medgremlin
@medgremlin@midwest.social
- Comment on How do you think early humans survived without water bottles? Did they just live next to water sources all the time? 5 days ago:
I do this now and didn’t have to as a kid…however, I have a weird kidney problem where my kidneys will just dump water, whether or not I have the water to spare. This means that I have a minimum water requirement of 4 liters a day. It’s not as bad as when I was on a really horrible medication that started the whole issue. When I was on that medication I had to drink about 4 gallons of water a day.
End result: I have a stupid party trick where I can down a liter of fluid in about 10 seconds, and a gallon of fluid in about 5 to 10 minutes depending on how recently I’ve eaten. (I did give myself water poisoning once, but that took 8 gallons over about 14 hours)
- Comment on More like a bacterial infection imo 1 week ago:
The issue is that the title of the story implies that it was entirely due to the organism that the Irish people suffered so many deaths. Context matters and they framed this in the worst way possible.
- Comment on More like a bacterial infection imo 1 week ago:
The Irish people were growing tons of crops besides potatoes, but the British landlords took everything besides the potatoes as cash crops/taxes, leaving them only the potatoes to actually eat. There was more than enough food to prevent those deaths, but the Irish people weren’t allowed to eat it.
- Comment on What is an example of a supermax prison? and how do you get sent there? And a regular prison in your state? Or what movies call club Fed which is the easiest? How do you get sent there? 4 weeks ago:
That is astonishingly stupid.
- Comment on What is an example of a supermax prison? and how do you get sent there? And a regular prison in your state? Or what movies call club Fed which is the easiest? How do you get sent there? 4 weeks ago:
Ft Leavenworth is the military’s prison. They don’t send civilians there.
- Comment on Trump says a 25% tariff "must be paid by Apple" on iPhones not made in the US, says he told Tim Cook long ago that iPhones sold in the US must be made in the US 4 weeks ago:
*Raise taxes on poor people. The billionaires can easily just fly to Europe for a shopping spree attached to their regular weekend jaunt and bring everything home in their luggage (if they cared about the prices of anything to begin with, that is).
- Comment on [deleted] 4 weeks ago:
But when they’re really young you can do things like convince them that trees walk and that’s why trees in cities are in those little cages or pens. (They do actually use their roots to pull themselves around a bit, but it takes a very long time for the amount of movement to be noticeable.)
- Comment on [deleted] 4 weeks ago:
The age group of children that gets put on leashes doesn’t have the brain development to feel shame or humiliation. Their brains have literally not developed the cortex that does that yet.
From the age of about 2 to 4, my Dad made a harness out of climbing webbing for me and clipped the leash to a carabineer on his belt when we were out and about. We were constantly going to places like Haight St in San Francisco and hiking on the sea cliffs in Santa Cruz. I 100% would have gotten myself killed without that leash because I was very curious about the fishies in the ocean at the bottom of that 50-100ft high cliff, and my Dad was wrangling me and my sibling by himself while Mom was at work.
I’m pretty sure there’s a picture somewhere of me leaning over a cliff being held back by the leash because I was a rambunctious little gremlin that was about 20 years off from having a fully developed frontal lobe.
- Comment on "You can't just have Geralt for every single game" says his voice actor, and if you think The Witcher 4 making Ciri the protagonist is "woke," then "read the damn books" 4 weeks ago:
That’s why the trailer has me so hyped for this game. It looks like the game is going to be different because Ciri is the protagonist. Her experience, reactions, and approach to saving a young woman from being sacrificed are totally different than what Geralt’s would be. I hate it when games like Mass Effect are like “Oh! You can play as FemShep! That totally counts as representation!” even though it changes literally nothing about the story.
I want more games that actually address the real and significant differences in the experiences and perspectives of different characters. I’m always disappointed when there’s a “female” option that’s just a re-skin of the male character with no changes in how the character interacts with the world and the story. (This happens a lot in non-video game media too.)
- Comment on Japan enacts the Active Cyberdefense Law, which permits the country's authorities to preemptively engage with adversaries through offensive cyber operations 5 weeks ago:
Did anyone else see this headline and immediately jump to Ghost in the Shell?
- Comment on Oof 5 weeks ago:
I didn’t say they paid no taxes at all, but I was explaining how the bottom 50% of earners in the country pay very little, if anything. The 19.3% is the bottom 19.3% of earners in the country, not a percentage of the bottom half.
I would argue that if you get everything (or most of your withheld taxes) back on your return…that means that you effectively didn’t pay federal income taxes or paid very little. If you get most of your withholding back every year, you could look at how you filed your exemptions on your I-9 and increase the number to the maximum allowable. I know some people that put the maximum allowances so that no federal tax is withheld from their paycheck and they just pay the balance at the end of the year when they file their taxes instead of getting a return.
- Comment on Lady Gaga bomb plot: Thwarted plan lifts veil on the gamification of hate and gendered nature of online radicalization 5 weeks ago:
For Youtubers, I wish H. Bomberguy would post more often because I’ve seen him cited as some people’s animus for de-radicalization. Abigail Thorn of Philosophy Tube was another good “male role model” prior to her transition and a lot of viewers commented about how she gave them a better model of masculinity to emulate (particularly ironic as she turned out to be trans). I think FD Signifier is a good example for young black men in particular, and Devin of Legal Eagle is a fine example of a successful professional for those that are more business-minded.
- Comment on Oof 5 weeks ago:
They just try to slide it under the radar by not showing the taxes on your payslip because you’re more likely to look closer at that than your receipt from the grocery store.
- Comment on Oof 5 weeks ago:
And that’s not even getting into state income taxes, Medicare taxes, and Social Security taxes. Those all have different brackets and some states are more regressive than others. There are states like Texas that don’t have income taxes, but they make up for it by taxing everything else through things like sales and property taxes.
Of note: sales tax is always the most regressive taxation model, and tariffs are basically sales taxes on steroids.
- Comment on Oof 5 weeks ago:
The bottom 50% of Americans make less than $40k a year. They do pay some federal taxes, but with the standard deduction, the 19.3% of working Americans that make less than $15k a year don’t pay any federal taxes. The standard deduction goes up to $22.5k for a head of household (i.e. a single working parent). Given that the federal minimum wage still works out to $15,080, that means a full-time minimum wage worker doesn’t make enough to get hit with income taxes.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 weeks ago:
It is absolutely nonsense. People are subjected to stronger, more direct magnetic fields all the time in MRI’s, and MRI’s are substantially safer than most other imaging modalities in medicine (besides ultrasound). The amount of radiation from non-atmospheric sources vastly outweighs the cosmic (non-UV) radiation humans are subjected to, to the point that it’s not really even worth considering outside of maybe astronauts or people who take long-haul high altitude flights extremely frequently.
The amount of ferrous material in blood is negligible at best, and there’s an estimated 3 to 4 grams of iron in the entire human body. The pressure from your heart pumping and the relatively high percentage of blood’s mass that is not iron (about 5kg) means that the effect of the iron if it was responsive to magnetic fields is slim to none.
- Comment on doctors 1 month ago:
For a lot of doctors, the incentive to not do risky procedures is the fact that you have to live with the guilt of your patient’s death, even if you did everything perfectly. Or, you do everything perfectly, but they still have a poor outcome because they weren’t healthy enough to go through the procedure and the recovery, and you get sued for millions of dollars because you didn’t spend 4 hours going through the informed consent with the patient to ensure that every single possible complication was adequately discussed.
I’ve worked in emergency medicine and I’ve had patients die in my care that we had absolutely no way of saving. The screams of their families still haunt me and I will carry those cries of anguish and loss to my grave. I would not perform a procedure that was not 1000000% necessary if the risks are too high because I have enough blood on my hands already, and I haven’t even finished medical school.
- Comment on doctors 1 month ago:
Sometimes. It depends why the first surgeon would be unable to do the procedure. If the problem is that the patient might not wake up from anesthesia because of problems with heart disease, lung problems, or other metabolic issues, then it doesn’t really matter what the surgeon has to say about actually doing the procedure because the anesthesiologist is the one saying “no”. If it’s an issue of too much adipose, sometimes it would mean that the surgery would take longer than it’s safe for the patient to be under anesthesia.
Another possibility is that the first surgeon operates at a facility that doesn’t have access to more advanced technologies or other medical specialists in the event that something goes wrong. And there are some surgeons that are just more willing to accept the risk of a bad outcome, and I would argue that that’s rarely in the patient’s best interest. There are alternative options that the surgeon should discuss with the patient as part of the informed consent process, and sometimes, the alternatives to surgery are just safer than the risk of the surgery itself, even if they aren’t as effective or are a long term treatment (ongoing) as opposed to a definitive treatment (cure). If the patient has a high risk of serious complications, up to and including death, then attempting the curative procedure might be more risk than it’s worth compared to a long term medication that mitigates the disease.
You’ll see this with pregnant patients too. For elective procedures that have safer alternatives or temporizing measures (a holdover treatment until surgery is safe), those are generally preferred to putting a pregnant patient under anesthesia because of all the cardiovascular, immunologic, and other physiologic changes that happen during pregnancy alongside potential risks to the fetus.
- Comment on doctors 1 month ago:
There’s a reason you have to get a pre-op physical exam for any non-emergent surgery. Figuring out if you’ll wake up from the anesthesia at all is part of the calculus that determines whether the benefits of the procedure outweigh the risks.
- Comment on How do children address a non-binary parent? 1 month ago:
I’m in my 30’s and my Dad still refers to me as “kiddo” sometimes.
- Comment on doctors 1 month ago:
Another option for diabetes are the SGLT-2 inhibitors like Jardiance. They work by making you pee out all the excess sugar. You won’t have the diarrhea issues, but you will be peeing a lot. (It’s basically a special diuretic, so it’s also really good for blood pressure.) Bonus: they’ve also gained approval for slowing the progression of diabetic nephropathy (kidney disease), so if that’s something you have any trouble with, it can help get it covered.
- Comment on doctors 1 month ago:
One of the biggest problems with the GLP-1’s (Ozempic, etc) is the fact that people lose weight by just not eating as much, and the things they do eat aren’t likely to be very nutritious. Protein malnutrition and muscle wasting are very common sources of weight loss on Ozempic. That’s why it’s standard of care to get your patient to a licensed dietician before starting them on one of those drugs if at all possible.
- Comment on doctors 1 month ago:
The BMI number that is calculated just from weight and height is really just a number that tells us we need to go look at some other numbers. The other numbers are things like body fat percentage, cholesterol levels, blood pressure, blood sugar, etc. It is entirely possible for someone to have a “normal” BMI and still be very fat and unhealthy, and those people are pretty easy to identify visually, just as someone with a “high” BMI who is a powerlifter or something is very easy to visually identify.
- Comment on doctors 1 month ago:
I’m a medical student and I have some direct experience with this. Sometimes, the difference between the surgeon who will do the procedure versus the surgeon that won’t do the procedure is the availability of specialized facilities and equipment that they have access to. An elective surgery (i.e. not an emergency surgery) can go from routine to very high risk depending on the amount of adipose tissue the patient has.
And it’s not just a matter of the fat tissue overlying the surgical site. Morbidly obese patients are much more likely to have things like sleep apnea which can make anesthesia more risky and might require more specialized equipment than a particular surgeon/hospital/anesthesiologist might have access to. The “morbid” part of “morbid obesity” also refers to the fact that people above a certain threshold of weight are much more likely to have other health conditions like heart disease that make anesthesia more risky.
- Comment on “No Apple tax means we will lower prices” - Proton announces lower prices for users by up to 30% after US ruling against Apple fees 1 month ago:
That’s what I’ve been seeing. I don’t use Netflix anyways and I mostly just have a VPN for when I’m on a university or hospital campus and I’d like to keep my internet usage private. (Or when sailing the high seas for books.)
- Comment on “No Apple tax means we will lower prices” - Proton announces lower prices for users by up to 30% after US ruling against Apple fees 1 month ago:
Yeah, my 2 year plan is up in June. I haven’t decided what I’m switching to. I’ve heard good things about Mullvad’s privacy policies and politics, but I’ve also seen reviews that a bunch of sites and services have them blocked.
I’m open to suggestions at this point.
- Comment on Pictures of Animals Getting CT Scans Against their Will: A Thread 1 month ago:
They’re probably having a better time than the ones that aren’t intubated. The intubation is to make sure they’re still breathing while they’re anesthetized. The ones without tubes are just awake and angry/scared.
- Comment on Pictures of Animals Getting CT Scans Against their Will: A Thread 1 month ago:
The crossovers between veterinary medicine and pediatric medicine are a lot more significant than most people like to think about. The Venn diagram isn’t a perfect circle…but it’s close.
- Comment on TRUCKIN' 1 month ago:
As an ED tech, I had to clean up C diff and chemo diarrhea off patients, beds, floors, and commodes multiple times. ED boarding meant that patients that should have been admitted to hospital rooms that had a bathroom attached were stuck in the ED for hours or even days.
- Comment on TRUCKIN' 1 month ago:
I worked as an assistant in a plastic surgery office for a while as well, and I had to clean lipoaspirate out of the suction tube/syringe and the erlenmyer flask it was emptied into. That was still preferable to the time it got splattered on my scrubs because the surgeon emptied it into a kidney basin the first time. (The flask was my idea to prevent getting splattered again.)