you also don’t hear about it as much because people tend to bike more in warm weather so it’s more likely for you to go long stretches of time without biking when it’s getting colder.

Off topic, but I think it’s funny how cycling is viewed in different parts of the world. You look at it as a hobby that is naturally done less in the winter. For me it’s just a way to get to work and I still have to work when it’s cold, so obviously I’m still cycling just as much. And this is true for a lot of people, the bike rack at my job is almost as full in the winter as it is in the summer.

Nylon can be washed in the dishwasher, but in my experience it does degrade a bit over time. Silicone on the other hand tends to absorb any smell or taste, including dish washing detergent.

Also, check out this one weird trick to get positive results almost every time: just use 20 different end points!

I went with a Sony 1V. It processes the images a lot more like a regular camera, so more natural but also less ‘flashy’ by default. If you take a boring picture, it’s going to look boring. But I just like that high-contrast, natural colors, ‘real camera’ look so much better than the always-on-hdr, artificial, tacky look of many modern smartphone cameras.

Amazing hardware, but I was really disappointed with the way the 13 pro processed pictures. I ultimately went with a completely different brand after being really hyped for the 1" sensor. The 13 ultra came with some minor improvements, at least that was my impression, but still wouldn’t have been an option for me. I’m really interested in what they’re doing with this newest iteration.

For toilet bowl cleaner, you want to make sure it has the ‘quality seal’ on the packaging. It looks like this.

Generally, if you have hard water and a lot of issues with limescale, you will need an acidic cleaner. These are usually advertised accordingly. Bleach won’t help with limescale and is usually not necessary. It’s also very dangerous to mix bleach with acidic cleaners.

While we’re on the topic of CPR, I want to address the myth that CPR “almost never works”. It’s great at what it does, which is pumping blood through the body enough to keep vital organs supplied with a bare minimum of oxygen so they can survive.

However, there’s usually a reason why the heart has stopped beating and in most cases, CPR can’t reverse that reason. If the patient is in a car crash and has completely bled out, CPR won’t get any blood back into their system. Or if they’re at the end stage of a terminal disease, CPR can’t magically cure the disease.

But in cases where the cause for the cardiac arrest is simple and easily reversed, chances of survival are much higher. For example, if someone is drowning and you get them out of the water within a few minutes of cardiac arrest, CPR is very effective, with the majority of patients surviving. Here’s a study with 113 patients who were resuscitated after drowning and only 8 were confirmed dead. For 20 patients, the outcome was unknown, but even if they all died as well, that’s still a 75% survival rate.

Yes, a heart that has completely stopped beating cannot be restarted by defibrillation. It only works in a condition called ventricular fibrillation, when the muscle fibers of the heart are still contracting, but are no longer “in sync”. This causes the heart to twitch chaotically, which is not an effective way to pump blood. And without blood pumping, the heart itself does not receive any oxygen as well, so it will eventually go into a complete flatline after a few minutes of untreated ventricular fibrillation.

The electric shock helps the fibers resynchronize. If you want to see the effect directly, here’s a video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCbawp9ZSnY

Be warned, it shows an open chest and an exposed heart, most likely during heart surgery. They are using spoon-shaped internal defibrillation paddles. In the beginning, you can see the heart in ventricular fibrillation. It’s twitching chaotically and not pumping any blood. After defibrillation, it starts contracting rhythmically again.

I’ve never heard of a punctured heart personally, but I do think it’s possible. A punctured lung is much more common. But both conditions are usually treatable if the patient survives.

CPR does carry some risks, but not doing CPR is guaranteed to be lethal. So any risk (to the patient) is worth taking at that point.

We do in Germany, every two years. It’s not helping and I don’t know why. Maybe people are aligning their headlights correctly just for the test. Or the test is garbage. Next time my car is due, I’ll ask the guy.

No argument here. I recently talked to someone who works for an insurance company and he said it feels like working for the mafia.

You’re generally correct. Insurances are a bad investment from a purely financial standpoint. Never get an insurance to save money or to avoid cost. Don’t get insurance for things that you can easily pay for from your savings or for things you can do without. For example, don’t get insurance for your flagship smartphone. Even if you can’t afford the same model again if it breaks, you can always get an entry-level or used phone for a fraction of the price which will do fine for daily tasks until you have saved up enough money.

But there are cases where losing money is just part of the problem. For example, health insurance can literally save your life by paying for a treatment you otherwise couldn’t afford. Or personal liability insurance - if you cause more damage than you can afford to pay for, you can lose your house and pretty much the kind of life you may have lived up to that point. On the other hand, if you’re already broke, living in a shitty apartment and hardly own anything of value, then there’s no point getting that insurance.

Exactly, as soon as the money goes from your bank account to theirs, they can do whatever the fuck they want with it. Not saying that’s a good thing, but that’s how the system is currently designed.

What does ‘strip’ mean in this context? (not a native speaker)

At my hospital it’s just luck of the draw. If you get the night shift in the spring, you work an hour less while being paid the same and in the autumn you’re working an (unpaid) extra hour.

The craziest thing was when my girlfriend had a patient die of non-natural causes during that night. In these cases, police have to be notified so they can investigate whether there was any wrongdoing. The police arrived a few minutes before the time of death of the patient, because in the meantime the clocks had been moved back an hour. Apparently they had also never had that situation before, so they were unsure how to document it correctly.

Growing plants just to use them for energy production is absolutely stupid and incredibly harmful, agreed. But there are types of biomass that are basically waste from food production or forestry. It’s not a ton of energy, but it may play a part somewhere.

The fact that Scholz didn’t even come to my mind when I thought about the German government says it all. I had no expectations and I was still disappointed.

Demand response just means making use of energy surplus. And we’ll have lots of that during spring and summer in the northern hemisphere. Running carbon capture machines only when there’s a surplus is a perfect example of demand response.

Oh yes, no argument there. We’re already using absolutely huge amounts of hydrogen that are mostly made from fossil fuels right now. Worldwide hydrogen production is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than the entire country of Germany. We’ll have to turn that into green hydrogen and use a ton of renewable energy for that. If we make use of surplus wind and solar, it will help a lot with stabilizing the grid.

What I was thinking of was the idea of producing hydrogen through electrolysis, storing it and later turning it back into electricity through fuel cells. And I’m not sure if that will ever be cheaper and more efficient than newer and cheaper battery technologies like sodium ion or redox flow batteries.

First of all, nuclear is anything but reliable. Germany had to supply huge amounts of electricity to France last year because half of their nuclear plants had to be shut down. They would have had major blackouts without support from their European neighbors.

But my main point is that baseload power does not mix with renewable sources at all. Using batteries and other solutions to store renewable energy during times of little wind or sunlight is actually the goal. But that also eliminates the need for baseload.

Baseload was never really a feature anyway, it was a necessity. Nuclear and certain types of coal power plants were unable to follow demand, they had to be run at close to full load all the time, either for technical or for economic reasons. To compensate for that, other more expensive plants had to be used to cover times of higher demand.