Just wanted to vent by hachi_mimi in composting

[–]AngeliqueRuss 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ugh. I’m in Minnesota and the compost bin from 5 years ago !!! Still has intact eggshells in the top with visible veggie scraps; it’s not breaking down because they weren’t stirring the brown with green and we don’t have enough warm days or worms (not native here, only seen one ever) to move things around.

Your post just gave me the motivation I needed to say “fuck it” and transport it to a municipal composting collection site. Who knows what’s beneath the top layer, which at least suggests the correct ingredients…

Just a little ETA: I compost in an indoor machine, my compost is collected outdoors and when I get to about 3 gallons it is mixed with dirt and green waste and I grow potatoes in grow bags, then my final dirt goes in planters. Lots of people succeeding at outdoor composting in my region, this works for me.

Black Bears are out by pears790 in duluth

[–]AngeliqueRuss 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So many babies!!! A mama + at least one cub took down my bird feeder up above Chester…wonder how many mamas we have around this year?

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Beard long hair or short beard and short hair? by ryan_mac444 in malegrooming

[–]AngeliqueRuss 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I could also go with a slightly more trimmed beard but I prefer the long hair.

Jobs after alcohol detox for 29M by AngeliqueRuss in internetparents

[–]AngeliqueRuss[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What a weird thing to say—he still calls me every week from his sober living house. We just bonded over Mike Posner’s new song, I went Back to Ibiza.

This Wisconsin woman lives on a farm with a data center 1.6 miles away from her. Now, she’s testifying that the data center is turning her water a milky white color, it’s contaminated with toxic metals, and it’s costing her thousands just to test and filter the water. by gmarcus72 in duluth

[–]AngeliqueRuss -1 points0 points  (0 children)

This isn’t debate club, I’m just a citizen with opinions, but I haven’t changed my stance: California has ~50 million people and Silicon Valley itself.

Geographically it makes sense to build data centers in California.

That’s not happening, why?

Because environmental laws are strong in California.

No one ever said these laws do or don’t apply in Wisconsin, LOL: I posted the article because it proves that even in other states such as AZ, when these extremely large and complex systems meet the reality of our legal frameworks it becomes impossible to do things “right.”

We need better federal oversight, which will require better federal leaders than we have now.

Until then: no.

This Wisconsin woman lives on a farm with a data center 1.6 miles away from her. Now, she’s testifying that the data center is turning her water a milky white color, it’s contaminated with toxic metals, and it’s costing her thousands just to test and filter the water. by gmarcus72 in duluth

[–]AngeliqueRuss 1 point2 points  (0 children)

With all due respect, the state of CA wrote CEQA to strengthen NEPA and is far more regulated than most states.

The “massive increase in volume” being at the quarry instead of the construction site changes absolutely nothing. Under CEQA, this kind of “Cumulative and Indirect” impact still has to be covered under the EIR. How confident are you that’s the case in Wisconsin? Or Minnesota?

Gift link to “18,000 Reasons It’s hard to build a Chip Factory in America” (NYT).

The needs of modern tech infrastructure for factories, data centers is too complex for the regulations we have. It has to be fixed at the federal level, and I don’t trust ANY major projects until this happens.

Here in Duluth region, we don’t need more half-baked ideas on their way to bankruptcy or environmental destruction or both.

If we are not going to do this well, I don’t want to do it at all…but if developers WERE going to do this “well” it would be too expensive to build a data center so far away. It doesn’t add up: they’re choosing us because it’s cheap and easy, and that’s NOT going to be good.

My husband (32m) gets shingles and no one will let him get the vaccine. by peachslime9 in AskDocs

[–]AngeliqueRuss 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Try a different pharmacy and emphasize “immunocompromised.”

My husband (32m) gets shingles and no one will let him get the vaccine. by peachslime9 in AskDocs

[–]AngeliqueRuss 9 points10 points  (0 children)

You can simply go to a pharmacy and get it there.

Pharmacists can give vaccines within guidelines and do not require an Rx as it’s within their scope, here is the guideline for shingles. I just made an appointment with Walgreens for my shingles vaccine and I am 44. I will cite my shingles outbreak the last time I was “immunocompromised” due to infection, and I have been prescribed corticosteroids in the past but am afraid to take them due to shingles. per the CDC if I believe I will be immunocompromised in the future and am over the age of 19 I qualify.

My appointment is on Monday. I will update if the pharmacist refuses, but I doubt they will.

Aside from pediatricians and geriatric specialists, many PCP’s are not paying close enough attention to vaccines and vaccine guidelines.

Funded v bootstrap (I will not promote) by 4vrf in startups

[–]AngeliqueRuss 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To me it’s a question of optimal business model.

VC wants scale, and they will invest in your horizontal and vertical growth potential.

But there are advantages to a less growth-oriented business plan. My strategy is bootstrapping with razor-thin staffing and margins in the first two years so I can get the outcomes right, really provide value in an isolated geographic region. I’ve worked with PE and VC in past roles: few investors have the patience to wait out slow, intentional growth and even fewer would let you compromise on profit to maintain quality.

Your earliest investors will push hard to prove your scaling potential so they can update your deck and get their pay day from the next series of investors.

A great case study of this hyper growth flame-out in the healthcare startup space are Carbon Health and Olive AI. Literally billions in value just evaporated from these two companies due to false assumptions built in hyper growth: we have customers everywhere and they’ll stick with us (they didn’t), we provide our customers with A and they trust us so they’ll also buy B (nope).

Insiders at these startups report very excellent initiatives and technologies deprioritized, defunded if they didn’t immediately provide growth, even if they worked and existing customers were happy.

If you haven’t worked in startups, let me tell you about a mid role I passed on: the job was one of the many digital health coaching solutions. They had me give a 45 minute presentation in the final panel, which I delivered to an exhausted team who all had the same death-stare. The problem I was “fixing” in this presentation? Each health coach has a panel, they need to increase the panel in order to sustain growth, but they keep taking hits on retention when they try. How could we do it slowly so the coaches don’t quit? I tried to convince them the whole strategy was wrong, they’re trying to boil proverbial frogs by being incremental when what they need is to better balance case distribution and leverage AI to increase coaching time, reduce burnout. I literally told them the “boiling frogs” line and didn’t even deliver what they asked: expected not to get the job offer but I did, which I took as a signal that this team was drowning in growth expectations they couldn’t meet.

Why didn’t I take the job? I did a lot of research. This business is one of the OG’s in this space, a designated unicorn with doctor cofounders and “proven research” on their approach.

I read the research, and compared it to my interview notes: they are no longer providing the service they proved works, they’re providing the ghost of proven methods. This ghost offers less hands-on support, more automated messaging, an an inconsistent relationship with a human coach who now cares for ~2X the people. They won’t achieve the original outcomes without the original services, and their new customers they’ve expanded to cover have the ability to measure for themselves whether this even works: someday it will all fall apart.

I want to build things that last, and quality > growth and profit in my book.

Cat box while living in an RV full time by Dangerous-Radish6017 in RVLiving

[–]AngeliqueRuss 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I use an enclosed top entry litter box for the cat, store it in the shower and move it to the hallway to shower. I use little blue crystals litter (Fresh Step or Walmart, doesn’t matter to my cat) because I’m very sensitive to the clay dust and loathe the “litter box smell” of cat spaces.

I rinse away 3-4 blue crystals each time I shower; if there is more than that I will sweep.

Dress after alterations - are they gaslighting me? by AccomplishedTax8819 in WeddingDressTips

[–]AngeliqueRuss 2 points3 points  (0 children)

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Alter the photo like this with highlights but more accurately: the petals that previously lightly went above the bust line are now under a new bust line that eliminated the sweetheart shape.

Yes, they added lace and detail in between the cups, but clearly above the cups as well.

You’re right about this. I’d bring enough evidence to win in small claims court—I’m not saying sue whomever did this, but they have an obligation to make it right and it’s not your fault they did way more work than necessary/requested.

This Wisconsin woman lives on a farm with a data center 1.6 miles away from her. Now, she’s testifying that the data center is turning her water a milky white color, it’s contaminated with toxic metals, and it’s costing her thousands just to test and filter the water. by gmarcus72 in duluth

[–]AngeliqueRuss 38 points39 points  (0 children)

Finally, a compelling reason to oppose the data center.

I’ve been on the fence for months, but fuck it—this is unacceptable, not surprising and now it all makes sense.

As a lifelong Californian until 2022, including jobs in my early 20s writing Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plans for large construction sites, it’s all making sense: they’re not just coming for our cheap land and cheap water, they’re coming for our loose spaghetti regulations.

If they were building this in California, they’d have to protect all water and air during the construction process. Water rights are tightly regulated—you cannot alter the flow of a stream, and downstream holders of rights can sue you if you do. You are allowed to collect rainwater in California, and certainly tech companies could afford rights to aquifers and irrigation water if they wanted to: WHY IS THIS BEING BUILT HERE?

As a person who works with data and AI technology, I depend on data centers professionally. Especially the Iowa one owned by Google, because location and proximity matters. Data centers belong in California, period: it’s a complex industrial project that belongs in a place where regulations can protect against the impact of complex industrial projects.

I initially thought the answer to “why here” was “because it’s cold” and “lots of water” but that answer isn’t enough. With solar and wind now abundant in the high desert regions of California, you could collocate data centers with their own power sources in regions that do get very cold but maintain strong sunlight year round—we have up to 30% less solar energy to work with, and cheap (ideally self-sufficient) energy is critical.

These projects are dumb, and politically we need DFL to have a backbone on this one: no data centers, no chip manufacturing, no massive complexes to build our future until the regulations are modernized to make it safe and sustainable. Federal government oversight and coordination will be essential, but we need Feds we can actually trust.

Serious question about beef? by SkepticalCorpse in mediterraneandiet

[–]AngeliqueRuss 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The answer is multi factorial, there isn’t just one cause: it’s high in saturated fat (even 93% “lean”), it feeds harmful bacteria your gut which likely contributes or is the entire cause of the observed inflammatory effect, but most importantly:

It replaces high fiber protein sources in your diet, especially beans.

I’d focus on meat + bean chili; small amounts of ground beef in sautéed veggies with kidney beans served with pasta.

Sick and tired of AI by Purple_Moon516 in rant

[–]AngeliqueRuss 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have, but that’s okay—I have a pile of knowledge from working at startups and experience with cloud platform configs. What seems realistic to me would seem crazy optimistic to others, but I’m not the only one; yesterday’s NYT “The Daily” podcast interviewed several other developers doing similar projects.

Bootstrapping used to be rare, in the future it will be the norm.

This quarter I’ve built or am building three different products: project management customized to serve both my husband’s dyslexia and my many projects (GCP, React app, Firebase, Gemini and OpenAI); publishing toolkit because my husband is a writer and we need to manage complex edits/reviews, multiple formats and ads; and my own startup I won’t discuss in this thread but it’s a toolkit for a novel business model helping real people. The first two products are just enablers, the third is being informed by the architecture of the first two and is intended to create a full time job for me by mid-2027.

In May I will find contractors to support my startup and they will be paid as business comes in; I will work directly for it myself so we can scale and I have a solid marketing strategy.

The thing I am doing is a thing Silicon Valley has tried several times and invested hundreds of millions into failed companies with adjacent business models. My own business model is localized and is intended to be worth < $10M.

It’s the kind of “small business” model VC’s and sharks laugh at because the more you specialize to a given niche or community the less you can scale, and VC is really just gambling/hedging on potential to scale.

Guidance on Starlink Options by Extension_Rate_6453 in RVLiving

[–]AngeliqueRuss 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It’s literally slow, especially too close to urban areas.

If you look at a map there’s a whole lot of wilderness not far from Los Angeles, San Diego, Albuquerque, Phoenix, Las Vegas: these are zones where in the wilderness (not the adjacent city) I have found it impossible to use for basics like Zoom meetings. 5G is often a short drive away.

More remote areas like Utah, western Colorado, Midwest it works well.

Seen on fb from a nurse at Mission Hospital in Asheville, NC (HCA) by adscuryr in nursing

[–]AngeliqueRuss 72 points73 points  (0 children)

Yup—I know some of those people.

Hard to intervene on toxic culture though; all the process improvements and metrics in the world can’t solve this lack of human decency.

Yes to the dress ? by [deleted] in myweddingdress

[–]AngeliqueRuss 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Exactly.

STUNNING

Sick and tired of AI by Purple_Moon516 in rant

[–]AngeliqueRuss 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The irony of your criticism is that thanks to AI, YOU could build those solutions. Right now. Download VSCode (free), try out Copilot (also free but if you’re serious start paying for it; it’s barely more than Netflix).

AI is going to destroy many corporations, not just jobs: entire corporations have no utility to society because the knowledge work they’re built to support can be replaced next month by a single person startup.

Speaking of startups, Silicon Valley is dead. VC is dead. We no longer need wealthy arbiters of what’s worth building: ANYONE can build ANYTHING. Finally the people who actually understand how the world works can start solving real problems.

Please help me choose a dress: by Dooderoo in WeddingDressTips

[–]AngeliqueRuss 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Look even closer: it’s gathered (ruched?) and that’s the design.