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Are food is poison... and no one cares!
From the i-dunno-what-to-eat-anymore dept.
I was thinking about this kind of thing:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170213131150.htm
And was thinking: the article is saying "Go gluten free and increase your chances of getting cancer!"
What it really should be saying is "WTF? Our food supply is killing us because we are tooooooo stupid to not poison our food supply?!?!"
Kind of surprised me for some reason: i've looked at articles from various sides before (Hey, Hillary vs. Trump articles!!), but didn't at first look at this one except from the "it was probably sponsored and written by someone in the bread industry" point of view.
We are poisoning our food, and the best we can do is: don't go gluten free... it will kill you, just like all the other food we are poisoning but ignore that elephant behind the curtain.
Humans are so stupid: i guess we DESERVE to die as we chase after that Dog almighty dollar. I guess if i ever get RICH, i'd better create a food biome: somewhere i can have uncontaminated soil and air to grow my food supply in.
Maybe that's why there's such a rush to Mars: rich people need a place to grow food in an uncontaminated environment (that is until they find they can make an extra dollar by contaminating it).
open-label placebos
Today I learned that fake medicines can work even when patients know they're fake.
Virtue signalling
springs and video cards
There is a web store which proclaims "shopping is entertainment." Well, it's time for me to rant about something that completely ruins the entertainment value, that being when the vendor can't be bothered to tell you the most important information about the product.
One example is coil springs for automotive suspensions. Springs aren't rocket science. There are only a handful of specifications that differentiate one set from another. Things like length, diameter, and spring rate. But it seems the vast majority of springs are advertised without this information. Instead they include some generic marketing crap about "improved handling" and "sporty ride height." So you really don't have a clue what you're getting unless you obtain the springs and measure them yourself.
A second example is video cards. The problem here is that the manufacturers can and do put whatever random memory chips they have available on the PCB, even if it results in a card that is hopelessly crippled by terrible memory performance.
Let's say that you have a low-end GPU with 4 pixel pipelines at 500MHz. 4x500MHz is 2,000,000,000 pixels that could be filled under optimal conditions. A pixel is 32 bits (RGBA) so that means you would need at least 8GB/sec of memory bandwidth to support this fill rate. This is completely ignoring the fact that you would need to access memory for other reasons like reading texture data or Z-buffer or whatever. It's the bare minimum. If you have less than that then part of the GPU's capability is just going to waste.
There are a lot of cards like this floating around, that have DDR2 instead of GDDR3, DDR3 instead of GDDR5, or half the memory bus is left unconnected. And it can be hard to identify the stinkers unless you get the part numbers from the memory chips and check their datasheet, or at least run GPU-Z on it.
Black Guns Matter
Tesla Driver Saves Volkswagen Driver, gets free repairs
Tesla Owner Who Sacrificed His Model S To Save Another Driver Gets Surprise From Elon Musk
Mmmh, that sweet good publicity. It's even better than bad publicity.
A Small Victory
I lost a second button off my coat. I managed to retrieve both buttons with the intention of sewing them back on, but the sewing kit lay untouched on my desk for a week.
I am very much a creature of habit. I do certain things, I don't do things that I don't usually do. I'm not used to sewing buttons, so the prospect of doing so struck me as terribly onerous.
Even so, it's still cold here in the Pacific NorthLeft. Leaving my jacket unbuttoned was not only cold, it permitted my shirt to get rained on.
When I got out of bed tonight I was completely overcome with self doubt with respect to my next consulting gig. I wrote an email to two of the client's people to tell them so, but that I had done lots of projects that were far more difficult. That is, my self-doubt does not make sense.
I went out for coffee and started to feel better.
When I came home I was determined to sew those buttons, dammit, and I did.
It wasn't hard at all.
This is a problem I have: the prospect of doing many kinds of work strikes me - ahead of time - as far more difficult than it really is when I'm doing it. So I put off starting it.
I worked an entire quarter at AMCC without doing a damn thing, then checked myself into a psychiatric hospital where they told me I had Attention Deficit Disorder.
I have no lack of attention, but I don't do well at volitionally directing it. If I can get started at a task I have no problem carrying on, but I have a hard time getting started.
That I know this is the case doesn't make it go away.
Chevy Cruze peak range: 702 miles on 13.5 gallons of diesel
New diesel Chevy Cruze can go an estimated 702 miles on a single tank of fuel
The 52 mpg highway fuel economy numbers apply to the six-speed manual transmission diesel Cruze, which gets 30 mpg on city streets. The car also comes in a 9-speed automatic transmission version, which returns 47 mpg on the highway and 31 mpg in the city with start-stop technology regulating the engine.
I'm Too Clueless To Do My Client's Job
My client asked me to bid on a second job. It requires a deep understanding of USB. I didn't understand much of the spec, so I ordered "USB: The Universal Serial Bus" by Benjamin David Lunt.
Just now I emailed my client to tell them that I'd need to study the book before I could produce a sensible bid. I said of course I would charge them for reading it, but I needed some time before I could produce that bid and get started on the actual job.
I expect they'll respect me for being honest but I fear they'll shitcan me for being an idiot.
It couldn't be any more difficult than firewire, which I was once quite good at.
