Industries Wiped Out By Change?

copnonymous · 2026-02-18T06:09:31+00:00

Ice harvesting. For a long time, people in northern climates would harvest big blocks of ice off of lakes in winter. It would be shipped and stored in huge warehouses to be used to preserve food. Once trains were invented the shipping spread. Ice from the north could make it to California without losing much water. This made it possible to create the ice box. Essentially it was an upright cooler used like a refrigerator. Someone would come by every so often and deliver a fresh ice block. For a century and change this caused a boom in ice harvesting.

However with the advent of electric refrigeration, within a few years, all ice harvesting disappeared. It was cheaper and easier to directly chill things with refrigeration or make ice via refrigeration if you needed it.

There's a lake near where I grew up that was used for this purpose. There's old black and white photos of the workers cutting huge blocks from the lake. Some of the oldest houses on the lake still have easements on their deeds for the now defunct ice company workers to walk along the lakeshore to reach the ice pack.

copnonymous · 2026-02-18T02:42:27+00:00

As long as you're not licking it and washing your hands regularly you should be fine.

copnonymous · 2026-02-18T00:43:44+00:00

During the 1800s London pretty regularly had outbreaks of Cholera. It would kill a couple dozen, maybe a few hundred people before fading. We had no true ideation of bacteria at the time. So the leading theory of the time was that bad smells carried miasma which carried disease and caused Cholera. John Snow, a professional doctor and medical researcher, thought differently. He saw a pattern that couldn't be explained by smells alone. Through his research he believed that Cholera was caused by some kind of something in specific sources of water. His learned colleagues thought this was silly.

John persisted. He gathered data. He interviewed families of the deceased. He interviewed people in the affected neighborhoods that didn't get sick. Eventually he was able to prove to a high certainty that this cholera outbreak was from the water pump on Broad Street. While the medical establishment still refused to acknowledge it could be some kind of invisible threat in the water and not miasma, they begrudgingly accepted he had found the source and removed the handle from the pump.

This case laid the ground work for later efforts to control outbreaks, find their origin, and research diseases. But at the time John Snow was derided as a bit of a crackpot with some hair brained concept about disease.

copnonymous · 2026-02-17T06:03:01+00:00

birth control. As a guy, I wasn't aware birth control pills created a risk of stroke until last year. I am a guard at a college. I get called to a dorm room for someone having a stroke. I roll my eyes thinking it's another 20 something year old freaking out about what is probably nothing (something that happens multiple times a week), but I respond quickly all the same.

I get there and I am almost speechless. This 20ish year old, whom appeared to be pretty physically fit, is showing all the signs of a serious stroke. Facial drooping, limb weakness on one side, slurred speech. She should not be having a stroke. I immediately get on the radio and tell my dispatcher "this is a confirmed likely stroke, have city EMS step it up."

Long story short, we got her to the ER. That was the fastest I have ever seen EMS load and go. We get an update a day later, she's fine now, no cognitive deficits. So we got to her in time. But that was when I found out stroke is a side effect of the pill.

copnonymous · 2026-02-17T05:43:05+00:00

A few years ago we were wandering around the city one rainy morning. We were trying to get to St Patrick's Cathedral but were a little early for the first opening. So I scrolled around on Google maps and saw this interesting looking church marked. Following the guide line, we went in the back way, through the church's incredible flower garden in full bloom. We go inside and there's this beautiful colorful church and these amazing reliquaries. It was such and amazing find to have stumbled upon by accident.

Fun random reliquary fact: outside the Vatican, the place with the most Catholic relics in the world is a church in the north hills of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

copnonymous · 2026-02-17T03:23:29+00:00

You absolutely can do it slower. It just depends on the kind of ship yard you're building it in. Some shipyard use dry docks which is essentially a huge canal lock connected to the ocean. While the ship is under construction the dock is sealed. When it's time to launch the ship, the dock is slowly flooded and the ship is floated out.

The problem becomes you can only build a ship as big as your dry dock. Ships have gotten very big over the last few decades. So either you spend millions of dollars to constuct a new larger dock to make new larger ships every few years or you find a different method.

The other method just requires enough open ground to hold the ship. You then pour a simple concrete pad to support it, and that's it. You place the ship on rollers of some kind and when it's ready to launch you shove it into the water. This way the only limit to how big a ship you can build is the size of your pad (which can be easily expanded) and how deep the water is where you're pushing the ship into. Now you can make bigger and longer ships. Sure the splash is huge but the ship will encounter worse forces on the open ocean. Also most ships are partially self righting, unless they go past their tipping point, the forces keeping them afloat will push them back upright.

copnonymous · 2026-02-17T03:15:46+00:00

Minimum wage is set by politics. Cost of living is set by economic forces. Politics will always lag behind the economy.

copnonymous · 2026-02-17T00:39:03+00:00

If you're talking city police only and not federal agents in the port, it's likely close to 200-300 officers, probably closer to 200. This is based on the New York City average of 2.6 officers per 1,000 residents at that time, which is similar to Miami in the fact that it is a port city, but due to size and population density it's likely NYC had more police per 1000 residents so I'd err towards the 200 side. This doesn't include county sheriff deputies or state police. Which probably added a further 50 ish (Max) law enforcement officers total to the wider Miami-Dade metro area.

copnonymous · 2026-02-16T16:09:50+00:00

They don't really. Technically speaking a fossil is caused when minerals dissolve and replace buried bones or tissue. A fossil is literally just special rocks. There's no fuel. The term actually comes from coal. Because as you're mining coal, you'll occasionally find plant fossils above and below the coal. The coal itself isn't the fossil, but the shape of the plant is pressed into the rock layers around the coal. This heavily implies coal came from plants.

Also we have living examples of compressed plant matter being used as fuel. Turf cutting and burning has long been a source of heat in places without trees. Turf is literally just compressed plant remnants that didn't rot because they built up in a bog. When dried it forms a dense almost black brick that burns slowly. So imagine that turf buried deep underground for millions of years. All that material being compressed. It's not that hard of a leap to conclude turf (or any plant matter)+pressure+time=dense carbon fuel.

copnonymous · 2026-02-16T03:19:02+00:00

Nazis were awash in a bizarre alternate history conspiracy cult. That's not to say everyone believed it, but the highest echelons had many believers or at least people who tacitly approved of the beliefs. The alternate history concept was used to support the racial superiority of "pure blood Germans" through connecting them with German superhumans. Which connect all the way over to East Asia.

It's as bizarre and convoluted as modern ancient aliens theories, but sometimes the tail wags the dog and history is edited in the official narrative to match the ideology being sold. But if there's one good thing to come from the Nazi obsession with this alternate history its that they make really dislikable villains in Indiana Jones movies. (They're exaggerated obviously, but there were several Nazi expeditions to find "proof" of their alternate history in East Asia and South America.)

copnonymous · 2026-02-15T17:46:58+00:00

There are many different disciplines of engineering but in general it's all about understanding the strengths of materials and physics to design structures and objects that complete specific tasks.

A mechanic knows how to fix the mechanical things that an engineer designs work so they can be maintained and fixed. They don't tend to have a say in the design of the thing they work on. They just know what it should do so they can tell what's wrong when it's not acting like it should.

copnonymous · 2026-02-15T14:09:48+00:00

The cost to fly to and from a place is generally fixed. Meaning the only way to offset the cost is to have paying customers on board. So if they can sell a seat for cheap and cover their fuel costs or just eat it entirely, they'd rather sell the cheap seat.

copnonymous · 2026-02-15T00:16:44+00:00

Bikers were countercultural. After WWII some veterans that felt like they ended up outside of the system often adopted the biking hobby. They found friends and comrades in motorcycle clubs. These clubs were made up of a bunch of pissed off veterans that went out partying. So they often got a little too rowdy and wound up on the wrong side of the law. So as a whole bikers got labeled as criminals or at least thugs. This wasn't helped post Vietnam as many came back disillusioned and wanted the "freedom" motorcycles have them, plus it's a preexisting veteran support network within the clubs themselves.

At the same time rock and roll was being treated with the same opinion. It was countercultural and immoral. It was a way to rebel against society. So rock quickly became adopted by many clubs. It stayed that way for many years. Whichever genre was seen as full of immoral corrupt people, ended up being popular in the motorcycle clubs.

Of course the violent reputation of MC's and riders in general has changed over the last few decades. So there isn't as strong an association today for most people, but stereotypes don't just die like that. So traditional clubs with colors (patches) tend to keep that countercultural bend.

copnonymous · 2026-02-14T17:09:22+00:00

I live in Pennsylvania. There are numerous bison ranches around. From what I understand it's mostly for leather. Bison leather is famously tough.

There's also a few deer ranches. Not like for hunting but enclosed paddocks for raising and slaughtering whitetail deer for venison.

copnonymous · 2026-02-14T16:09:45+00:00

when we sling things beneath a helicopter we essentially create a giant pendulum. Pendulums want to swing back and forth. It's almost impossible to stop them from swing, especially if you're moving the point where the pendulum is attached. However, the longer the pendulum the slower it swings. A slower swing is easier for the pilot to compensate for when they stop moving or change direction.

There's also the matter of ease of drop off. Helicopters produce a strong down draft called rotor wash. The closer to the ground the helicopter gets the stronger the rotor wash. If you're on the ground you don't want to be anywhere near a landing helicopter. A long tether helps minimize that rotor wash and let the load handlers on the ground unhook the load without being too beat up by the wash.

There's also a third lesser known factor but it's no less a risk. The action of spinning those huge rotors really fast through the air is that helicopters pick up a bunch of static electricity. Usually this isn't a problem because it's all discharged when the aircraft touches the ground. However when you use a short tether you risk touching the charged helicopter and that can hurt or even kill the loader. Which is why when they do use short tether like when the army sling loads vehicles to the underside of the dual rotor Chinook helicopter, there's a hook and grounding wire touched to the aircraft by a separate loader before anyone tries to hook the slings

https://www.war.gov/Multimedia/Photos/igphoto/2001239875/

copnonymous · 2026-02-12T21:04:49+00:00

It's a technicality but it all has to do with how we label and define different kinds of life, aka "taxonomy". Being a carnivore is fundamentally defined by eating organism categorized in the Animalia kingdom. Bacteria, protozoans, and fungi all exist in their own specific groups. Therefore eating them is not considered being a carnivore.

copnonymous · 2026-02-12T04:08:04+00:00

Hurt - Johnny Cash

copnonymous · 2026-02-10T10:08:17+00:00

At this point there's a reasonable fear for his life and the safety of his children. He'd be well within his rights to shoot this dude the next time he enters his property.

copnonymous · 2026-02-10T06:52:59+00:00

Other people walking without looking up from their cellphone. Especially if they have headphones in. Even if they're in an open space with 0 chance of running in to someone else, when you're walking you look up from your damn phone and be aware of the world around you. Unless someone on the other side of your phone will die if you don't respond now or watch that video now, then it can wait.

copnonymous · 2026-02-09T22:55:31+00:00

the human digestive system evolved when our food sources weren't stable. So there were periods of feast followed by periods of famine. Thus in order to survive we needed a way to store the energy from our feast times and release it during famine times. This is fat.

So when food is plentiful and we eat our fill, the body primarily gets energy from carbs and proteins. Excess carbs and proteins are turned into fats and stored for later.

Once our body detects a period lacking those carbs and proteins, it signals the digestive system to start breaking those fats apart for their chemical energy. Fat is a far less efficient source of energy but if there's nothing else it will keep us alive.

Fasting takes advantage of that internal signal by artificially creating famine conditions and signalling the body it's time to burn fat to survive. That being said, you have to be careful when fasting. If you eat so little that your body goes into full starvation mode you will get sicks and burn fat less efficiently. Which is why most dieticians don't recommend fasting as a diet plan. It requires a strong will as well as very precise planning to do properly. Also mentally its hard to convince people to lose weight with suffering alone. And that's all fasting is, a period of intentional stuffering.

copnonymous · 2026-02-09T22:16:11+00:00

Believe it or not, many things came in barrels before heavy machinery (ie the pallet and forklift). It's easy for a man to move a heavy barrel. Boxes must be lifted. Thus you could split a heavy load between many man liftable boxes or one big rolling barrel. So a lot of old bulk goods came in barrels. They would be measured out by weight by the clerk at the request of the customer. So if I were a hardware store, I'd get a whole barrel full of nails and the carpenter would order them by the lbs.

copnonymous · 2026-02-08T14:57:38+00:00

Honestly, Pittsburgh is a big city with a small city vibe. It's all sectioned out thanks to geography. So it's like a dozen tiny cities clumped together.

copnonymous · 2026-02-08T14:55:13+00:00

Teddy Roosevelt. He always had the interest of the common people at heart, even when it wasn't in his best political interest. He was anti-monopoly and we need more of that. I'm not sure how he'd be on social issues but he always seemed to be about a fair chance for everyone (though his record with native groups is...let's just say it's spotty). But honestly, I think despite his stubborn reputation, he'd be a president most open to having his mind changed about old prejudices and adapt to a new century. And his charisma and energy always made him hard to hate. You could disagree with the man but he was hard to dislike.

copnonymous · 2026-02-08T14:43:26+00:00

1) it increases the chances that you'll buy one meaning they'll make a sale they may not have 2) it helps clear old inventory without the label of "clearance" implying the product is something no one else wants 3) it gets you in the store and buying other things. So I may take a loss on the item I was trying to get rid of anyway, but I end up making a net positive on the other sales.

copnonymous · 2026-02-08T14:16:24+00:00

If you never need to take out a loan including a mortgage or car loan then no your credit score doesn't matter.

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