand instinctively reached for the mic button, I had to remind myself that my CFI was in control of the radios. Still, I thought, it must be done – in mere hours we’ll be out of the sector and the opportunity will be lost. That Beechcraft must die, and die now. I thought about all of my training and how important it was that we developed well as a crew and knew that to jump in on the radios now would destroy the integrity of all that we had worked toward becoming. I was torn.
Somewhere, half a mile above Colorado, there was a pilot screaming inside his head. Then, I heard it. The click of the mic button from the right seat. That was the very moment that I knew my CFI and I had become lifelong friends. Very professionally, and with no emotion, my CFI spoke: “Denver Center, Cessna 56-November-Sierra, can you give us a ground speed check?” There was no hesitation, and the replay came as if was an everyday request. “Cessna 56-November-Sierra, I show you at 56 knots, across the ground.”
I think it was the six knots that I liked the best, so accurate and proud was Center to deliver that information without hesitation, and you just knew he was smiling. But the precise point at which I knew that my CFI and I were going to be really good friends for a long time was when he keyed the mic once again to say, in his most CFI-like voice: “Ah, Center, much thanks, we’re showing closer to 52 on the money.”
For a moment my CFI was a god. And we finally heard a little crack in the armor of the Houston Center voice, when Denver came back with, “Roger that November-Sierra, your E6B is probably more accurate than our state-of-the-art radar. You boys have a good one.”
It all had lasted for just moments, but in that short, memorable stroll across the west, the Navy had been owned, all mortal airplanes on freq were forced to bow before the King of Slow, and more importantly, my CFI and I had crossed the threshold of being BFFs. A fine day’s work. We never heard another transmission on that frequency all the way to our home airport.
For just one day, it truly was fun being the slowest guys out there.
As a former SR-71 pilot, and a professional keynote speaker, the question I’m most often asked is “How fast would that SR-71 fly?” I can be assured of hearing that question several times at any event I attend. It’s an interesting question, given the aircraft’s proclivity for speed, but there really isn’t one number to give, as the jet would always give you a little more speed if you wanted it to. It was common to see 35 miles a minute. Because we flew a programmed Mach number on most missions, and never wanted to harm the plane in any way, we never let it run out to any limits of temperature or speed. Thus, each SR-71 pilot had his own individual “high” speed that he saw at some point on some mission. I saw mine over Libya when Khadafy fired two missiles my way, and max power was in order. Let’s just say that the plane truly loved speed and effortlessly took us to Mach numbers we hadn’t previously seen.
So it was with great surprise, when at the end of one of my presentations, someone asked, “what was the slowest you ever flew the Blackbird?” This was a first. After giving it some thought, I was reminded of a story that I had never shared before, and relayed the following.
I was flying the SR-71 out of RAF Mildenhall, England, with my back-seater, Walt Watson; we were returning from a mission over Europe and the Iron Curtain when we received a radio transmission from home base. As we scooted across Denmark in three minutes, we learned that a small RAF base in the English countryside had requested an SR-71 fly-past. The air cadet commander there was a former Blackbird pilot, and thought it would be a motivating moment for the young lads to see the mighty SR-71 perform a low approach. No problem, we were happy to do it. After a quick aerial refueling over the North Sea, we proceeded to find the small airfield.
Walter had a myriad of sophisticated navigation equipment in the back seat, and began to vector me toward the field. Descending to subsonic speeds, we found ourselves over a densely wooded area in a slight haze. Like most former WWII British airfields, the one we were looking for had a small tower and little surrounding infrastructure. Walter told me we were close and that I should be able to see the field, but I saw nothing. Nothing but trees as far as I could see in the haze. We got a little lower, and I pulled the throttles back from 325 knots we were at. With the gear up, anything under 275 was just uncomfortable. Walt said we were practically over the field—yet; there was nothing in my windscreen. I banked the jet and started a gentle circling maneuver in hopes of picking up anything that looked like a field.
Meanwhile, below, the cadet commander had taken the cadets up on the catwalk of the tower in order to get a prime view of the fly-past. It was a quiet, still day with no wind and partial gray overcast. Walter continued to give me indications that the field should be below us but in the overcast and haze, I couldn’t see it. The longer we continued to peer out the window and circle, the slower we got. With our power back, the awaiting cadets heard nothing. I must have had good instructors in my flying career, as something told me I better cross-check the gauges. As I noticed the airspeed indicator slide below 160 knots, my heart stopped and my adrenalin-filled left hand pushed two throttles full forward. At this point we weren’t really flying, but were falling in a slight bank. Just at the moment that both afterburners lit with a thunderous roar of flame (and what a joyous feeling that was) the aircraft fell into full view of the shocked observers on the tower. Shattering the still quiet of that morning, they now had 107 feet of fire-breathing titanium in their face as the plane leveled and accelerated, in full burner, on the tower side of the infield, closer than expected, maintaining what could only be described as some sort of ultimate knife-edge pass.
Quickly reaching the field boundary, we proceeded back to Mildenhall without incident. We didn’t say a word for those next 14 minutes. After landing, our commander greeted us, and we were both certain he was reaching for our wings. Instead, he heartily shook our hands and said the commander had told him it was the greatest SR-71 fly-past he had ever seen, especially how we had surprised them with such a precise maneuver that could only be described as breathtaking. He said that some of the cadet’s hats were blown off and the sight of the plan form of the plane in full afterburner dropping right in front of them was unbelievable. Walt and I both understood the concept of “breathtaking” very well that morning, and sheepishly replied that they were just excited to see our low approach.
As we retired to the equipment room to change from space suits to flight suits, we just sat there-we hadn’t spoken a word since “the pass.” Finally, Walter looked at me and said, “One hundred fifty-six knots. What did you see?” Trying to find my voice, I stammered, “One hundred fifty-two.” We sat in silence for a moment. Then Walt said, “Don’t ever do that to me again!” And I never did.
A year later, Walter and I were having lunch in the Mildenhall Officer’s club, and overheard an officer talking to some cadets about an SR-71 fly-past that he had seen one day. Of course, by now the story included kids falling off the tower and screaming as the heat of the jet singed their eyebrows. Noticing our HABU patches, as we stood there with lunch trays in our hands, he asked us to verify to the cadets that such a thing had occurred. Walt just shook his head and said, “It was probably just a routine low approach; they’re pretty impressive in that plane.” Impressive indeed.
Little did I realize after relaying this experience to my audience that day that it would become one of the most popular and most requested stories. It’s ironic that people are interested in how slow the world’s fastest jet can fly. Regardless of your speed, however, it’s always a good idea to keep that cross-check up…and keep your Mach up, too.
Talked about this a ton with an LLM a couple months back. The thing is, there was never an alternative that captured a similar psychotic zealotry. All groups have their faiths throughout the same eras, but none match the exported hate, murder, and industrial scale slaughter of other humans like the Abrahamic faiths. Confusion Monks never invaded France. Buddhists never occupied Scandinavia. The hate, death, and constant conflict of the Abrahamic faiths are the absolute most toxic and harmful aspect of all of humanity. The most deadly conflict since WW2 has been in Africa over the last few years. Most of the west isn’t even talking about this. It is a Abrahamic in origin. Gaza is the same. It has all been like this for 2500 years of constant killing. Other places had minor issues, but they never exported and in the present, these others are mostly in decline. If you take away the Abrahamic faiths, I bet all are gone in half a millennia. The man was as schizophrenic as the nations and peoples he left in his wake. Taming the ghost of the worlds most psychotic killer changes everything for the better.
You're getting religion mixed up with technology and opportunity.
There's been plenty of violence, war, and extremism in the name of Buddha and Confucius. They absolutely can be used to justify genocide, just look at Myanmar. It's very difficult to find a major religion that has never produced fanatical sociopaths.
Never on boats across seas and continents. Nowhere on earth now is really safe from the history and influence of colonialism. All of those expeditions carried a strong religious underpinning that was the primary capital motivation in case of loss. Myanmar is no exception. All of it only happened because it was underpinned by religious bullshit. Many cultures were motivated by trade in the past but none of those that only cared for trade ever had the kind of history of death accompanied by Abrahamic faiths. This is the primary commonality with all of the worst acts in human history in one form or another. Shedding this one awful thing would be the largest positive change possible. Abrahamic faith is the single greatest disease in all of history.
I’m an atheist and think we’d be better off if we moved beyond religion. That said, I don’t think it’s true we’d be so much farther ahead without it.
Looking at early humans I think religion was a competitive advantage, because it organized groups of people who might not otherwise have worked together. It allowed us to move beyond tribal affiliation, to create a common “operating system” for societies and conceive of and pursue multigenerational goals.
I think we can do all that stuff now without religion, but also think we need more explicitly defined structures and institutions to fill the role religion has played.
If Hitler had been captured he’d almost certainly have been captured by the Soviets and the chances he’d make it to Nuremberg are quite slim. He may have been publicly executed or just disappeared. Considering how many soviet lives were lost in WW2 it’d be unsurprising if the officer in charge of his capture didn’t just take matters into their own hands over a personal grudge.
It's not though. The question makes the assumption that he would have been handed over for the Nuremberg trials.
But the Soviets were fucking ruthless against Nazi Germany. They were REALLY driven by hatred for them. If a Nazi soldier surrendered to Russians, a summary bullet to the head was often the more merciful outcome.
And it was the Russians that would have found Hitler first, so it's far more likely that they would:
execute him on-the-spot
torture him until death
have their own trial for him in Russia before torture/execution.
It’s not though. The question makes the assumption that he would have been handed over for the Nuremberg trials.
It absolutely misses the point, and so have you. It is a hypothetical whereby he was captured, turned over to the Nuremberg trials, and found guilty. That’s the basis of the hypothetical. Saying that wouldn’t have happened absolutely misses the point of the hypothetical.
Just so everyone knows, you can’t transplant dead organs (at least not as safely or with the success of live organs).
They can only use your organs if you die in a hospital setting. They will keep pumping blood to your organs after you die to keep them “fresh” and “alive.”
Post-death organ transfer exists but is way more risky than an organ that was recently in a living, functioning body.
So if you’ve ever considered it, keep in mind that you have to die at a hospital for it to happen, and even then, they’re still technically forcing your body to be alive to keep these organs alive.
Source: Friend who lost his leg to amputation during a COVID-coma. They didn’t think he would make it. He woke up in the donor ward.
I don’t think knowing this fact should discourage anyone from choosing to be a donor, though. It just means that yeah, it’s unlikely that you’ll be in a position where they can use your organs when you die, but it doesn’t hurt to be put on the list just in case.
Iirc, I think a lot of organ donations end up being from people in motor vehicle accidents.
I did get to see one case where they harvested the person’s bones instead of their organs. Didn’t even know that was a thing. I’m not sure if they died in a hospital setting or not. Might be you get more time to harvest bones as opposed to organs?
Oh yeah, I hope I don’t dissuade anyone. I just hadn’t ever really deeply thought about it before, despite being a registered organ donor. It’s an interesting conundrum to me, because you need fresh, live organs, but you can’t reasonably take those from fresh, live people most of the time, so you need people who are literally on death’s door, who aren’t going to make it, to have their bodies kept artificially alive for the purpose of organ transfer. COVID was just a fucked up situation all around with not enough beds and so many people dying. My friend had a rough experience, but it’s hardly the norm.
Yeah I’m so glad that we’re not still in that disaster. I mean, I know COVID is still out there, but thankfully in much smaller numbers and we have a much greater capacity to treat it nowadays… especially without hospitals being overwhelmed.
I’ve seen cases where patients actually ended up getting lung transplants in an attempt to save them with COVID. I handled the diseased lungs and they were so bizarre looking.
Wow, I didn’t know about the covid lung transplants. If you don’t mind me asking, could you describe the covid lungs/how they looked different to healthy lungs? Just morbidly curious
Sure thing. It’s been a while and I’ve only seen a few, but I’ll do my best.
So normal lungs are puffy enough, and smooth and glistening on the outside. On the inside, they resemble a kitchen sponge. They are soft and pliable, and able to easily contract and expand to inhale and exhale air.
In these COVID lungs, the outside was very ragged and shaggy. They were distorted with a lot of contracted areas. When you cut into it, there was some residual spongy areas, but a lot of it was white, firm, and solid. Think of how you might get a gnarly scar on your arm from a bit cut. Except instead of just being a single scar, almost the entirely of the lungs are scarred and firm. They aren’t able to contract and expand easily anymore because of how firm and rigid they’ve become. And because they no longer have the spongy architecture, it means many of the airspaces are lost and there is far less areas for potential gas exchange.
So I’m not positive, but I’m fairly sure these COVID lung transplant attempts are primarily performed on younger patients after their body was able to clear the virus. It’s just that in these individuals, although they no longer had COVID, the resulting scar tissue absolutely destroyed their lungs. It doesn’t happen in every case thankfully…or even most cases, but when it does it’s a bit scary.
I remember one of my cases being a young pregnant woman who had to be put on an ECMO machine (artificially oxygenates the blood when your heart and/or lungs cannot). I don’t know whatever came of her, but I hoped she was able to go on and lead a relatively normal life.
What does it even look like when you wake up in a donor ward? Was he a write-off and the doctors were just like ‘oh shit, he’s awake’? Do non-donors simply get disposed of instead of being brought there?
He’s older and it’s been tough to get explicit details from him, but yeah it sounds like because it was during COVID and beds for bodies were so scarce, on top of the fact that they didn’t have high hopes for him surviving (so many people his age with COVID just never made it), that they were keeping in there for simplicity’s sake. Anyway, it spurred me to begin looking into organ donation actually functions, and I mean, it makes sense, I just hadn’t really thought about it before that you technically have to have your body being kept alive to be able to donate the organs. A rotting organ probably isn’t very useful. That’s why it usually happens with terminal patients where the outcome is 100% they are gonna die. During COVID, with bodies piling up, and lack of open beds in hospitals, it at least makes sense to me that he would have ended up there, in case he didn’t wake up. It was pandemonium, at the time. Sadly, it seems to have kind of messed with his head to wake up in that situation, he’s a lot less trustful of doctors now.
It’s not the leg amputation, I believe, they considered him “as good as dead” when he went into coma. He knew he was getting an amputation. What he didn’t expect was that he would wake up to a nightmare of being prepped for his other organs to be removed.
I worked as a transplant coordinator for a few years, and you’re mostly right, but there qre a few points I would clarify.
Dead is dead. All transplants are post death.
All of your organs need oxygen to keep functioning. When they don’t have oxygen, the cells die and the organ stops working, but you can be dead and have functioning organs.
When your brain is deprived of oxygen, the neurons stop firing and you’re gone. Dead is the irreversible cessation of brain activity. Sometimes organs can heal, but once your brain is gone, you’re dead.
Sometimes that happens because your heart stops beating. The muscle in your heart can also die, and it will stop pumping blood. This heart failure deprives your brain of blood, and then you die. When your heart is failing, you can stimulate the heart to keep beating and continue to live. But if your heart stops beating and you die, that is called a cardiovascular death.
You may also lose oxygen due to a failure of the lungs. Lungs put oxygen in your blood, and if your lungs fail, you don’t get oxygen to your brain and you die. This could be related to the lungs, the vasculature between the heart and lungs, or any combination of the three.
The liver and the kidneys work to filter the blood. If either of these fail, your blood can become toxic and poison your heart, your lungs, and/or your brain. The liver and kidneys also need oxygen to live, so if your heart stops beating or your lungs stop providing oxygen, then they will begin to die at the same time as your heart.
Like your organs, your muscles, skin, and nerves also need oxygen to live, and if you have trouble getting oxygen to your peripheral systems, your limbs can begin to die and become necrotic. Necrotic tissue creates a feedback loop of decay in your blood stream, and often requires amputation.
Covid affects both the lungs and the heart. Lung damage reduces oxygen in the blood, and heart failure reduces the flow of blood to the extremities.
Now, in the event of a traumatic brain injury, like a motorcycle accident, the brain can be killed before the other organs begin to die. The heart has a special mechanism that allows it to continue beating without input from the brain. These are ideal circumstances for organ donation, because the donor has died but their transplantable organs are in good condition.
It might be different in other countries, but in the USA, there is a network of transplant professionals that work together to procure and distribute transplants. They work with the hospitals to identify potential donors and talk to the families about donation options.
The hospital would call the local organ procurement organization every time any patient had a traumatic brain injury, even before they died. Patients would continue to receive treatment in the same area of the hospital by the same doctors and nurses. There is no “donor ward” and the only difference in treatment is that additional efforts will be made to keep the transplantable organs alive.
The patient’s doctor wants to keep their brain alive along with everything else, and they only stop trying when it becomes impossible to succeed.
So, while I’m sure that your friend really did experience the loss of a limb, and I’m certain the OPO had dispatched a transplant coordinator to evaluate your friend for donation, there’s no way the family was approached for possible donation without a dire prognosis (or maybe they asked). The approach would have been in the same conversation where they discuss withdrawing care because there is no hope.
The doctors and the family may have mentioned that they had discussed donation to demonstrate how dire the situation seemed, and how close to death your friend was, but they would not have altered his care at all or moved him to a special section for donors.
His parents both died of COVID while he was in the coma. While I’m sure you’re very correct in everything you’re saying, he was basically a “ward of the State” at that point, considering his “family” was now deceased.
That’s fucked up. It must have been horrible to wake up to all of that.
As a ward of the state, he would have been assigned a case worker who would have been in charge of his care and end of life decisions. The TCs would have still tried to find next of kin or any family that could provide consent (and a medical and social history). Besides the legal implications, there’s also a PR consideration. Transplant organizations are keenly aware of the public perception, and they will go to any lengths to avoid the narrative that the state killed someone to steal their organs. If there was a third cousin in Germany, they would have gotten a phone call before decisions were made.
ICU PA here who frequently deals with all of this. Amazing information, thank you.
Would just like to add to the conversation that tissue like corneas can still be donated in even circumstances where other more sensitive organs are nonviable. Please correct me if I’m wrong!
Now, in the event of a traumatic brain injury, like a motorcycle accident, the brain can be killed before the other organs begin to die. The heart has a special mechanism that allows it to continue beating without input from the brain. These are ideal circumstances for organ donation, because the donor has died but their transplantable organs are in good condition.
This is why they call them donor-cycles! Also why early summer is peak donation time. Yay!
James seems to be taking this approach, as opposed to a criminal indictment, because New York law empowers the AG to seek damages caused by fraudulent business behavior as a form of consumer protection. The law doesn’t require the AG to identify a victim or even demonstrate anybody suffered harm. Plus, the burden of proof is lower in civil cases than in criminal ones.
“What makes this statute particularly powerful is that there doesn’t have to be a loss,” Will Thomas, a law professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, told Yahoo Finance. “This statute has been used to disgorge profits illegally gained. The government can be allowed to claw back all of those profits. Provable nature is lower, and you don’t have to prove intent or willfulness.”
A civil suit also prevents James from bumping into the criminal case against Trump’s company that the Manhattan district attorney is prosecuting. Those two offices sometimes work together on criminal cases, as they’re doing on the recent indictment of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon. With regard to Trump, however, they seem to be pursuing complementary approaches instead of overlapping ones.
So the answer is: it's easier to win, it's easier to punish Trump & they can still file criminal charges after a successful civil case if more crimes are uncovered.
On the one hand, doas is simpler. Less code means less bugs, and lower chance someone manages to hack it and gain admin rights. On the other hand, sudo is more popular, and so has a lot more people double-checking its security. Ultimately, I don’t think it matters - when someone unauthorized gains admin rights, usually it’s not due to bug in sudo or doas, but other problems.
Ugh! Can’t they just monetize the sale of our personal data and push nauseating ads every other post… like any other respectable post aggregation platform?
Ads they won’t (At least I believe so.) But I won’t be surprised that some data harvesting companies have servers set up to collect all the data, aggregate, and sell it. Lemmy is an openly federated platform after all.
The vaule of the data totally relies on the aggregation process. It involves grouping, categorizing, and linking the unstructured data into a relatable and structured format. For example, A data harvesting company can use their own existing data and link a Lemmy user to a known identity or the probability to a known identity, using techniques like NLP and statistics. That’s value.
Data most of the time are free, but there are also datasets sold for a price.
In the user’s home directory, which may or may not be in /home/username.
grep username /etc/passwd will show you the home directory for a user. Also ~username from the CLI will resolve to that user’s home directory. e.g. cp file.txt ~username/Documents/
I was wondering about that too… According to the spec:
/home is a fairly standard concept, but it is clearly a site-specific filesystem. The setup will differ from host to host. Therefore, no program should assume any specific location for a home directory, rather it should query for it.
Sometimes home directories are in other locations. My University used to have different mount points for different graduating classes on our Unix servers. And I use “/home2” for one of my servers for… reasons.
Though I’m not sure that qualifies as “deprecated”? I get the “non-standard” bit though.
You also have to consider that roots homedir is in /root and not home, so if you’d just assume it’s /home/$USER you’d get in trouble when your programm is run or compiled as root.
My best guess is that having programs treat a user’s home directly as a location for things like config files is deprecated. Programs should be following the XDG standard instead.
You could contact the author (their email address is in the image), but I’m too lazy to do that.
The legend seems confusing to me. I think it’s trying to say that /home is non-standard. Notice that the description for /var/run explicitly states it’s deprecated, and has a solid border.
But only in regards of nuclear bombs. Maybe it’s because of the scientific origins of these fields. Probably the same reasons why Americans measure firearm munition in mm.
Firearm’s ammunition is a mixed bag because many military sizes are standardized with the rest of NATO. 5.56, 7.62, and 9 mm sure; but then you get a bunch measured in caliber .308, .45, .50.
we do list volcanic eruptions in megatons of TNT. The makers of the first a bomb pick it since the largest explosion ever made by then was a ship full explosives and some had calculated how many tons of TNT that ship was carrying
Yes, I think it’s a question of use. I can’t think of many examples where you would quickly need to know the measurement to the nearest Mm. Maybe if for some reason you deal with a lot of lunar orbits? Diameters of exoplanets?
Any earth distances we need to know with greater precision, and any stellar distances are probably better measured in light years, etc.
Huh, I’ve not read of that before! That definitely fits with what I was thinking, and points to other terms that may apply as well (universal/inclusive design). Thanks!
When closed captioning for TVs was being rolled out by government mandate in the US, there was widespread anger over having the cost of a TV increase by $0.25 for everyone for a feature that would only help a few. I was sickened by the callousness.
Plus people rarely know in advance that they might become disabled later in life, so they are shooting themselves in the foot by protesting when they are lucky enough to be able bodied in the present day.
They won’t be able bodied for long if they shoot themselves in the foot! Seriously though, some people refer to abled body people as TABs, which stands for Temporarily Able-Bodied, to drive the point that advocating against or ignoring issues which negatively impact people who are disabled may include themselves in the future.
I like that and will start using it. We’re all pretty helpless after birth and before death, so being able bodied is just a temporary phase in the middle, for those lucky enough to not be born with a disability or acquire one in the middle of life.
I’m from the states and live in Ireland. I never had a problem with switching back and forth as I visit the states and Germany frequently.
The one danger is if youre in a parking lot or similar and pull out onto the road when there are no other cars after not driving for a while, you might be on the wrong side for a second.
The trick to remember isn’t left or right its that the driver is always in the middle of the road.
If youre holding the steering wheel and are on the outside of the road, youre going the wrong way. Keep the center line right next to you and you’ll be grand as the Irish say.
They drive on the left in the Bahamas too, so they mostly import Japanese cars, but there’s a lot of American cars and golf carts, so the driver can be any side…
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