Thisiswritteningerman

@Thisiswritteningerman@midwest.social

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If we humans have a whole range of microbial life living on our skin, do other animals have their own similar micro fauna covering them?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Not typically, as they’re normally pretty comparable between people. I’m sure specific exceptions exist based on hygiene and other external factors. In general, skin’s made of the same thing and the amount of sun and moisture and types of fluids excreted by our pores tend to be similar in the same areas.

  Your friends armpits vs their ex’s are probably similar, pending they live in a similar area. Same would go for the genetials of their ex vs any of their other partners. Differentiating members of the opposite sex is important here: the biome of the vagina is drastically different than that the surface skin of a dick. However, a bacterial infection from one to the other wouldn’t be common.

  The biomes are “contained” by your physiology and your environment. In the same way you wouldn’t normally find a fish (a wet biome like water with plenty of food) chilling in a tree (a dry, exposed to the open air location with little for a fish to eat) you don’t normally find yeast (common in dark, moist biomes with skin excretions to eat like armpits or the groin) on the back of your hand (bright, arid, with minimal excretions). Your environment can change that. See athletes foot or diaper rash. Normally dry skin being saturated for too long can allow yeast to proliferate.

  Does/did your friend pee after every encounter? Not doing so does drastically increase the risk of UTIs, as the biome of the vagina and the urethra are not exactly the same, but similar. The biome of the outer area divides these areas normally, but during sex there’s quite a bit of fluid moving organisms about.

  Also, as above, hygiene can play a factor. Clean your external skin periodically. Particularly after sticking it anywhere. New organisms and potentially new resources can be introduced to the biome. Soap and water are more than enough for normal hygiene, don’t get crazy. You can alter the biome or kill off the native organisms, which isn’t optimal.

  Were they using a condom or some other form of external object for protection? Anything on the inserted, artificial object could absolutely alter the biome for someone. Probably not organisms (I’d hope it’s a fresh out of the package item or at least cleaned) but chemicals that might be feeding or killing native organisms.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If we humans have a whole range of microbial life living on our skin, do other animals have their own similar micro fauna covering them?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I have a biology degree, but am A: plant focused and B: now a manufacturing engineer, because of you wanna do biology in the Midwest it’s corn or soy time. And those are boring. So only marginally more applicable.

  You’re pretty spot on. The vast range of skin biomes directly impacts what sorts of organisms can live there. Even between a human arm, armpit, nose, and intestines you’ll have different organisms making up the majority of the biome, and potentially even organisms unique to that biome.

  Changes to the region or loss of competitors in other connected biomes can allow normally less dominant organisms to gain a foothold. Absolutely how one gets a yest infection. You can even just KILL EVERYTHING and still different organisms might colonize the area faster, resulting in a difference that’s noticeable even at our comparably massive scale.

  I didn’t particularly know what organisms prefer the fur, feather, or scale coated regions of animals, but they very much would have the same type of dynamic populations.

  Ballpark guess, given how there’s a Salmonella risk associated with reptiles, I’d assume they have some biome that allows Salmonella to survive, if not directly thrive. Similarly with some varieties of Armadillo carrying leprosy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What do office workers actually do?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Is your site currently losing about 1/3 of it’s area to an outside company who bought a division and the apparently completely sane plan is to seperate off that area and duplicate prexisting structures (HR, Warehouse, Quality) for the new company?

  But yeah Patient safety comes first. As long as the lines don’t go down. Or too slow. Or don’t get stopped from speeding up at the planned rate.

  For a business where the FDA WILL show up unannounced and audit, we sure do love to push back against quality.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What do office workers actually do?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  We’re making medical product, and are 13485 and 9001 regulated. It’s concerning the number of times I’ve had to fight with supervisors because I deemed it important to loop Quality in on my changes and made a task take longer and they didn’t agree with the choice.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What do office workers actually do?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  As a manufacturing engineer, I’m mostly in an office when I’m not actively dicking about on the production floor or talking with my production operators. Most of my desk time is

  1. Answering questions from people who aren’t me about my manufacturing lines: specifications, output, inputs, could I do experiment XYZ if they sent me info. Subject Matter Expert is the term the company uses. Debatable if it’s accurate, but it’s the expectation.
  2. Answering stupid questions for people who could absolutely open an app or walk and look in person but would rather be handed the info.
  3. Collaboration with other employees: be it Quality as to what hoops I need to jump through to do something, providing process data relevant to a manufacturing defect they were alerted to, pestering other engineers to see if they’ve done anything like what I’m up to because it’s a good shortcut, or trying to work out how to use a system I’m unfamiliar with.
  4. Tracking output metrics: Management loves the same numbers tracked 5 different ways and having them reported to them constantly.
  5. Meeting prep: either making a slideshow, crunching data to present, updating a project tracker (see above), or reading all the relevant emails associated with the meeting because earlier I super just skimmed them for anything I was required to do urgently. 7: Tinkering on things at my desk: familiarizing myself with new equipment/parts, testing an idea out of scraps/easily sourced parts before I ask our Tool and Die team to draw up a design for something sturdier/more expensive, or rooting through boxes for things I inherited relevant to that manufacturing line when I was assigned to it.
  6. Messaging folks on teams: lunch plans, thoughts on recent events, or even just sending memes, gifs, ASCII middle fingers to people I like. General screwing around.
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Literally Nineteen Eighty-Four⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  For manufacturing I’ve taken to using spelled out numbers when quantities and names both use numbers. Four 4s rather than 4 4s. Makes it harder for someone to speed through an email and get the completey wrong information.