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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • All good, I always feel like it’s 72 hours, and I think the equivalent in most states is only 72 I think we’re the odd one out on that, and I feel like in most cases patients managed to get stabilized enough to be discharged after the 72 hours.

    I kind of feel like the extra two days are mostly so there’s time to get everything set up for a 303 in case the patient tries to fight it and it goes to court. I had to be a witness for that over a call I took once, I only got like a day or two’s notice because it all has to happen on such a condensed timeline



  • It is and it isn’t

    Certain things absolutely need to be standardized

    But in other cases it can just kind of bog things down.

    I remember one training thing we had to do to keep our certifications up to date, part of it had to do with fire dispatch.

    And at the beginning of that, our instructor basically said “Almost nothing in this course is at all relevant to us. But it’s a national standard and we have to teach this to you”

    It had a lot to do with wildland firefighting and some other specific situations that have nothing to do with how things operate in our area or with the kinds of situations we deal with.

    It was interesting, I learned some fun facts, but I haven’t yet had any reason to use any of the knowledge I picked up from that training.

    And that time could have probably been better spent doing something else.


  • Funnily enough, I actually work in an agency that’s very close to Philly and deal with my counterparts in the city fairly regularly.

    I don’t get (or want) to listen to a whole lot of PPD radio chatter, we have plenty in our own county to keep us busy, so I don’t know for certain if they’re actually still using 10-codes or any other similar system or not. I can’t think of any time I’ve heard a Philly officer or dispatcher use one with me, but it’s certainly possible that they’re still in use there internally.

    Also even though we’re using plain language, there’s still some weird miscommunication that happens.

    I remember one time needing to advise Philly of a report of gunshots we received that might have been relevant to them, it was near their border.

    So I called over to their dispatch and advised them that “we received a report of shots fired in the area of…”

    Which kind of sent their dispatcher into a bit of a tizzy because in Philly dispatch lingo “shots fire” basically means an officer has fired their gun, but to us it’s just any report of gunshots (which, more often than not, means fireworks or something that the caller mistook for gunshots)


  • Just as an aside, most police codes aren’t really standardized across different agencies.

    There’s a handful of 10-codes that are pretty much universal, like “10-4”

    67 isn’t one of those codes. A lot of departments do use it for a report of a death

    But it’s also commonly used to advise of an important incoming message

    And other agencies may have other uses for it

    And other agencies use other systems besides 10 codes, I believe some departments in CA have been known to use penal code numbers

    But so because of that, there’s been a big movement in emergency service to use plain language over codes for the last decade or two, mostly since Katrina since different agencies using different codes lead to a lot of miscommunication there.

    I work in 911 dispatch, at my agency and pretty much everywhere around me it’s all plain language. One or two 10-codes linger around, more as informal slang than anything that gets official use. 10-4 sometimes gets used, but that’s practically just part of the English language now.

    10-96 also kind of lingers around in my agency, which in the set of 10-codes they used before I started was for a subject with mental health issues. We’re not really supposed to use it but no one has really come up with a better shorthand for it so it still pops up from time to time, mostly from our officers.


  • Not a fan of the bait and switch, and I haven’t really looked into her beyond this article so I can’t say if this is the case

    But I kind of wonder if this isn’t actually a pretty good strategy.

    A whole lot of Texans aren’t going to vote for anyone who doesn’t have an R next to their name, regardless of if they actually like their policies or not.

    So maybe if you just do everything as a Democrat would do but register as a Republican and don’t talk about it too much, you can slip one by them and get the idiots to vote for an actual RINO.

    Of course the trick is getting the word out there to get Dems to vote for someone without a D next to their name as well without clueing in the Republicans that that’s what’s going on. The Republicans are a little more used to listening for dog whistles than Democrats are.


  • I believe you’d still be controlling the player character, you’d just be seeing through the eyes of the enemy

    I don’t know how well it would work as a game mechanic, but I could see a cool take on this in a cyberpunk setting where the player character is blind, but can hack into other people’s eyes to see, so you go around seeing yourself from different viewpoints

    I imagine it would get weird

    You shoot someone and suddenly you can’t see through their eyes any more since they’re dead. Or maybe their bionics are still powered for a while but they’re not facing any useful direction, maybe they fall face down and all you can see is the floor tile they’re laying on, or they’re facing up and all you can see is the ceiling until you walk right over their corpse

    Maybe after you kill a room full of enemies you need to lug around a corpse or maybe just a severed head so that you can find the exit because none of them fell looking the right direction.

    I’m not normally much of a writer, but that idea actually inspired me a bit, so here’s a little short story I guess

    I walk into the lobby and I begin to see through the eyes of the security guard seated at the desk. He’s reading a newspaper - an actual ink-on-paper newspaper. I didn’t know they still made those.

    The door chime beeps and his eyes are immediately on me, zooming in, trying to get a read on me. I see my own features, distorted by the fisheye lens of his implants.

    These security types always have some high-end bionics- night vision, thermal imaging, zoom, image stabilization, extra-wide field of view, facial recognition, the works. They think they can see everything but somehow they never seem to see it coming.

    A notification pops up in his vision “Unrecognized person detected, check ID” the angle changes as he begins to get up. I see the back of his hand as he raises his arm in a “stop” gesture. He’s wearing a wedding band. That’s unfortunate.

    I see movement in the bottom corner of his vision. He’s doing something with his other hand but I can’t tell what. Is he reaching for his gun? Is he smoothing out the wrinkles from his shirt? Is he just trying to put the newspaper away?

    Maybe that’s why he reads an actual newspaper. He’s supposed to be alert and paying attention, if he read on his phone or tablet like anyone else his employers could track it, they’d know he was slacking off. Smart.

    Through my own ears I hear him ask for my ID.

    Through his eyes I see myself reach into my coat pocket he zooms in slightly. I love it when they zoom, it makes what comes next so much easier.

    I see my gun come out. The angle changes abruptly but strangely smoothly, that image stabilization is doing some heavy-lifting as he tries to duck for cover and reach for his own gun.

    His eyes are fixed on it, he’s staring right down the barrel, I can even just about line the sights up through his eyes, he’s making it too easy.

    A flash. A loud bang heard through my own ears. Flashing warnings at the corners of his vision reporting critical vital signs.

    The angle changes again, I think he’s fallen backwards and is propped up by his chair. He’s not looking straight up at the ceiling, but he’s not looking straight forward at me either. I can catch glimpses of the top of my head here and there as I stumble blindly towards him.

    My face comes into full view as I make my way around the desk. I start going through his pockets looking for a key card to let myself into the elevator.

    I find a rectangular piece of plastic on a lanyard stuffed into his pocket, and hold it in front of his eyes to confirm that it’s what I was looking for. I tap it on the sensor on the desk and hear the elevator doors slide open.

    I point his head towards the elevator so that I can see where I’m going. A message notification pops up in his vision from “Bae💜” asking if he’ll be home for dinner. I see myself sigh as the door closes behind me.

    The steel and concrete of the building sever me from his ocular feed as the elevator starts climbing and everything goes black once again.


  • There was a thread I saw not too long ago where someone brought up a little conspiracy theory I think I may subscribe to

    There’s a new Alzheimer’s treatment, Lecanemab/Leqembi, that was given accelerated approval in the US by the FDA this year in January, so just as trump took office.

    It’s given by IV every 4 weeks. Trump has been seen with what looks like makeup thats covering up bruising from an IV

    It also seems like he has highs and lows where he declines for a couple weeks then perks back up a bit before declining again, and you can maybe kind of match those up to a similar 4-ish week cycle.

    And it also calls for regular cognitive tests and MRIs to monitor if it’s effective, and, well, trump has been doing that.


  • Couple months ago I found myself needing to stop at a McDonald’s in probably one of the worst neighborhoods you can find outside of the inner city. Nature was calling and it seemed like my best option.

    It was for paying customers only, fair enough, I made a token purchase of a McChicken and some fries, and got an employee to unlock the door for me.

    I was greeted with that eerie blue light that bathrooms in places like this use to deter drug use because it makes it harder to find a vein.

    It gave off an all-around really unsettling vibe, but I will admit that, at least as far as I could tell given the lighting, it seemed to be immaculately clean.


  • That is just not the case.

    The case that people tend to cite when this comes up is Burdick vs United States, that determined that people can choose to decline a pardon.

    And one of the reasons they gave for why someone may choose to refuse a pardon is because it can be seen as implying guilt.

    Basically, some people will see you take the pardon and think “if he’s innocent, why is he taking a pardon instead of seeking exoneration?”

    But of course, if you know anything about the US “justice” system, that argument falls apart pretty fast.

    Actually admitting guilt is not part of accepting a pardon, it’s just that a lot of people think that it means you’re guilty, and the pardoned people don’t want to have people think that about them.

    And of course spreading this kind of misinformation only makes that issue worse.






  • I tend to think of and describe myself as a conservative, but don’t align myself with the Republican party at all (I am registered to vote Republican to try to weed out the worst of their lunatics in the primaries, but it’s gonna be a cold day in hell before I vote for one in a general election with the way things are going)

    In my view, which absolutely isn’t the view of the Republicans or conservatives as a whole, the point of conservatism is to just pump the breaks and slow things down to make sure all the "I"s are dotted and "t"s crossed to make sure things are actually going to work as intended.

    Liberals/leftists/progressives should basically be the “idea guys” coming up with big general plans for what they want to happen

    Then the conservatives would be sort of the bean-counters/logistics/nuts-and-bolts sort of guys. They shouldn’t be there to outright oppose the liberal ideas, they’re there to point out the problems with their plans and make sure they’re addressed before we commit to some half-assed plan.


  • Could also just be the rim being kind of dirty and corroded and needs to be cleaned up a bit of bead sealant.

    I’ve had it happen to me a couple times, tires just always lost air sort slowly, I never cared enough to bring it in just for that, not a big deal to stop by the air pump once a week or so when I was getting gas anyway.

    I’m sure if you brought your car in just for that they’d probably slap some token $10-50 price on it.

    But if you bring it in for another service I feel like a lot of places will just do it. I know I brought my car in to pep boys one time for an oil change or something and asked them to look at it and they just did it, no extra charge.

    I feel like it’s one of those little things that no one is quite sure how to write it up in the system, and figuring it out is more of a pain in the ass than just not mentioning it to the boss, not like he’s gonna notice they used an extra scrap of sandpaper and blob of sealant anyway.


  • I’m certainly no expert on Namibian history and culture, most of what I know comes from just now skimming the Wikipedia article

    But a couple things jumping out at me

    The area was at one point a German colony (and also at one point they carried out a genocide against the Herero people that some think may have been sort of a model for the Holocaust)

    They also had apartheid similar to South Africa.

    And to this day a whole lot of Africa doesn’t exactly have stellar access to education, the internet, etc. and even in some parts of the world that do have better access, there’s a lot of people in other parts of the world outside of Europe and the Americas who don’t quite grok* just how bad the Nazis were because it’s not something they cover so extensively in their history classes. I feel like every couple years I see some story come out of Asia somewhere where some business opens up with a Nazi theme and they don’t get why so many people in the West are mad about it.

    So kind of taking a couple stabs in the dark here

    It could be that his father named him after Hitler maybe trying to soften things up for him, like maybe the white people at the top of the apartheid heiarchy would be a little nicer if he was named after the biggest whitest racist he could think of.

    Or maybe they were in a bit of an information bubble where he just really didn’t fully understand how bad Hitler and the Nazis were and went with it because he thought it had a nice ring to it

    Maybe it was a way to give a giant middle finger to racists. Sort of a “haha, how do you like your leader’s name when it’s on a black kid? Suck it Nazis.”

    Or maybe it was something else. That’s just a couple thoughts off the top of my head.

    *fuck muskrat for trying to steal this word for his own bullshit.




  • As far as terminal tutorials, so far the best I’ve found is LabEx, but I feel like it’s lacking in a lot of ways.

    First of all it definitely feels designed to push you towards paying for a subscription. And while their pricing honestly isn’t too terrible, it’s more than I want to spend on this. Nothing against companies and people being paid for making a product but it feels a little against the FOSS spirit to me.

    Second I’ve mostly been trying to use it on my phone and that experience is just kind of shitty. Personally I kind of want to learn in short bursts here and there throughout the day when I have downtime at work or whatever. If I have time to sit down in front of my computer it’s probably because I want to be doing something fairly specific with it and it’s probably not to just practice my terminal use, so a better phone experience would be great.

    And finally, it just seems a bit over-engineered, at least for what I want to use it for. It seems like it’s spinning up a whole Linux VM with a desktop environment and such for me to interact with through my browser just for me to type stuff into a terminal and read their tutorial. It does have other courses and maybe all of that is more useful there, but it seems like a bit much for me.