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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • There was a big idea a couple decades ago that corporations were going to copyright natural genes and sell them for massive profits to other biotech companies that could use them to make cure for diseases and other things.

    Michael Crichton wrote a few books about it, pretty good reads.

    They did do the gene copyright thing in the real world, but it turns out that doing anything with a random gene is pretty hard and the genome isn’t just something you can copy paste a gene into and have it cure aids or cancer, so no one wanted to buy genetic sequences that they would then need to do a whole bunch of work on anyway to make it useful.

    Pretty much all 23andMe did was increase the size of the Law Enforcement dna database by letting cops send in samples of suspects and get back their family members info. Of course the company said that was very naughty, but no one got into real trouble for it. And now 23andMe owns a lot of other people’s genetic code, and it’s not worth the hard drives it’s stored on.





  • Oh we have generics all over the place.

    The problem is that large drug companies abuse our patent systems to keep their drugs exclusive for longer than should be allowed.

    Look at EPI pens. The drug is just Adrenaline, you can get a vial of that anywhere as long as you have a prescription. But the EPI pen mechanism itself is patented. So no other manufacturer can sell an easy to use, pre measured dose of Adrenaline without violating the patent. That’s why EPI pens cost hundreds of dollars instead of the 20 bucks they probably actually cost to produce. And you need that mechanism, because no one with a throat that’s closing is going to be able to calmly pull out and ampule or vial, measure the right dose into a syringe, and get it into their system before they pass out from anaphylaxis.


  • To orbit the moon, a space craft needs to move at about 1.5 km/s, or 3300 miles per hour.

    So any landing starts with you going at 1.5 km/s and needs to end at the moons surface when you reach about 0 meters per second.

    If anything goes wrong with your engines while you slow down, you smack into the moon at either near orbital speeds, or at fighter jet speeds. The window for having an engine failure and being slow enough to survive is so narrow that it might as well not exist.

    That’s why Apollo used pressure fed, self igniting engines. As long as 2 valves opened, you had an engine. And Apollo landers had a totally separate ascent engine that worked exactly the same way, so if the landing engine failed, they could just drop the landing stage and return to orbit at practically any time during the descent. They even had a whole procedure of what to do if the ascent engine didn’t light when they were supposed to leave. Everything from jump starting the engine like a car with a dead battery, to physically getting access to the valves and manually opening them.

    I hate the current plan for Artemis. I hate that in 55 years, we’ve only managed to make shit more complicated. The current plan is for a vehicle with no abort capability to ignite its 3 turbo pumped, liquid methane fueled engines at least 4 times to get from low earth orbit to the moons surface, with days between ignitions.

    A capability that has never been shown to work or even exist in any capacity. Turbo pumps are finally machined pieces of engineering that need to behave exactly right, or they turn a rocket into either a bomb, or a giant tube that can’t move. And the current plan for Artemis calls for these finely crafted pieces of machinery to be subjected to the harsh environment of both space where they’ll sit for at least a week, and multiple ignitions, where they’re subjected to ridiculous temperatures and pressures.

    Absolutely ridiculous. We never left an astronaut on the moon in the 60s and 70s, but by god are they trying to open the first graveyard on the moon these days.




  • Semi drivers require a commercial license, and special training. They’re monitored way more closely than your average American driver.

    And side mirrors only let you see what’s behind the car to the sides and at a distance, not what’s immediately behind the car. I don’t want some idiot in his $80K battering ram to roll over me because I happened to walk behind his death trap and he couldn’t be bothered to wait for the rear view camera to come up.

    Not being able to see what’s immediately behind the vehicle is a safety hazard, especially in suburban areas or parking lots where most people are reversing out of a space with other people walking around.



  • It’s not about converting the car.

    I have a 2009 Chevy with an automatic transmission. I’m order to convert it to electric, the ECU would have to be replaced so the car knows when to shift to a higher gear without a combustion engine.

    Because of environmental reasons, ECUs are pretty tightly controlled by the government. I don’t know if any company even exists that can sell an aftermarket ECU. There’s plenty that can hack or reprogram ECUs, but even that is becoming increasingly regulated and legally questionable.




  • Some of y’all aren’t training your dogs on food aggression and anxiety and it shows.

    Play with your dog’s food while it eats, don’t take it away, but move the bowl around and stick your fingers in the food. Get them used to you fucking with their food, and show them that nothing bad happens when their food gets touched. Especially if you have little kids or have little kids that come to your home with friends and family, your dog should be trained not to get anxious or aggressive about food. I’ve seen a lot of kids get scared by dogs because the dog is very defensive about food, but 5 minutes of training a day will knock that right out of them.