Often reverse osmosis works better - and distillation systems require a lot of upkeep and energy costs. So there is that. And of course they only help if it’s not their transport system.

First of all: Where in your system was the sample taken? At the well? At a tank? At a faucet?

The answer to this question is important for the next steps.

Be aware that high lead content can also be an issue for plant watering and even showering.

If the sample has been taken at a endpoint (faucet) I would try to get another sample at the well directly. If you are “lucky” the acidity of the water is the reason lead is brought into your system from a section of your transport system. In that case replacing the transport layer (basically: Get new pipes) is the best approach - while it’s not cheap it is also not as expensive as filtering (or dealing with the health issues from lead, especially in the US).

If the well shows the same values you are screwed. There are basically two scenarios then: Your well installation itself is the problem - this is in theory “fixable” but expensive, but you might accidentally even poisoning your neighbours then. (The way to find out if it’s your installation is either with specialised equipment or, for some confirmation, get a sample from a neighbour who ideally life upstream from you)

If it’s not your well installation then it’s the well itself…and then you really really need a more extensive analysis: Lead in a ground water deposit is somewhat rare and often a indication something else is problematic - both because geologically lead is often next to other nasties, but also because human caused pollution with lead often goes with the real nasty stuff like arsenic,etc. And you really would want to find these. Then shit sadly becomes really expensive.

Which a lot of people don’t know: IOM also helps migration within industrialized nations - e.g. they used to have special flight conditions for migration to and from the US or Australia. (Mostly not cheaper but extra luggage allowance or things like that)

Nope,it hasn’t. If your glasses are fogging up in sync with your respiration rate or within a very short timeframe your mask is not sealing. Period. The only difference is when you have either have a valve mask, work with a face shield or similar things or in confined spaces - it’s basically impossible to fog up your glasses with a correctly positioned mask as the filter medium does work as a diffuser. If your mask does fog up suddenly despite a confirmed fit it usually is a warning sign for a breakdown of the filter medium.

(And believe me, we tried really hard - as part of a customer contract we tested all major mask manufacturers available in the EU, with a sample size in the 4 digit range, including UV fluid and thermal imaging tests)

I am fully aware that the equivalent of N95 is often seen as comparable to FFP2, but this is not actually quite correct. The FFP2 has a slightly worse filtration rate and a slightly higher resistance both for inspiration and expiration. Anyway, I intentionally wrote FFP3 as this is the recommended FFP class for Measles while within the NIOSH legislation only a N95 is recommended.

Mostly yes,but it is possible to have some beardstyles if you know very much what you are doing (and have a large head).

But the actual area of contact and to a certain degrees the areas around it need to be shaved properly,yes.

Every vaccination has a (although very slim) chance to cause an adverse reaction. Around 5% of all people vaccinated have a minor skin reaction (which is physiological and not an anaphylaxis. 1% report joint pain.

But,more severely, 1-4 people out of a million develop a life-threatening anaphylaxis, 3 out 100.000 a serious blood clothing disorder. Very rarely(as in: Less than 1 in 1 Million), but with a slightly higher incidence of you are an adult pancreatitis and deafness is reported.

As medicine is always a game of chances we try not to risk things,even if they are rare.

Healthcare professional here - but not your HPC and you cannot confirm that I am who I am so double check what I write:

• Get your titers checked and get revaccinationes asap. If you are not vaccinated or are a non-responder talk to your healthcare provider. Isolate until then.

• Mask up and keep your hands away from mouth, eyes and nose. You will need a properly fitting FFP3/NP95 mask here - measles are far meaner in terms of infectiousness than COVID. Tight fitting means: You have no leaks at the side - if your glasses fog up, if you can feel air going in or out next to your face,etc. it is not working. The usual “duckbill” masks with straps around the ears very very rarely fit properly.

• Wash your hands and desinfect them properly.

• Stay the fuck away from babies. Really. Please.

Octohill will come out next week, it’s at least a new take.

Centauri Carbon might be worth a look into then - it can print fairly high temperature filaments.

Yes and no. Old job was more IT and process related, nowadays I work more in disaster planning , public health policy and process planning in healthcare, spiced up with a bit of medical intelligence.

Basically hospitals, large companies and government bodies are legally required to have plans for major incidents (from “hey,there has been a train collision, you get 30 severely injured in 20min” to “shit,we lost all power” or “IT outtake”) - we do the planning and training, including life exercises for you. You want to update your healthcare system/the placement of your prehospital resources(ambulances, etc.) as a state or government body? We do that that for you.

You need to know which hospital in a random African country is the right one for a tourist with a sudden rare disease or your insurance wants to know how safe it is to send on of your staff members someone right into the current emerging disease hotspot? We do that for you.

Well, I got fired from a very stupid company (who would have guessed that healthcare companies needs more assistance instead of less during COVID? Not them.) when COVID hit.

Started my own company from the severance,so basically I hired myself and created my own job…and a few more.

Couldn’t be happier.

You are really surprised by a guy who wanted to name his car series S-E-X-Y and had a temper tantrum when model E was taken and he could not “buy” it.

I personally would start with TPU(after PETG) - the different shore grades provide a large usability for a lot of things and it print comparably well once you find the right calibration. Especially with a A1 as you mentioned you have one.

To be honest I would skip ABS totally in an A1 unless you have an external enclosure with a good filtering and exhaust solution. Be aware of the noxious fumes ABS will produce that have a potential to intoxicate you and are suspected to cause cancer depending on the additives. (Among others ABS produces hydrogen cyanide when printed - which is often better known under it’s former German brand name: Zyklon B…)

ASA nowadays provides a far less problematic (but not unproblematic) solution and while it’s a little bit more complicated to print it’s still manageable depending on the filament manufacturer. But you will need a temperature stabilised enclosure for both anyway, while ASA is a bit more sensitivitie,it doesn’t really matter that much for me.

Within ASA I personally found a far larger bandwidth of printability between the manufacturers. The major manufacturers for PLA often suck - especially Bambu Lab ASA is hideous to print. If you are in Europe I cannot recommend the Black Forest Filament ASA enough, their stuff is not comparable to any other ASA I printed. Alternatively material4print. If you need a filament that is available worldwide Filamentum Apollo X is a solid choice, so is Polymaker,but both to a lesser extend.

In theory PMMA, PCTG and CPE are also worth a consideration, but besides CPE all of them are far more difficult to print.

BTW: All variants need to be printed very dry, ideally out of a warm dry box.

You can easily kill yourself with a water overdose (and it’s actually fairly common),so yes.

Nutmeg was already mentioned - high doses can easily kill someone, sadly even without hallucinations simply by killing off ones liver and dying an agonizing death a few days later. The same goes for cinnamon, but with a much lower dose.

There are a few more, but I don’t want to give people too many ideas.

To make it short: Yes, possible,but it’s mostly a very slow death over multiple days that fucks you up really bad and is a horrible way to go.

Sadly the hallucination effect does not correlate with the toxicity,especially the hepatotoxicity with nutmeg… You can absolutely kill of your liver and die an agonizing death a few days later and have no hallucinations at all.

Tbf, comparing blender and openscad is more like comparing a hammer with a knife.

FreeCAD would be the more obvious comparison here - and while Openscad has some benefits for more complicated projects it is less than optimal - and sadly FreeCAD still sucks compared to most commercial products,even though it has improved recently due to the ONSEL influence.

There simply is none. Because you have trace amounts of Methanol in every hard liquor as it is created when Pektin is separated during the production. While it can be minimised by proper precautions (right enzymes,right base, etc.) and some liquors carry smaller (Potato,grain based) or higher (fruit based) contents, even professionally produced liquor carries a (very very) small amount.

This does rule out all the “test stripe/kit” sets that are e.g. used in waste water treatment (methanol there is really bad as it means your plant is contaminated and your bacterial cultures are possibly dead) as they only perform quantitative tests - they tell you “yes/no”. But when every test is potentially a yes,it won’t help. (And additionally they are prone to interference by ethanol and some other stuff and need very specific test conditions)

So the test needs to be quantitative - it needs to tell you how much Methanol is there. The only mobile process I am aware of is photorefractometer based - and these need very specific sample preparation that is unfeasible with a drink in a bar. Besides, the cheapest commercial product I am aware of is around 4k and “mobile” is,well, a big word for it - the device is the size of around 4 Nintendo switch consoles. (And each test including preparation takes around 5-10min and costs 20 bucks)

There has been a research project by the Swiss ETH Zurich that claimed that a smaller device has been build,but as far as I know it has not yet reached market maturity so far.

Lastly it’s also a bit of a problem of practicability - do you want to test each drink? Because what happens if the barkeeper changes the bottle while you drink there? Can you still perform the test after one drink? Or two? Unlikely. Can you make sure the testing conditions in terms of temperature,etc. are met?

So in the end you are absolutely out of luck,sadly. But there are a few things one can do besides drinking only in reputable bars or drink no alcohol:

• Stay.the.fuck.hydrated. I know, we all say that a lot, but especially in a warm environment you often aren’t. And in case your body actually encounters Methanol it will need a fucking lot of water to get rid of it as fast as possible (via your kidneys). It’s basically your best bet. Because most methanol poisoning cases are actually never recognised as such, as people simply think they have a hangover,stomach bug,etc. You don’t get blind, you don’t die, you just kill a bit of your liver, heart and brain.

• Immediately stop drinking if you get a drink that tastes like it contains a lot of alcohol but does not make you tipsy - the inebriation of Methanol is far less than ethanol and while you every likely have already ingested a dose that will severely hurt you, it can make a difference. If you start to feel sickish after that get to a reputable hospital asap. There are good hospitals in Vietnam,but they might not be around the corner. (And for fucks sake get travel insurance)

• Watch your surroundings. If the bar you are in is only frequented by tourists despite your location making it normally a likely spot for locals as well this is not a good sign. If the bartender used different bottles of the same brand for different guests it is not a good sign as well. If they use two bottles of the same brand for the same drink? Stay the fuck away. (That’s a common way to hide counterfeit alcohol - you have one legit bottle you use for controls, sometimes for shots especially at the beginning of a night and fill drinks and later rounds up with the counterfeit bottle)

• Now for something a bit more risky: Get a bit drunk beforehand from safe alcohol. No,I am not joking. Methanol competes with regular ethanol for certain enzymes/receptors. By blocking them off before Methanol arrived one can buy the body a bit of time to get rid of more Methanol. (Especially as Ethanol is more competitive). That is why back when I started my career it was not uncommon for a patient to receive ethanol in hospital - or, if that one was “out of stock” for some reason aka an alcoholic pharmacist - to drive lights and sirens to the next 24/7 fuel station as they are allowed to sell alcohol here. Again,that will not safe you,but it might buy your kidneys time.

• If you feel unusually sickish the next morning,like having an extra hard hangover or similar symptoms for the next 48-72h: Get yourself to a doctor if you have the slightest doubt in your alcohol sources. It’s very rare for people to be intoxicated so badly that they are incapacitated directly. Almost all cases die after a latency period of 48-72h before the real bad symptoms set in. If you are able to receive modern intensive care medicine within that time there is a chance to survive cases nowadays that would have died 15 years ago.

Or,even easier: Don’t drink.

(And for fucks sake people: Get travel insurance, don’t drink and drive scooters, and maybe find out where the next private hospital is in the area you travel to. )

Absolutly believable. People often have a rather high resistance to engage in physical altercations even when directly targeted and a lot of people don’t know how to defend themselves, even more so if facing against a group and in darkness.

A group that works coordinated,brings one member of their opponents to the ground and uses kicks to the head has a good chance to only face two opponents within 15 seconds,sadly.

Besides: There is literally no mention that no weapons were used and there is literally zero mention in the article (and never has been,I checked) that the woman stayed. (Besides - have you considered that people might get injured enough after a sexual assault that they are unable to run away)?

Wtf man, what is your point?

The problem is not her age but the lack of contingency planning - this actually happens a lot in industrial nations. The caring partner has an accident or a sudden medical illness and the person cared for dies of the lack of care.

The easiest form of backup is someone checking in regularly by phone - if the relatives (Hackman had three children and at least one granddaughter - but it seems they were estranged) or friends can form some form of habit to call each on a different day and act if none picks up unexpectedly, most of these cases can be effectivly solved.

But additional options exist: Modern medical alarm systems can be programmed to have a “death man switch” - if a certain key is not pressed once or twice a day the system sends out an alarm to the alarm company and they try to get a voice contact. For carers of bed bound patients (with no large pets - so not applicable here) the option to use a motion detector in a hallway exists - instead of the button the system sends out an alarm when none is moving in the hallway for a certain amount of time,which means something is wrong with the carer.

Lately there are ambient assisted living (basically smarthome) systems that can be used as well - e.g. you can hook up a sensor to the microwave and cutlery drawer. Neither has been opened by 2pm? So none had breakfast or lunch and something is wrong. Etc. etc.

In the end people need to plan ahead - and that is the problem. Because by doing so they must submit to their own mortality and we don’t like that.

In 22 years in healthcare I had my fair share of these cases. Most end well, but only go on our nerves as paramedics (and nurses),because it’s a really big problem if you have a patient who is the carer of someone who can’t stay at home alone, and the patient needs urgent transport. (We can’t simply take them with us most of the time)

But just to give you a few examples of cases I remember:

• The 45 y/o lady who basically died of thirst fully conscious - She was a quadriplegic, her husband was a bit older and seemed to have suffered a sudden cardiac arrest while caring for her, ripping of her communication computer of her bed while going down. She was still alive when found, but sadly we couldn’t save her, organs and brain were to far gone. That one really left a mark in my brain.

• The 80 year old lady who was mobile but had heavy Alzheimer and ran away (possibly to find help,not totally known) after her partner was unable to get up for 36h after an fall resulting in a broken hip. He literally saw her walking out but couldn’t stop her. She was found 4 weeks later, in a creek.

• The 90 year old who died of thirst and hunger after his somewhat wife died during the night. He made notes on a piece of paper about the dates… But was unable to summon help due to being bed bound. Especially bad as he had a system in place - their daughter called every day - but she had a horrific accident on “day one” and was in coma.

Anyway. It’s a horrific way to go. Talk to your elderly relatives and neighbours.

Often enough the credit card payment still is done through PayPal, though