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Cake day: June 24th, 2024

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  • Mullvad until you are often in the PCR, there I had a much better experience with ExpressVPN compared to basically everyone else.

    If you need a lot of exit nodes in different countries Proton or Pure, but I grow increasingly wary of Proton these days and Pure is getting more and more enshitified these days.

    So I simply use Mullvad for privacy and my own WG service for security.






  • And this ladies and gentlemen is what is wrong with Linux and its communities.

    Technological gatekeeping is THE major problem in the Linux world. You use Linux to use Linux. You intentionally do not want people that you consider “below” you to use Linux or even be present in your communities.

    Most people use computers to get something done. Be it development, gaming, consuming multimedia, or just “web browsing” (which you intentionally use to degrade people “just” doing that). They do not use computers to use computers. They don’t need to and should need to. If you want to do this, good for you.

    But stop trying to gatekeep people out of it. That’s just an a****** behaviour.





  • Bring neighbours together. One step at a time.

    The problem with a lot of small projects in towns is that they cater to a certain crowd - but there are often not enough people to sustain that momentum for a longer period of time. And it’s sometimes used to keep people away. (Aka the soccer fans go to their club, the old folks to bingo, the Christians to their “clubhouse”, the D&D to theirs. And in the end small bubbles form)

    So organise something that caters to “basically everyone”.

    I once lived in a neighbourhood that suffered from exactly this problem until a few people (one had actually a research background in this matters) started a small initiative which did exactly this: bring the neighbours together with some things people hardly can be opposed to. First they rented a proper Pizza oven and did a “pizza festival”. They “sold” the dough,tomato sauce and baked the pizza, but you had to bring your own toppings (saved them from the ongoing debate about that). Someone volunteered to get the older folks to the location (a cul de sac). Proceedings did not go to any cause beside the festival itself, they only covered their cost.

    Next time they organised a outdoor movie night with a -intentionally non-confrontational- movie from the 80ies.

    Etc. Etc. Other neighbourhood followed with similar concepts.

    Now multiple neighbourhood bought a mobile pizza oven together and gifted it to the city so that it can be used by every neighbourhood. Etc.

    But this was their way to bring people together beyond their interests/hobbies.

    And it worked.


  • And then what?

    Mongolia is fully landlocked and is a minor military power.

    • They cannot get him out of the country to the ICC as neither Russia nor China would give them flight permissions. Russia for obvious reasons and China would surely not do it as well - as it would make travelling for Xi much more problematic, especially after what he plans with Taiwan.

    • They cannot keep him there because the Russians, as military incapable as they are, would basically drive into UB and simply retrieve him. The Mongolian armed forces have a joint budget that is less than what a single CH-53K King Stallion costs. Their army is based on (hardly working) T54 and BMP1. Their airforce owns exactly two Mig29 Fighters (gift of Russia). And that does not even include the very real possibility that the Chinese do Vladimir a favour and get him - simply to make sure to keep the West occupied and shift the focus away from them and Taiwan again.

    • If they keep him there and he dies…well…that would at least mean the end of the political ruling class of the country and could lead to the very real threat of large scale revenge by either Russia or Russia and China.

    My personal prophecy for any scenario like that would be that a few thousand Mongolians die, around 300.000 end up in labour camps and Mongolia as a sovereign nation ceases to exist. Why? Mongolia exists mainly because two major powers “couldn’t be bothered” to conquer them, it would make them look bad and a buffer to a not that welcome neighbour is always welcome. If Mongolia fucks it up for one or both of them it basically looses that “reason” to exist in the eyes of both the Russians and the Chinese. And they would be “bad enough” in the light of a lot of countries as well as their own population that a “swift special military operation” is justified.



  • Pellagra usually comes from eating a high corn/sorghum diet without proper nixtamaliziation (I really hope I spelt that correctly), the alkalisation of the food before cooking. While some chronic digestive diseases, alcoholism and a few other causes can also lead to it, malnutrition is the main cause and neither of these causes come upon an otherwise healthy looking child overnight. While I might not rule out that someone is idiotic enough to feed their kid only corn and sorghum it is rather unlikely and diarrhoea is one of the rather late symptoms.

    (I transferred a five year old with major liver and some cerebral damage after the parents kept the poor kiddo on a “barley, corn, yeast, self produced apple juice and full grain” only diet for a year…one can imagine what that leads to)


  • The bad parents as in “not caring” aren’t the worst ones, at least for me (not a doctor, paramedic with former leadership/admin roles including in a hospital like environment)- the ones who think they care but really don’t are the ones that get most of my colleagues and me far more. Because for “simply not caring” parents you can at least inform the proper authorities and at least here they are actually fairly good at dealing with them.

    But there are so many “bad faith” parents out there meanwhile - intentionally withholding Information from both the healthcare providers as well as the children, withholding care, working against the best interest of their child.

    Just to put themselves and their beliefs first. It’s a huge crowd these days:

    • The alt-righters who think that their children will get nanobot vaccines and that that modern medicine is against them anyway.

    • The alternative medicine idiots who believe in homeopathy and crystals

    • The religious numbnuts who think that their God gave them a prayer as universal treatment - and not modern medicine.

    • The instagramers. The ones who either need their sick child as a way to gain sympathy or even money in social media, to exclude themselves from other obligations of adult life (that borders on Münchhausen by proxy often). And the ones who blindly follow some influencer and their “new nutrition supplements” that helps against everything.

    • The know it all’s. The ones who think a quick google search can actually replace a multi year medical training and specialisation and the four buzzwords they just googled in the elevator make them the new noble price winner. There are actually two types of these people: The diagnosers and the undiagnosers. The first ones have already diagnosed themselves and will jump from hospital to hospital,from doctor to doctor until they finally find someone who gives them the diagnosis they already had in mind four years ago. The undiagnosers are always three steps ahead of you and you can always count in them to bring in another rare disease that needs to be checked out.

    People can belong to multiple of these categories. And parents are especially bad at it - I get it, it’s your child - but after working in healthcare on 4 continents for 20 years now it feels like these people spin faster and faster down their rabbit holes today.

    Just to give you a few examples(not all directly from me,some from colleagues I know):

    • The mother who replaced the “Chemo” for her deadly sick child with saline in an unobserved moment. The twist: It wasn’t even a chemotherapy drug,it was an immunoglobulin, 10k per session. Kid nearly died as a result and will be disabled for life.

    • Parents who withhold cancer care for their daughter, daughter suffers immensely and dies. They thought prayer would be enough.

    • A mother faking vacation certificate so her kid could attend kindergarden. A few months later the kid showed measles symptoms in the kindergarden and was sent home. The mother faked a doctor’s certificate that the kid was well and non-contagious so the kid could attend an event there. The event was also attended by other parents and the younger siblings. Multiple kids still too young to vaccinate got infected and one kid died.

    And a few more recent ones:

    • Parents brought their lawyer to the ED when they attended it for a broken arm.

    • Parents demand a hymen-repair surgery at 4am on a Sunday for their 17 year old daughter.

    • Parent told me the 6 year old kid with diarrhoea and fatigue (at 2am at night) surely had pellagra. Dumbfounded I asked how much corn or sorghum they eat. None,the children don’t like either.


  • sighs Oh god. No, it wouldn’t. Here we go.

    The name pressure headaches come from the feeling of pressure,not from actual pressure - actually most pressure headaches are not caused by a process within the cerebral cavity at all. Most are related to sinuses, especially the frontal sinuses, teeth, the middle ear/auris media, tension headaches(which are usually cervical/muscular). Only migraines as a cause for pressure headaches are actually within the cerebral cavity but have nothing to do with actual pressure. (Okay, actually we don’t really know how they start - but we are really sure it’s not the pressure)

    As the brain matter itself has no pain receptors it does not actually feel pain - but the root of nerves like the Trigeminus, Occipitalis and the layers of tissue covering the brain (Meninges) as well as the vessels can absolutely feel pain. A lot of pain.

    Cerebral bleeds, post aneurysm or trauma, usually happen in a very acute form or very slowly - with patients suffering from minutes to month from occasional headaches,often rather mild and not “pressure” headaches. Often after an initial knockout punch. (And at that point I must remind people that someone who has been knocked out needs a brain scan urgently. It’s NOT something to joke about and feel ultra manly,eh, toxic masculinity, about)

    The acute form is totally different though - it’s one of the nastiest ways to go. Patients have a sudden onset of massive,life-changing pain, described by survivors as a catastrophic, sharp(*), pain associated with a fast onset of other neurological symptoms.

    Another misconception is the fact that the cerebral cavity has no openings - it has quite a few and when the pressure within the skull is increased by a pathologic event like a cerebral bleed or the swelling of the brain the brain gets pushed in these holes - mainly the hole connecting to the spinal column. Which is why cerebral bleeds are so deadly - because the brain goes “stem first” through there - and it’s too small even for the brain stem. And the stem is what regulates breathing,etc.
    Other nerves get simply sheered off/cut by the pressure. (This is part of the pain mentioned above - Large nerves being cut by your own blood pressure)

    Nevertheless even in these cases the removal of large parts of the skull as it is done by neurosurgeons does not alleviate the pain - the damage to tissue, nerves, etc. is done. The goal is to give the brain room and stop the bleeding. But thankfully we have good options for pain relief these days and these patients are in a very deep sedation/coma for a good reason.

    (There are of course rare special cases like hydrocephalus cases, but that’s a bit far fetched here)

    So no, it would not help a bit painwise ,even in the most extreme situations.

    So as a healthcare professional I generally would advise against drilling into one’s head. It will make a lot my colleagues very angry.

    And if you really feel you must do that please consult the nearest psychiatrist first. And if you then still feel like you must do that, make sure to do it during business hours, make also sure you livestream a video of it for the loolz of a lot of HCPs around the world, get a testimony recorded so your next of kin can sue the earlier mentioned shrink that he did not admit you to a closed ward and most importantly get a organ donor registration.

    And due to a call a decade back I might also add: DO NOT drill into your own Sinuses as well,even if they are clogged up. Even if you are a doctor. You might accidentally (almost) lobotomize yourself.

    Source: Am a paramedic. Seen shit. Seen people do shit that started as an internet hoax.


  • A Chinese low cost manufacturer from Shenzhen. Their parent company is actually one of the Top 5 manufacturers - but none in the North/West has heard of them.

    They were specifically founded to provide smartphones for low and medium income markets like Africa, India, etc. Meanwhile they also manufacture phones there.

    Their parent company holds almost 50% of the African market share.

    They are actually producing decent phones by now - had the chance to take a look of one of their most recent phones a few weeks back. 5G, dual SIM, dedicated microSD slot, headphones jack (yes Lemmy!) and a big battery - but the camera and display were mediocre. Overall still a decent phone for a good price, even though they don’t sell them everywhere and I would be weary of the updates issue.