Not sure I understand your point, but if it’s helpful, I’m blind, prefer to be called blind, but get tired of educating people on what “blind” actually means as it’s a spectrum and not a binary condition.
In my community we refer to non-blind people as “sighted” which I suppose is also a spectrum.
Blind is very descriptive, and in my opinion not derogatory. I’d rather it not be my primary differentiator or descriptor unless comparing me to virtually identical people who have full or near full vision. “The blind engineer on the team” is ok with me as it’s the fastest way to describe me if we’re all middle aged guys with beards. If I’m the only bearded guy on the team of middle aged engineers I’d prefer “the engineer with a beard”
> A fighter jet and a helicopter based off the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz both crashed into the South China Sea within 30 minutes of each other, the Navy’s Pacific Fleet said.
>The three crew members of the MH-60R Sea Hawk helicopter were rescued on Sunday afternoon, and the two aviators in the F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter jet ejected and were recovered safely, and all five “are safe and in stable condition,” the fleet said in a statement.
>The causes of the two crashes were under investigation, the statement said.
Yes* most of the time. The purpose is the Pentagon doesn't want adversaries or anyone else getting their hands on classified gear or aircraft systems because it's basically flying around with a datacenter nowadays. If it's in deep water, NAVSEA may bust out FADOSS gear and make it a OJT exercise for junior recovery personnel.
Even if nothing was damaged (like that's going to happen) after you fish them out of the drink you think they can be put back in service? Just look at the boosters on the Shuttle--the cost to refurbish them after their dip in the ocean was almost as much as buying new. Valuable in as much as it showed the problem that lead to Challenger, but they refused to look.
Chlorinating the water would have adverse effects on material strength and longevity. Even irradiated and heated to 50c, I’ll bet there’s some extremophile bacteria in there somewhere.
Had a buddy on a nuclear sub drink water from the primary coolant loop when he joined the team.
While I do see this as a form of hazing which I am morally opposed to-
8oz (.237 liters) of primary coolant in a properly maintained pressurized water reactor might contain up to 13mrem of orally ingestible radiation, or approximately the radiation of a chest x-ray. (For comparison you get between 3-8 milirem on a 7 hour transatlantic flight)
Don’t make it your primary source of hydration and you’ll be ok. If the fuel is degraded or there is a leak (unlikely in properly maintained PWRs) the radiation dose is significantly higher.
That makes zero sense. Radiation is not a component of water; it is literally photons[0]. In the nanosecond after you fill the glass, all the radiation in it has left the volume.
I'd drink it. It's just extremely pure water, with a nuclear flashlight at the bottom of the pool - which no one could see, even if they had gamma-ray glasses on[1], because the water attenuates it so much.
[0] Or ions of hydrogen or helium, in the case of alpha and beta radiation.
[1] Which it turns out were way less cool than the Sea Monkeys(tm).
Radiation isn’t contained in the water as photons, but the coolant itself becomes radioactive through neutron activation. Even with intact fuel rods, oxygen in the water turns into N-16 with a half-life of about seven seconds, and trace metals like nickel and cobalt form isotopes such as Co-58 and Co-60. These emit strong gamma radiation while the reactor operates.
The primary coolant is not simply pure water; it contains boric acid, lithium hydroxide, dissolved hydrogen, and trace corrosion products like iron, nickel, cobalt, and chromium. Under power level neutron flux, some of these elements become short- or medium-lived radionuclides. Once removed from the core, most of the activity decays within minutes, but during operation the water is measurably radioactive.
An eight-ounce sample taken from the loop at power would carry roughly the dose of a chest X-ray before it decayed away, due to these activated isotopes rather than residual photons [EPRI PWR Primary Water Chemistry Guidelines; NUREG-1437][0].
I was on site for the mid cycle outage of three mile island unit 1 around 2005. I did the data sync and transfer for the steam generator inspection, but got tutored by some old PHDs during the down time.
We don’t let our kids on to TikTok, but all their friends are on and it surprises me how much they take whatever advice is shown them as gospel. Lucky for me my kids will tell me “Hey, Johnny said the best way to get ripped is X” so I get the chance to teach proper research techniques (for the level they are at). Two of my four kids are avid readers, mostly fiction but some not, the other two I am really struggling to get them engaged.
After being forced to read books in high school over the summer (school mandated summer reading) I got turned off on reading for years until I picked up Harry Potter. That changed my perspective and I read gobs of books now. I actually prefer to read information mostly than to watch a video about it.
Solution for my kids was buy or borrow whatever books they show interest in.
If they like reading comics, then get a stack of comics.
I allowed them to stay up later (if they want) but the condition is that time only can be used for reading. They really enjoyed that and it helped.
In time they traded the comics to fiction novels and their reading ability kept improving.
They now get books from the library on their own and read quite a lot for their age. No parental pressure needed, they are addicted.
High school also killed my love for reading. I really regret that I didn't start reading again outside of assigned works until I graduated college. Now I read a pretty significant amount, and it's a joy to me! Something about how school analyzed literature and required you to read what they dictated didn't align with me.
I just finished the Odyssey, a required book in high school, after I previously finished the Iliad, which wasn't required in high school. Reading those two together after reading Stephen Fry's Mythos and Heroes books was a wonderful experience that I felt could have been replicated in high school rather than the whirlwind of bouncing around to unrelated books like the Catcher in the Rye.
One idea I read somewhere (online) is to financially incentivize them once they get an understanding of cash/money. No clue if it would work or how effective it would be.
My kid is on the way and my spouse has zero interest in reading.
We read to them from the time they were born. Simple stories and picture books at first. I think exposure is key, but I’ve also found that kids learn way more with what they observe than what they are told to do. So they see mom and dad reading is going to have a much larger effect than just telling them to read. We take them to the local library and let them pick whatever books they want to try. One of ours took a long time to ever find anything, then discovered he loved dragons, so for a year he devoured any dragon book. Even graphic novels, which I had thought “Isn’t my 12 year old to old for these?” Primed the pump and she’ll go through 2-3 chapter books per week.
We also made age appropriate audiobooks available to them and all 4 adore listening.
Congrats on your baby! I’ve never been more exhausted in my life but I’m loving it.
In the context of kids, note that those books essentially legalize rape by saying the humans telepathically connected to the dragons mating just have to also do the deed.
Maybe go through them yourself first to decide when is appropriate, and talk about how compilations of old thoughts can be good and bad at the same time.
100%. Imho, parents should generally at least skim books before giving them to younger children, if only to know what topics their child might ask about after reading.
As a YA author at a recent con panel put it: "I let my kids read any book they want, but I describe the themes. Sometimes, they decide they might not be ready for specific topics"
Help kids censor for themselves, if they choose. (Personally, less-so on censoring for them, especially books)
I'm thinking less censorship and more understanding of when starting to think about something is appropriate, how to build a healthy worldview, and how to communicate about uncomfortable things. Like, A Song of Ice and Fire is a great world with captivating storytelling where some nasty things happen, and its characters can sometimes be "bad people", and that's part of the story! It's fine that books also portray things that are not just happy endings. GRRM is a good enough writer to make that improve the story.
(The author of Dragonriders of Pern, unfortunately, is not a good enough writer that her addition of certain topics into the books could be said to improve the books. I'll leave you with <https://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Tent_Peg_Statement>. It's still a fun series, even if the author is not someone I'd invite for dinner!)
Unilaterally deciding as an adult "when" is censorship.
A big discussion point in the panel, which I agree with, is that kids will move on to more mature themes when they're ready (and not before).
Retarding that development process by deciding what is and isn't age appropriate for them (a) breaks down trust and communication and (b) substantially raises the risk of their doing so secretly, which increases the very risk you're trying to prevent.
We may have had different childhoods, but no bans my parents put in place that I felt strongly about weren't circumvented.
My philosophy on parenting is that you should support and be involved in your child's development, at the pace they choose, not plan and meter it.
I think you're projecting your own background into my words. Adjust your bias from "parental decision to censor" to "things to think about and discuss" and re-read.
It's a synonym of "suitable" or "fitting". I don't really understand what you're asking. Are you expecting me to lay down some strict rules that people under the age of X must not be exposed to topic Y? I'm not American/religious enough for that kind of thinking.
Personal anecdote: Before I could read, my mom would sit down and read Donald Duck comics with me. It started out as looking at pictures for a few minutes, soon was her reading a whole comic book aloud in one sitting, and when I eventually learned to read myself, the teacher's feedback was that I read out loud to the class in a way that brought the story to life, where others were just reciting the words.
To think of replacing that shared time with a financial incentive comes across as really cold. (Sorry.) Also, way too late!
I find that the yogurt is thicker when I initially heat it higher. My understanding is it changes some of the proteins, resulting in a higher curd yield.
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