Alyx Woodward (obsolete) @Alyx@computerfairi.es
Alyx Woodward (obsolete)
boosted
@Sylvhem One of the truest but hardest lesson I was ever taught, by Esmeralda Weatherwax:
«If you trust in yourself...and believe in your dreams...and follow your star... you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.» #Pratchett
more chemical accident salt
oh, this one will _really_ make you love capitalism! a massive explosion at a BP refinery in Texas City, hideously understaffed and with catastrophically bad process monitoring. 15 deaths
corporations shouldn't run factories, they're shit at it
@maple you're kidding...no you're not kidding
bleh
chemical safety horrors from the CSB
"oh whoops the phosgene just diffused through the Teflon hoses! who coulda predicted that" just...aaaa
a DuPont engineer recommended a hose jacketed in Monel metal but, nope, stainless steel was cheaper
imagine being a factory worker. you don't get told about this stuff. you don't know that the equipment's safe or not, they're never gonna _tell_ you
chemical safety horrors from the CSB
bleh, was phosgene really handled this casually at DuPont?
chemical safety horrors from the CSB
these chemical safety board reports are something else. gawd some of this stuff is frightening
"heh yeah we sprang a methyl chloride leak and didn't find out until it triggered a distant alarm five days later, our bad"
@Freylet *hugs* aw thanks :=)
a flippin' miracle happened last night, which is that Organic Syntheses finally put up a new article
and it's about using sym-trimethoxybenzene to make asymmetric diphenyliodonium tosylate reagents that reliably undergo nucleophilic substitution on the desired ring, with sym-trimethoxyiodobenzene leaving
re: Drugs
@Freylet it's the stamens you smoke (although I have vaguely heard of other parts being smoked)
🕷️ Kara here! I have tried them at a friend's. it's a pleasant mild smoke, if nothing else, I rather want to try it again
Drugs
@Freylet Kara's thinking of trying lotus smoking
@cinebox I'm wondering about fifty years down the line when global warming has made a mess of the world economy. like, what's still gonna be around
Alyx Woodward (obsolete)
boosted
climate woes, dark
@Alyx we aren't giving up either. we can't give up on anything, we've forgotten how.
maybe we're doomed to slide into the darkness no matter what we do, but we'll be fighting the whole way down with anything we can find to fight with.
@cinebox @diodelass do you foresee having access to large-scale integration in perpetuity
climate woes, dark
@diodelass I ain't giving up
like, maybe humanity's shot its bolt, maybe it's time for someone new, but goddamn it
we can manage a better transition than...THIS
it's not impossible, I just can't imagine it myself :=(
Alyx Woodward (obsolete)
boosted
climate woes, dark
we could also find the courage to keep on living, of course. but, you know,
Alyx Woodward (obsolete)
boosted
climate woes, dark
if we're so keen on wiping ourselves out, we could at least have the decency to make it quick.
slowly warming up the climate until all our food sources die and the air becomes unbreathable is a pretty painful way to go, and will cause the most suffering to the least deserving, over generation after generation.
if we're trying to wipe ourselves out, surely we could do it more mercifully, more courageously.
Alyx Woodward (obsolete)
boosted
climate woes
saving the planet is not the concern.
life on this planet will persist. if you ask us, and many ecologists we know, wiping out all life on Earth is beyond the capability of humanity.
we can, however, wipe ourselves out.
we, who depend on so much, stand to lose the most from our own actions. if we don't change things now, we're going to drive ourselves to extinction. maybe it's already too late.
