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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • My front loading clothes washer. It frequently doesn’t drain right. If you create a fault tree on what causes that, you can have:

    • Faulty water level sensor
    • Clogged water level sensor hose
    • Clogged filter
    • Clog around the heating element
    • Broken check valve
    • Faulty pump
    • Clog between drum and liner
    • Faulty control board

    The pump can clearly be heard running when the water levels are too high, so I know the sensor, sensor hose, controls, check valve, and pump are all functioning. Sometimes, the pump runs for way longer than you’d think necessary, with only a small trickle of water coming out little bit by bit. This indicates to me that there is a clog upstream from the pump. Multiple times, I have squeezed myself back behind the washer to take the back off and access the filter (which should be accessible from the front). I’ve found no clog there. Ive taken out the heating element to check for clogs around it, and found nothing there. Ive shown a bright light from inside the drum to highlight any potential clogs between it and the drum, and seen nothing there. Despite all of that, the problem remains, and when I manually spin the drum with nothing inside, I can hear what sounds like stuff moving around inside.

    I assume it must be ghosts or something at this point.





  • I found this good review article based on a study commissioned by the Canadian government.

    https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10408444.2023.2295338

    It seems like potential IQ effects are still difficult to distinguish as a dose response, so they weren’t able to come up with a point of departure. It doesn’t help that in a lot of studies comparing “high” and “low” fluoridation effects on IQ, the “low” is still higher than the WHO recommended level of 1.5 mg/L, and the US recommended level of 0.75.

    I think the optimal level is likely going to vary by municipality based on the quality of dental care and the use of fluoridated toothpaste (that everyone overuses), and consumption of high fluoride beverages like tea. I guess my main takeaway is that people need to read their local water quality report, and do what they will with that information




  • One thing to keep in mind with a lot of responses is often when someone says “we didn’t learn about x in high school”, what they should be saying is “I didn’t learn about x in high school”. I’ve certainly heard former classmates claiming not to have learned something even though they were sitting next to me when I learned it.

    When i was a preteen, we learned about WW2, mainly from a US perspective, and had a fairly large focus on the holocaust, including a visit to a holocaust museum.

    As a teen, I had a class on specifically European history. In there, we learned about lot more about the rise of the nazis (though not much on Italian fascists).

    Here’s the tl;dr on what I remember learning about then:

    WWI ended with the treaty of Versailles which was not a realistic, sustainable peace. We learned about the economic trouble like hyperinflation. We learned about the beer hall putsch, and that it was effectively unpunished. We learned that Hitler then sought power through legal means by allying with a broad range of groups unhappy with the current government. As he rose to power, various elements were purged from the government. Concurrently, political violence from the stormtroopers suppressed minorities and other enemies from organizing against them. This culminated in Hitler being elected chancellor, and then the enabling act gave him ultimate power. In the night of the long knives, all the allied elements in the party were purged. After that was kristallnacht, the remilitarization of the rhineland, annexation of Austria and the sudetenland, and then finally the invasion of Poland.




  • It basically says you can’t add anything to water except for “water quality additives” and has a fuzzy definitely of water quality additive.

    403.859 Prohibited acts.—The following acts and the causing thereof are prohibited and are violations of this act: (8) The use of any additive in a public water system whichdoes not meet the definition of a water quality additive as defined in s. 403.852(19)

    And then 403.852(19) has

    “Water quality additive” means any chemical, additive, or substance that is used in a public water system for the purpose of: (a) Meeting or surpassing primary or secondary drinking water standards; (b) Preventing, reducing, or removing contaminants; or © Improving water quality.

    Bold are the additions. The “primary and secondary drinking water standards” are legally defined terms where the EPA sets limits on maximum allowable amounts of stuff in water.

    https://www.epa.gov/sdwa/how-epa-regulates-drinking-water-contaminants-documents

    Personally, I would argue that fluoride is added to water for the purpose of “improving water quality” because water that protects people’s teeth is higher quality than water that doesn’t. If I were someone from a municipality whose job was ensuring water quality, I would read this as still allowing the addition of fluoride. If anyone doesn’t like that, let them try to prove in a court that fluoridated water is lower quality.


  • It’s salsa roja, salsa verde, salsa fresca, and any other fruit (mango is common) based condiment that you’d eat with chips. Salsa de mole, we just call mole. Other types of Mexican sauce like what you’d put over enchiladas, just gets called “enchilada sauce”.

    It’s a common thing with loan words to have them only applied to the subset of things that were originally imported and called by that name. No one out of Italy, for example would call pizza bianca “pizza” if you gave them a piece and asked what it is (I’m talking about roman pizza bianca, not “white pizza” being back translated).

    Sometimes the opposite happens, like “curry” being derived from a specific thing in a specific part of India, being applied by the British (and everywhere else they exported it) to basically any saucy Indian food.