you also don’t hear about it as much because people tend to bike more in warm weather so it’s more likely for you to go long stretches of time without biking when it’s getting colder.

Off topic, but I think it’s funny how cycling is viewed in different parts of the world. You look at it as a hobby that is naturally done less in the winter. For me it’s just a way to get to work and I still have to work when it’s cold, so obviously I’m still cycling just as much. And this is true for a lot of people, the bike rack at my job is almost as full in the winter as it is in the summer.

Nylon can be washed in the dishwasher, but in my experience it does degrade a bit over time. Silicone on the other hand tends to absorb any smell or taste, including dish washing detergent.

Also, check out this one weird trick to get positive results almost every time: just use 20 different end points!

As far as I know, CR123 is equal to 16340, so 2 mm thinner and 1 mm shorter than 18350.

For toilet bowl cleaner, you want to make sure it has the ‘quality seal’ on the packaging. It looks like this.

Generally, if you have hard water and a lot of issues with limescale, you will need an acidic cleaner. These are usually advertised accordingly. Bleach won’t help with limescale and is usually not necessary. It’s also very dangerous to mix bleach with acidic cleaners.

While we’re on the topic of CPR, I want to address the myth that CPR “almost never works”. It’s great at what it does, which is pumping blood through the body enough to keep vital organs supplied with a bare minimum of oxygen so they can survive.

However, there’s usually a reason why the heart has stopped beating and in most cases, CPR can’t reverse that reason. If the patient is in a car crash and has completely bled out, CPR won’t get any blood back into their system. Or if they’re at the end stage of a terminal disease, CPR can’t magically cure the disease.

But in cases where the cause for the cardiac arrest is simple and easily reversed, chances of survival are much higher. For example, if someone is drowning and you get them out of the water within a few minutes of cardiac arrest, CPR is very effective, with the majority of patients surviving. Here’s a study with 113 patients who were resuscitated after drowning and only 8 were confirmed dead. For 20 patients, the outcome was unknown, but even if they all died as well, that’s still a 75% survival rate.

Yes, a heart that has completely stopped beating cannot be restarted by defibrillation. It only works in a condition called ventricular fibrillation, when the muscle fibers of the heart are still contracting, but are no longer “in sync”. This causes the heart to twitch chaotically, which is not an effective way to pump blood. And without blood pumping, the heart itself does not receive any oxygen as well, so it will eventually go into a complete flatline after a few minutes of untreated ventricular fibrillation.

The electric shock helps the fibers resynchronize. If you want to see the effect directly, here’s a video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCbawp9ZSnY

Be warned, it shows an open chest and an exposed heart, most likely during heart surgery. They are using spoon-shaped internal defibrillation paddles. In the beginning, you can see the heart in ventricular fibrillation. It’s twitching chaotically and not pumping any blood. After defibrillation, it starts contracting rhythmically again.

I’ve never heard of a punctured heart personally, but I do think it’s possible. A punctured lung is much more common. But both conditions are usually treatable if the patient survives.

CPR does carry some risks, but not doing CPR is guaranteed to be lethal. So any risk (to the patient) is worth taking at that point.

Ask the Kurds.

Also, Hamas didn’t just come up in a vacuum. People here in Germany are radicalizing because they were asked to wear masks during a pandemic and they heard that brown people are now seeking refuge in Germany. Palestinians have been suppressed, starved and killed for decades and none of the more moderate forces have been able to do anything about it. Not that Hamas would do any better, but it’s understandable that people support more radical movements when they’re literally fighting for their survival.

Slaughtering civilians is never justified. What Hamas did was horrifying and a crime against humanity. But the reason why Hamas ever got so strong in the first place has a lot to do with how Isreal has systematically oppressed and killed Palestinians for decades. And the war it is waging now against the Palestinian people is also indefensible. It should be widely condemned, any support withdrawn and Israel should be sanctioned.

I wonder what kind of storage solutions we could have today if we were investing as much into it as into nuclear fusion and fission…

No argument here. I recently talked to someone who works for an insurance company and he said it feels like working for the mafia.

You’re generally correct. Insurances are a bad investment from a purely financial standpoint. Never get an insurance to save money or to avoid cost. Don’t get insurance for things that you can easily pay for from your savings or for things you can do without. For example, don’t get insurance for your flagship smartphone. Even if you can’t afford the same model again if it breaks, you can always get an entry-level or used phone for a fraction of the price which will do fine for daily tasks until you have saved up enough money.

But there are cases where losing money is just part of the problem. For example, health insurance can literally save your life by paying for a treatment you otherwise couldn’t afford. Or personal liability insurance - if you cause more damage than you can afford to pay for, you can lose your house and pretty much the kind of life you may have lived up to that point. On the other hand, if you’re already broke, living in a shitty apartment and hardly own anything of value, then there’s no point getting that insurance.

Exactly, as soon as the money goes from your bank account to theirs, they can do whatever the fuck they want with it. Not saying that’s a good thing, but that’s how the system is currently designed.

What does ‘strip’ mean in this context? (not a native speaker)

At my hospital it’s just luck of the draw. If you get the night shift in the spring, you work an hour less while being paid the same and in the autumn you’re working an (unpaid) extra hour.

The craziest thing was when my girlfriend had a patient die of non-natural causes during that night. In these cases, police have to be notified so they can investigate whether there was any wrongdoing. The police arrived a few minutes before the time of death of the patient, because in the meantime the clocks had been moved back an hour. Apparently they had also never had that situation before, so they were unsure how to document it correctly.

People living comfortably here in Germany are flocking to extremist parties, because having to wear a mask during a pandemic or minding the rights of other people makes them feel oppressed.

The rise of Hamas was absolutely inevitable given the way people in Gaza were treated. If you’re literally fighting for survival and you realize more moderate groups are unable to change anything, you will support extremists out of sheer desparation.

There are no good guys in this story.

Gambling, tobacco, alcohol and all sorts of other addictive things are for profit, so why exclude cannabis?

I would advocate for treating other addictions the same way too.

Alcohol and tobacco ads are targeting young people because they’re more likely to develop a lifelong addiction if you start them early enough. Gambling machines are set up to make people believe they can beat the system, so they stay hooked.

I just don’t think these should be legitimate business models.