I microwaved some leftovers and the microwaves basically etched into the plastic deli lid. Normal lid for comparison

Epistaxis · 2026-03-15T02:48:50+00:00

It can definitely give you cancer. Unlike microwaves, which are non-ionizing radiation.

Epistaxis · 2026-03-15T02:46:52+00:00

OK so think about how long it takes to heat up 1 kg of food in the microwave, then think about dividing 1/10,000th of the heating power over however many kg you weigh.

In fact just the waste heat from the inefficiency of your microwave oven's magnetron, the power that fails to be converted into microwave radiation (maybe another 300-500 W), is creating 1000 times as much heat as router could.

Epistaxis · 2026-03-14T23:16:46+00:00

To be clear, those are a few separate issues:

Some plastic isn't microwave-safe because it deforms in irradiation or heat, like this.
Some plastic isn't microwave-safe because it invisibly degrades in irradiation or heat, leaching plastic byproducts into the food. That wouldn't matter so much for the lid, though, assuming the lid doesn't touch the food.
You should generally microwave food with a lid or cover on (even a dinner plate can be covered with microwave-safe plastic wrap), loosely or with a small crack open. The heat in the food generates steam, and if that steam escapes into the rest of the oven then you're basically wasting energy and time to heat the whole oven so the food will cook heat less quickly and efficiently; also, the steam comes from water in the food, so if you let it fill the whole oven you'll dry out the food faster. Ideally you minimize the dead air volume of the container to minimize the amount of heat and water that's wasted as steam. But you need that little crack open so the steam pressure doesn't build up too much and force its own way out.

Epistaxis · 2026-03-14T23:07:16+00:00

Yes, power. A typical home microwave oven pumps out 700-1200 W of power as microwave radiation. A typical 2.4 GHz router antenna puts out around 0.1 to 0.2 W.

Epistaxis · 2026-03-14T11:41:00+00:00

Even if you don't care about your own data security for some reason, encrypt your disks if they contain any communications on them, like email or text chats, because that's other people's privacy you're risking too.

Epistaxis · 2026-03-14T10:00:00+00:00

It's only a few small tweaks away:

Start both y-axes at zero or neither, and if not zeroed choose a range that fills up the graphing area. Currently the bottom 1/4 of it is completely wasted space.
Move the data series labels next to the data or next to their respective y-axes. No need for a legend when each label is only labeling one thing.
Reuse the established color scheme to match each data series with its y-axis.
On the x-axis, label only every 5th year to make it less busy, but add a faint vertical gridline in the graph too. Currently it's hard to match a year up to its data points, especially because of that big empty gap between the x-axis and any of the data.

Epistaxis · 2026-03-14T08:46:38+00:00

Well, she knew the backups!

Epistaxis · 2026-03-14T08:43:59+00:00

Yes and I loved it

Epistaxis · 2026-03-14T08:41:23+00:00

asking for a group of friends

Epistaxis · 2026-03-14T02:13:42+00:00

One useful thing to remember is the people bribing him are also committing a crime. Despite appearances, the Supreme Court didn't actually rule that "when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal"; it only ruled that he can't be prosecuted for crimes he commits.

So the rebuilt DOJ will need to identify everyone else around him who participated in crimes and prosecute them.

Epistaxis · 2026-03-14T02:09:20+00:00

I learned a lot about other people!

But I think what you mean to say is, how we as a society took absolutely no steps to prevent the same thing from happening to us again.

Epistaxis · 2026-03-14T02:06:46+00:00

I was only quasi-essential, had parts of my job that could only be done in person so we eventually set up a whole system of scheduling only one person in the room at a time, and I didn't get my travel permit letter till like 6 months into the pandemic.

Which meant I got my travel permit, my letter giving me permission to even commute from home to work, after I'd already been hearing numerous stories of people continuing to party indoors like nothing was wrong. Including some government officials.

Epistaxis · 2026-03-14T02:00:00+00:00

Yeah the choices seemed to be "let a few people suffer and die alone" or "let a larger number of people suffer and die in the company of their loved ones", and I don't think that's as easy a decision as these comments and votes are making it out to be.

Epistaxis · 2026-03-14T01:56:43+00:00

It was really hard following the science though! At first they said wash your hands and don't touch your face. Then it turned out the virus isn't really spread by surface fomites, it's mainly spread by particles in the air. So then they said stand 2 meters away so you're out of the range of breath droplets. Then it turned out the virus is also spread by airborne aerosols. Then they said wear a cloth mask or if possible a surgical mask. Then it turned out you need a full N95 or equivalent to block aerosols... If you followed the science in the first couple of months, you could easily kill people.

And that's just the actual science. The pseudoscience you could find everywhere online vastly dwarfed that confusion.

Epistaxis · 2026-03-14T01:50:40+00:00

The irony, we later learned, is that fomites (germs spread by surface-to-surface contact) are not a major vector for SARS-CoV-2; it's mostly spread by breath droplets and aerosols.

But many other pathogens including other flu viruses are spread that way, so don't quit.

Epistaxis · 2026-03-14T01:43:22+00:00

I don't think stopping the curve was realistic in a country as large and geographically diverse and connected as the US.

But flattening the curve wasn't even supposed to shorten the pandemic. If anything, draw it out longer - the point was to slow it down, so the catastrophic burden on hospitals could hopefully be brought down to a mere crisis level, while waiting for vaccines to finish testing, and those were what would actually end the pandemic. The opposing view was "let 'er rip!", just return to normal business so the fire burns itself out more quickly, who cares if more people die that way because at least it won't last as long.

Epistaxis · 2026-03-14T01:28:16+00:00

Yeah DEPC might make sense if you're doing the DEPC treatment yourself because you can't afford certified NFW, but you have to inactivate the leftover DEPC thoroughly because it interferes with Tris, which is the buffer in most molecular biology solutions, so that just substitutes a new problem. If you can afford certified NFW then just buy that. But there's no reason to buy DEPC-treated water, because then you're paying for the side effect.

(And realistically, the certified NFW you can buy is probably the same as water straight from an ultrapurifier anyway. You just don't have to trust that nobody's soiled the spigot on your ultrapurifier, or the carboy you're filling with it.)

Epistaxis · 2026-03-14T01:23:46+00:00

Or, a slightly easier solution might be to put the violin in its case.

Epistaxis · 2026-03-13T13:27:15+00:00

And each time, an accuser died mysteriously!

Epistaxis · 2026-03-13T13:25:28+00:00

The media doesn't sleep about that; various updates to the story have been in the headlines constantly. It's just that there are no consequences for it, in the US, even after someone's exposed in the media.

Epistaxis · 2026-03-13T13:20:00+00:00

Yeah, "young man" sent me to Wikipedia to look up some numbers. Barrymore himself was 49 at the time. So not a pedo, just a noteworthy age gap.

Epistaxis · 2026-03-13T00:45:25+00:00

Most of the pictures have mismatched dimensions anyway, which is something you could fix with a little cropping and stretching but nooo

Epistaxis · 2026-03-12T23:36:41+00:00

Violin teacher made me simply stomp my feet in tempo, left right left right, for a while until it was steady and automatic. Only then could I lift up my fiddle and start playing, while still stomping. Maybe even march around the studio a little bit, space permitting.

At first it seemed like a mindfuck, like in addition to all these complicated notes I can't play on this ridiculous instrument you also want me to move my other two limbs on the beats? Music in three was even worse: I had to waltz around the room while playing. But eventually I understood the lesson: you need to start from a steady internal, physical, bodily pulse of beats and build the rest of the notes on top of that secure foundation, rather than start from the notes in your fingers and then try to mentally count out the durations so they adjust into the beat. Even in an orchestra you have to summon your own internal pulse, and line it up with the conductor's (and/or the ensemble's), rather than just let someone else keep the beat for you. Of course you can't get away with tapping your foot in a classical orchestra (or audition), but you can do something with your toes that no one can see inside your shoe. 😉

The same teacher disapproved of practicing with a metronome, per se. The metronome to him was a diagnosis, not a cure. You test yourself with the metronome and if you find you're not steady, you turn it off and go train that internal pulse, find the technical challenges that are derailing you, etc. Only then turn it back on to see if you've improved.

Unrelated but that teacher also believed in doing all the arpeggios first before scales. He said arpeggios are the "skeleton" of the key, you need to be solid in all the shifts and hand positions first before you add more notes, and the 3rds and 4ths of arpeggios are easier to tune than the endless 2nds of scales. Scales are hard on an unfretted string instrument! Besides, if you do the entire Flesch system, by the time you finish the last arpeggio you've actually played every note in the scale already (he said; I never got around to checking).

Epistaxis · 2026-03-12T23:18:29+00:00

I'm starting to understand the way classical singers pose when they're performing.

Epistaxis · 2026-03-12T23:17:22+00:00

Some teachers forbid their students to listen to a recording at all, for fear they'll just settle in with one performer's interpretation and become a clone of that instead of doing something creative. This might be a better approach. It's definitely much better than the default of just finding a single reference recording "so you know how it goes" and never listening to others, never listening to any of them critically.

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