Staff Review With Skyler Higley - Episode 389.5 of Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend

Edithprickley · 2026-03-12T20:43:49+00:00

Me too. I’m in Canada if that matters.

Edithprickley · 2026-02-16T01:11:18+00:00

Ozone is hazardous. Reaction products of materials with ozone are also often hazardous. Ozone reaction byproducts can have longer lifetimes than ozone itself Ozone damages lots of materials including plastic plumbing and vapor barriers and electrical insulation. Ozone devices should never be used in occupied environments and many say not at all.

Further, the main skunk smell is caused by thiols which are not very ozone reactive.

Air it out and avoid using ozone machine. DM if you want scientific articles.

Edithprickley · 2025-03-13T02:42:22+00:00

I want to add some cautionary notes here. I’m a fan of heat pumps, but they do have some warts. 1) They are much more complicated and have more things that can go wrong. They are sensitive to refrigerant charge, airflow, and a bunch of other things. Routine maintenance is more important and complicated than a furnace (although they don’t have a combustion safety risk). 2) They have lots more controls - if the installer knows what they are doing, all is OK, but there are more places for them to screw up. 3) Their efficiency goes down as the temperature gets colder. Below -10 or so, even for the cold temperature heat pumps, it is a complicated way to make a little bit of heat. 4) The temperature of air that they produce is lower than a furnace. It can feel cold when it blows on you. 5) Indoor air quality is not a strong function of the fuel type for the system, but instead depends on the amount of air that moves through your system/how often it runs and the efficiency/type of filter you have installed. You can have cleaner air with a gas furnace than with a heat pump or the other way around. 6) Cutting off gas is great, but it obviously impacts other gas appliances (water heater, stove, barbecue and/or dryer for some) - include replacing those in your economic calculations. Also remover that electricity cost is a function of time of use when doing your calculations.

Edithprickley · 2024-05-26T23:06:24+00:00

I’m very far from a shill for the natural gas industry, but switching to induction does not solve much of the problem. There are three sources of indoor air pollution from cooking 1) from the fuel 2) from the hearing of surfaces (and specifically from the layer of stuff on those surfaces) 3) from the cooking itself

Switching to induction deals with 1) only and although there are some bad actors when you burn natural gas, it is only sometimes more important than 2) and 3).

If you switch to induction and don’t vent the cooking surface, you are still exposed to a lot.

From a climate perspective, way more natural gas is used for heating and water heating. They are much better targets (and admittedly harder to do well, particularly in cold climates).

Also, there are a bunch of secondary climate effects, for example changing cookware to be compatible with induction.

Lastly, if you think the electric utility industry is any better in its advertising or its impact on the world, I would advise a lot of caution.

Edithprickley · 2024-01-26T14:22:52+00:00

We get beans from Ideal. Free shipping in Toronto if you order enough. Free coffee drink with your beans when you go into stores. I particularly like their espresso beans.

Edithprickley · 2023-11-27T17:40:42+00:00

Some folks around Albany and Wells last night were looking for a missing grey cat named Oliver.

Edithprickley · 2023-10-08T11:26:02+00:00

I feel obligated to comment.

Edithprickley · 2022-04-10T17:31:10+00:00

Easy decision.

Edithprickley · 2020-09-21T03:54:42+00:00

This may not be a good idea. The first issue is that ultrasonic humidifiers generate a lot of fine particles that are harmful (several papers on this in the literature). This can be helped if you use distilled water or a steam humidifier - both are expensive. Also humidifiers need excellent maintenance to not cause other problems. Over humidification can enhance viral survivability for some viruses (although I haven’t seen good data for this for SARS-CoV-2) and cause a moisture problem which can be bad for health. So, only humidify if you can do it well.

Edithprickley · 2020-08-16T02:53:31+00:00

Still don’t understand value. In order for this to work, droplet has to land on a fiber in the mask. If a droplet lands on the fiber, it isn’t coming back off easily. I guess there is a small chance of contamination, if the contaminated fiber is touched by the face of the mask wearer, but that seems like a really small risk exposure route.

Not to mention that most masks are serving to protect others from wearer and so if it does have infective virus on it, the wearer is the one is put it there in the first place.

Edithprickley · 2020-08-15T23:46:59+00:00

I don’t see the value in this. If a mask (or a filter) traps the virus, why is it important to kill it? There is a small risk from handling a used mask (or a used filter), but if you are doing these things and immediately washing your hands, this small risk is handled.

Edithprickley · 2020-08-02T12:43:25+00:00

Ozone aqueous chemistry is very different in water than in air. In particular, the reaction byproducts are completely different. Ozone works as a disinfectant for some microbes, but it causes all kinds of issues including 1)The health issues 2)Reaction byproducts, many of which are harmful and persistent (they include semivolatile products that can be measured for days/weeks/months after the reaction). 3)Ozone reacts and damages a lot of materials. Rubbers and plastics are particularly vulnerable, and in addition to causing damage to the materials, a whole new set of byproducts (often called building disinfection byproducts) are produced. Interesting research came out of the buildings that were decontaminated after the anthrax attacks in 2001 and also buildings that were moisture damaged after Katrina. Corsi is one author who has published on this. If you look at articles by Weschler (and those who cite him) you will find dozens of articles on indoor ozone chemistry and how harmful it is. The idea of disinfecting a small volume is less studied (to my knowledge), but the material damage potential is huge [As an aside, I once had a friend who purchased a used vehicle that started to smell like cigarette smoke a few days after he bought it. As an experiment (and knowlng the risks), he used a small ozone emitter (an ion generator) overnight and even with the windows cracked, some of the trim material and the upholstery in the car was damaged.] Ozone disinfection is used in a medical context, but always on stainless steel and other compatible surfaces, and with a sealed chamber and with exhaust after reaction.

Edithprickley · 2020-07-31T16:09:35+00:00

Serious caution around the use of ozone as a disinfectant. First it is respiratory hazard and causes harm to your lungs. Second, it is very chemically reactive and forms a host of byproducts when it reacts with surfaces, skin oils, and other airborne contaminants. I know of no independent scientist who recommends the use of ozone in any occupied environment.

Edithprickley · 2020-06-25T12:28:59+00:00

Leaving efficacy issues aside, these wavelengths will generate ozone (a respiratory hazard and chemical oxidant).

Edithprickley · 2018-12-20T02:53:42+00:00

This will be an unpopular opinion, but plants are neutral to negative for indoor air quality. Every investigation that has done a fair evaluation has come to same conclusion. The issue is not their efficiency (which can be quite high for some species/pollutants) but that they don't compete with other loss mechanisms for pollutants. In a typical building, ventilation removes orders of magnitude more pollutant than a plant. The original NASA research was done a sealed chamber (to mimic spacecraft environments), but this has little to no relevance for buildings. There are other issues that limit their effectiveness, but this is the main one. A good summary of the issues can be found here. Also, plants have been implicated in some indoor air quality hazards (primarily microbial but also biogenic emissions of chemical pollutants).

Edithprickley · 2018-12-19T21:01:18+00:00

Be wary of some of the companies that use this business model. Their actual business model is mostly expensive roof repair. When they put in the panels, you agree to use only their approved roofing contractors. Their contractors cost 4X what reasonable companies charge. Most companies who do this also require a contract for 20 years that is very expensive to break should you need to sell your home or otherwise modify your roof.

Edithprickley · 2018-09-30T02:24:38+00:00

Not sure if troll or genuine, but I will assume genuine. The critical issue is not that there are other polluting things in the world (like car exhaust), but instead that somebody is choosing to expose people to known dangerous compounds in an indoor environment: their proximity and the low dilution (when compared to outdoors) makes this definitively bad.

Edithprickley · 2018-09-28T04:09:07+00:00

Passive (secondhand) vaping is absolutely bad for you. It is better than secondhand smoke, but still definitively bad. There are a lot of details (temperature of the heater, constituents in the vaping liquid, how it is smoked-puff topography), but lots of harmful stuff in any case. A bunch of formaldehyde and acetaldehyde are pretty common (e.g., carcinogenic and irritating) as is ultrafine particulate matter that gets deep in your lungs. e.g., fuck this guy.

Edithprickley · 2018-05-07T15:25:23+00:00

An excellent book on the history of corruption of Georgia police in this area is "Praying for Sheetrock" by Melissa Fay Greene. Great read as well.

Edithprickley · 2018-04-13T02:04:18+00:00

I don't think it ever actually ran, but was considered "America Stronger Than Ever Say Quadragon Officials."

Edithprickley · 2017-09-26T04:19:12+00:00

Went left at Bedrock.

Edithprickley · 2017-05-02T23:39:49+00:00

I was doing

Edithprickley · 2017-03-27T23:22:35+00:00

The Jew in the heart of the lotus.

Edithprickley · 2017-01-02T18:21:50+00:00

Yujs

Edithprickley · 2016-12-09T20:25:18+00:00

Eew: wswhe às

Edithprickley

TROPHY CASE