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Cake day: September 24th, 2023

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  • The grenade thing depends on the generation of grenade. Also depends on the country of origin. Assuming we are talking about the American M67 one you see in most movies, there are 3 different generations of safeties.

    Quick basics of an American grenade- the spoon is the handle looking thing that is sticking out the top and runs along the side. Under it in the head of the grenade is a spring that is always trying to push the spoon off its hinge and make it fly off, while then starting the fuse and the whole bang process. The safety pin (a codder pin with a ring on one side to pull on) runs through the head of the spoon and is held in place simply through binding into its hole/channel by tension provided by the spring. For a little bit of extra safety the end of the pin sticks out about a quarter inch and is bent for a little, but easily straightened and pulled out with the ring (look up a picture and you will see what mean).

    The old ones were just the safety pin held in place by the spring/spoon mechanism. But if you had excessive vibration or just enough pressure and you had pre-straightened the safety for pulling ease, it would negate the spring pressure and the safety pin could slip in and out with ease (thus easy to pull with teeth for Rambo effect). People didn’t trust it, so it was typical to then use electrical tape to hold the spoon down wrapped around the full body and then a bit extra folded back to make a quick pull tab. To throw: pull e-tape, pull pin, throw. The army then added a secondary safety to the safety. It was this secondary safety clip that held the spoon down to the head, providing constant tension and stopping the vibration loosening issues. They were also intentionally designed to have to get pulled off in opposite directions. To throw: (I am left handed) sweep safety clip left, pull pin right, throw. This was in my opinion the best setup and my favorite of grenade generations. Apparently this was about 50/50 with other others. So the army then came out with their third generation, the “confidence” thumb guard thing. It is a metal flap switch that locks/latches the safety clip onto the pin ring. I thought it was dumb. Most people hate it. But credit where credit due- it is impossible to fuck it up. Now to throw: thumb/sweep up on confidence latch, sweep left on safety clip, pull right on pin, throw.


  • Congenital? No. Acquired? Yes. The area of the brain that processes and interprets sound has to develop. Without sound input as a child, that won’t happen.

    Current leading theory of tinnitus is called the ‘central gain’ theory. This is where the brain becomes accustomed to seeing signals from the ear at a certain level, and when that neural level is no longer at that level it will add in its own noise to make up the difference. This noise is then perceived as a tone or sometimes a broadband sound, commonly described as either a ringing or a whooshing sound. Sometimes it can also be described as crickets. Depends on the person and cause. Not all hearing loss comes with tinnitus, but most tinnitus comes with hearing loss. In audiology school we had a whole class on tinnitus and covered many interesting aspects exactly like your shower thought here and went over papers on every angle you could think of. It was fun. But in the end, the brain has to at a minimum know what sound is to even perceive sound.


  • I have an honors minor in medical humanities and took several medical policy courses. We looked at this exact graph from previous years as well as several other huge sets of data/graphs/studies and anything else related to insurance you can imagine. Insurance is not a standard market commodity and does not follow the same trend or logic. The only way you can lower premiums in insurance is by reducing the risk in the pool, or increasing the pool size to dilute the risk. This is either increasing the total pool size by increasing premiums, getting more people, or being selective about who joins the risk pool. The third one was what was called “preexisting conditions” and kept high cost people from entering the risk pool and draining the funds. This got banned and increased premiums. By increasing competition you end up splitting up the pools, making everyone’s premiums go up. This happened multiple times post ACA after the GOP started stripping out the funding and safeguards to prevent this. More and more competition opened up with artificially low premiums being subsidized by federal dollars, but then when the subsidies ended the premiums started jumping. Then when the premiums were jumping, new companies opened up to make more competition advertising lower rates, but then further fractured to pool sizes, leading to premiums skyrocketing. If you look back just 10 years ago there was a 3-5 year stretch of premiums increasing almost 30% year after year. It was due to all the competition opening up every year. This is why single payer systems have the lowest rates. If you have even one private company monopoly with a regulated cap on profits you would still end up with lower premiums. Then, if this single paying company was nationalized to take out the profit making middle man, the premiums are that much lower because your risk is spread across a massive pool. More competition in insurance makes the problem worse. I would agree with your stronger regulation though. There is a lot that can be done there.





  • MrEff@lemmy.worldtomemes@lemmy.worldVeteran Affairs
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    9 months ago

    There was a HUGE difference from when I first applied a few years after my first tour and had issues (around 2010) versus when I recently applied. The first time was a whole stack of paper only. Electronic wasn’t allowed. Must be in person to submit. If anything wasn’t filled out correctly they wouldn’t tell you, you just had to wait a month and get a letter telling you what page to resubmit. Then the appointments to evaluate you were scheduled with zero input from you. And occasionally they would do ghost bookings to boost numbers. Those are bookings where they would book it the day or two before, only give mail notice, and when you get it it was for an appointment that had now passed, and they make you rebook it with the strike against you for noshowing. It was a nightmare. Then the clinicians defaulted to just assuming you were there for money and if there was a shadow of doubt it was denied.

    Then, if you did finally get a rating, good luck getting any treatment. I had a prescription of sertrilene, aka zoloft, literally the world’s most prescribed pill, it ran out after I moved back from Chicago to Houston. But because records were only regional at the time and I was in a new region, I had to re-register for Healthcare. And even though I had the bottle with me, I could not use the pharmacy without a new prescription. So I had to go through the ER, as a triage level 0. I was in there at 11 am and waited ALL DAY until the standard ER closing time and they shifted to life threatening only (about 6 pm), and was not seen. Told to come back the next day. Was in there by 10, seen around 3 or 4. And the doc who saw me was shocked about the whole thing when i explained it to him.

    With all that, it has come a long way and was so much easier when I did a pact act claim. It was all online, simplified, they worked with me, contracted out the appointments, it was great. World of change over the last 10+ years.






  • MrEff@lemmy.worldtoTechnology@lemmy.mlPrice of solar dropped 89% in ten years
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    11 months ago

    I can see that critical thinking isn’t your strong suit, but I’m willing to comment it out with you instead of just down voting.

    If the price of solar is already the lowest -and still dropping- then how is the most expensive option that takes about a decade to implement a better option for right now? This apparent point of diminishing returns is only beginning to manifest in even lower prices than this 2019 chart. And this diminishing returns point is only in the cost of the panels dropping; they are still getting better in technology and improving efficiency while maintaining low prices. If your argument is “solar can’t continue on this trend forever” -no one expects anything to consistently drop almost 90% every decade. Of course it will level out. And when it does, it will STILL be the cheapest option.


  • Huge up front costs.

    https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power.aspx

    “On a levelized (i.e. lifetime) basis, nuclear power is an economic source of electricity generation, combining the advantages of security, reliability and very low greenhouse gas emissions. Existing plants function well with a high degree of predictability. The operating cost of these plants is lower than almost all fossil fuel competitors, with a very low risk of operating cost inflation. Plants are now expected to operate for 60 years and even longer in the future…”

    “World Nuclear Association published Nuclear Power Economics and Project Structuring in early 2017. The report notes that the economics of new nuclear plants are heavily influenced by their capital cost, which accounts for at least 60% of their LCOE. Interest charges and the construction period are important variables for determining the overall cost of capital. The escalation of nuclear capital costs in some countries, more apparent than real given the paucity of new reactor construction in OECD countries and the introduction of new designs, has peaked in the opinion of the International Energy Agency (IEA). In countries where continuous development programmes have been maintained, capital costs have been contained and, in the case of South Korea, even reduced. Over the last 15 years global median construction periods have fallen. Once a nuclear plant has been constructed, the production cost of electricity is low and predictably stable.”

    TLDR: If you weren’t already on the nuke train when it was going, the upfront costs are too much to make it worth it this late in the game. You are better off just getting solar/wind + battery. If you already invested in nuke, then you are good to keep updating them.




  • Unlike the othe comment, this DOES sound like it could be BPPV, where something like the epley maneuver would work. Typically we would use the Semont-plus maneuver (same idea, slightly different). Or there is a fun half somersault maneuver the person could try on their own.

    Bppv will be brief but intense episodes lasting seconds with lasting nausea for minutes and exasterbated by head movements. You will also see their eyes jumping or flicking (nystagmus).


  • The epley maneuver is to treat BPPV- where an otolith becomes dislodged and then finds its way into a semicircular canal (normally the latteral canal). If it was causing vertigo it would have to be the posterior canal. Not to say it isn’t possible, but it is the statistically least common canal to happen in. Not only that, but the epley wouldn’t treat it. Even then, this strongly doesn’t sound like BPPV, whose episodes would last seconds to minutes. If the episodes are lasting minutes to hours it is a short list of other possible things. best case this is vestibular migraine of it was vestibular related. More likely this is central involve ment and the person needs to see a neurologist. I have seen patients like this before for balance accessments. We will do the testing on them(VNG and caloric testing), but then have to tell them to go to a different department because it isn’t part of the vestibular system causing the problem. I would push to see an ENT/neuro/PCP sooner than later because worst case is it is a developing vestibular schwanoma (non cancerous tumor) and the sooner the better to take care of it or at least monitor it.