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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • Yes, in a sense. It technically isn’t vibrating them, but rapidly spinning them due to the constantly changing magnetic field (produced by the magnetron).

    Since water has a dipole moment (one side of the molecule experiences a slight positive charge, while one side experiences a slight negative charge) it will react to changes in an electric field just like a magnet would

    Edit: I’d also like to add this is not specific to water. Some fats and other food material also undergoes that rotation, and the same concept (with different frequencies and wavelengths) is used in industrial processes all the time to quickly, and efficiently heat materials



  • The issue in my eyes, and my number one complaint with this massive E.V. push (for many years now) is the insane environmental impact of lithium mining and the very short termed planning of just going hard on batteries (without spending more time and money on better battery tech [Toyota actually has that new solid state battery I’m very hopeful for, and we’ve been working on polymer batteries for decades]) we will waste a very precious earth material we WILL NEED in the future, and you never ever hear any of the politicians or CEOs talk about how dirty lithium mining and processing is because almost all of it happens outside the countries leading this push (thus, not their problem).

    Not saying we shouldn’t be moving away from ICE, it’s that I feel our current approach is incredibly short sighted, and will have far reaching impacts into future generations and I feel as though we may even cause more damage than help in our current approach


  • Anyone I know who left our troop, did so early after transitioning from cub scouts to boy scouts. Most had other commitments that required most of their time (sports mostly), or they didn’t find it “cool”. I didn’t care if it was “cool” at school or not so that point never bothered me. I managed playing 2 year round sports along with scouts and clubs, but totally understand not wanting to make that commitment and deciding to drop scouts. I loved the camping trips, cool merit badges, and high adventure opportunities it provided (like Philmont Ranch).

    You seem to have a very different perception of scouting (which obviously could come from the way your troop functioned vs. how my troop did for example), but my point is that you shouldn’t paint things with a broad brush. Again, I don’t share any of these same sentiments with you, but you speak like it’s absolute fact or that you know all intricacies of the situation. You simply do not, nor do I. I am sorry you had a poor experience.

    To your last point. I just texted 2 people who left my troop (we are still friends) and brought forward what you said. Only 1 has responded so far and said “LOL, it had nothing to do with “facism” wtf. I just didn’t really love it so I didn’t want to keep putting time into it.” So again to my point of not painting things with a broad brush…not everyone shares your experience of “the young fascists club”. In general, sweeping generalizations result in indefensible positions. It’s easy to find flaw in absolutist statements about large groups


  • I’m not sure what troop you were in, but nobody I know had an experience like that in scouts. I loved scouts and highly suggest people get into it. Without scouting I would have never done many awesome things, and I straight up never would have gotten the chance to get into certain hobbies like snowboarding (my family does not ski), without taking merit badges like the snow sports merit badge. I learned how to scuba dive, I learned blacksmithing (awesome merit badge), it helped fuel my love of chemistry, and so SOOO much more. I’m not saying it’s all fine and dandy, there are bad people out there. However, painting scouts with a broad brush (or painting anything with a broad brush) is just wrong. It’s not representative of the entire group, nor of everyone’s experience with said group.

    I would say scouting significantly built my leadership skills, I attended multiple leadership conferences and trainings, and my eagle scout award is a talking point in every interview. Along with many of the life long friends I made along the way, I highly recommend scouting to young children. You will be shocked the cool opportunities it can provide.

    Finally, I’m not in any way sure what was fascist about anything we did in scouting? Outside of being respectful when performing flag ceremonies, very little national anything came up unless we took a trip to a military base to see refueling planes for example. I’d assume this highly depends on the troop and its leaders, but again this is not an across the board scouting thing. Every troop can be wildly different from the next as long as their bylaws fit within thr BSA rules




  • Yeah, very sadly the chemical industry (and then by extension, manufacturing/maintenance as a whole) is rife with this shit. I hope and pray that young and aspiring chemists/chemical engineers/regulators/safety engineers/etc. will make changes in time that we take harder approaches to shit like this. We put the environment and people first, the “progress” of industry in a close second.

    Regarding what you said about the old guys doing it how they used to. I see that all the time in my steel mill. Lots of older guys (and some younger ones who put off the too cool for school vibe) dont wear earplugs all the time. They havent for the last 20 years, so what is me telling them they will lose their hearing gonna do? They have done it this way, and will continue to do it this way. Luckily, we have had success in general improving our safety culture, but getting people to care about the unseen threats (particulate matter, hearing loss, exposure, etc.) can be very hard


  • To be exact, it is a wt% of the feedstock they are changing. Not the fuel itself. (I am not commenting on the fact that they likely would be exposed to combustion products/uncombusted products).

    From a chemical perspective, it also chemically needs to be similiar to the original feedstock, or else you would not be producing the fuel you want in the correct ratios. These systems are a very complex system of multiple primary reactions + side chain reactions. They are not trying to reinvent the wheel here, they would want the system to behave as close to the same as possible so that they can just apply this in their existing plants.

    IF (BIG IF) they can prove that the waste plastic feedstock does not change the output products of the combusted fuel (included non combusted products, or products of incomplete combustion), this could be a big win for making use of waste plastics, otherwise I have a very sick feeling that this is trending towards the next tetra-ethyl lead event


  • So I wanted to provide a bit of unique perspective here on the topic. I now work as a process engineer in a steel mill, but 2 of my previous positions were in product safety and regulatory compliance. I worked in US, CA, & MX regulatory law, as well as global compliance with countries outside of the Americas. In my position I had to deal with regulatory compliance with chemical lists (TSCA, ECHA, DSL/NDSL, ISHL, etc.) and I was responsible for creating and verifying the information we use to create our SDS sheets.

    So a large part of people are stuck on the fact that there is a lot of redacted information in the paper, this could be for multiple reasons outside of protecting trade secrets. As I stated above, there are regulatory chemical lists. In many countries, it is entirely ILLEGAL to sell or use in manufacturing, any chemicals which do not appear on the list for the country in question. When a company wants to create a new chemical (which is happening all the time, this also can be a “mix” and not a defined exact molecule, ill speak more on this later) its is a very slow and long process of classifying the chemical, getting a CAS number assigned, and then getting this chemical listed on the regulatory lists of the locations you intend to use it/sell it. To get listed on these lists is a process in itself that includes providing absolutely as much information on the chemical as reasonably achievable. From my experience, ECHA (EU) has stricter rules than TSCA (U.S) for example, and not all lists are made equal, governed equally, or even list the same chemicals. So circling back, the feedstock listed in the paper is likely very early in this process or is in the middle of the process, meaning there is not an “official” name or means of identifying what is being spoken about, anything referred to in the paper would just be internal monikers/code names or possibly a nickname to describe it.

    On the topic I said I would speak more about, “mixes” or “chemicals” without a defined chemistry. So there are feedstocks/chemicals/mixes of oils/paraffin materials/alkanes/etc. that are very hard to control the creation of, so they are created as an inseparable bulk mixture. Some Examples:

    -Cas #: 85535-86-0 [C18-28 Chloroalkanes (20-50 %Cl)]

    -Cas #: 97553-43-0 [Paraffins (petroleum), normal C > 10, chloro]

    The “mixtures” are classified based on their properties and what is actually making up that mix defined within the certain Cas #. This is likely how all of the feedstocks in the paper would be classified. Based on certain plastics that are recycled you could expect X, Y, Z, defined blends.

    Finally, regarding the safety aspect. Having been thrown into the world of chemical regulation (I am a chemical engineer by education, we covered the existence of TSCA in like one section of our safety course), I got to see first hand how almost “fly by the seat of your pants” it is. I cannot suggest a “better” way to more safely regulate these chemicals, other than to take an outright strict approach (which I am in favor of btw). Eu for example is much stricter (both health and environmental hazard wise) compared to the U.S. They have a higher burden of proof that the chemical is not harmful and an approach of “okay if it shows signs it could be a problem, classify it as such”, while it sure feels like the EPA takes the approach of “okay, lets see if you guys can keep this from becoming a problem.” Which companies have proved repeatedly, they cannot.


  • I am really hoping they ditch the bloated design of PD2 and use this as a fresh slate to not repeat some of the same mistakes as last time (I have my doubts, hence why I will let it simmer a bit before I dive in if its looking alright). I couldnt care if they added a pass or something that gives cosmetics (NO GAMEPLAY NECESSARY STUFF) if they need that long term cash, but PD2 became so DLC bloated over its life that it became a barrier to entry, or a barrier to even want to boot the game up again after another 5 little DLC purchasable thingies were dropped in the last 2 weeks