Notices by SewBlue (sewblue@sfba.social)

@cdarwin @pluralistic Engineer here in a safety related field. More human focused that pure engineering.

At this point I have 22 years of experience. I'm a principal. What I see a lot of is Great Grandma's Brisket.

Great grandma teaches grandma to make brisket. She cuts the ends off while teaching it. Grandma teaches it to mom. Cutting the ends off. Mom teaches it to her daughter. Cutting the ends off.

Young daughter makes the brisket with pride while great granny watches.

Why are you cutting the ends off? I only did that because my pan was too small.

When I do research, I often find brisket driving a practice rather than clear and present safety concerns. Code was worded differently 30 years ago, safety equipment operated differently or didn't exist.

In a way though, the point is the same. Someone needs to know their shit, to know if the cows are elsewhere or if it's the end of a brisket.

@sidereal @NatureMC @ai6yr and in the case of Rancho Palos Verde, successful sue the government so they can build on a landslide area.

The judge decided that the science wasn't good enough (uncertainty!) and forced the city to allow building permits.

Those homes are now sinking into the ocean.

@futurebird Central heating.

Skirts got short as furnaces and radiators became more common.

@mizblueprint @KFuentesGeorge You could argue that Marin still a sundown town/county, unless you can buy your way in.

You can work here, but you absolutely cannot live here.

Marin had a school desegregation as recently as 2021. For Marin City and the historic shipyards. Was also where that home appraisal lawsuit came out of, where the house value grew by $500k when it was stripped of any signs that a black family lived there.

Economic segregation is alive and well in California. Only now we call them NIMBYs.

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/09/1162103286/home-appraisal-racial-bias-black-homeowners-lawsuit#:~:text=Black%20couple%20settles%20lawsuit%20claiming%20their%20home%20appraisal%20was%20lowballed%20due%20to%20bias&text=Owned%20Television%20Stations-,Paul%20Austin%20and%20Tenisha%20Tate%20Austin%20stand%20in%20front%20of,discrimination%20lawsuit%20late%20last%20month.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/education/article/Two-Marin-schools-forced-to-integrate-after-years-16256418.php

@KFuentesGeorge In my town, Vallejo California, they straight up bulldozed half of downtown for a freeway that never came.

Vallejo was a Navy town, and had a huge, rather seedy nightlife spot for the sailors on leave. Party town of the west coast. During WWII a large number of black Americans were brought in to work the shipyard, in segregated housing. Like most of the Bay Area there hadn't been much of a black population before WWII.

Within 15 years of the war ending white flight had taken over and they simply bulldozed most of downtown to stop any black owned businesses from forming in the vacuum. Highly restricted zoning to prevent even restaurants. It was repeated all over the Bay Area - Oakland, Richmond Hunters Point, Marin City. Any place that had ship building intentionally sabotaged the economic growth of the city long term because of the demographic changes, to prevent black wealth.

Pisses me off on so many levels.

@tdverstynen This one lost my respect for him as well.

I loved loved his Great Courses on language - it really made me reevaluate my thoughts on language, what it does and why/how it is used in certain ways, especially to control and enforce class and power dynamics. I've listened to it a couple times, all 26 hours or so. I went through a John McWhorter period for a while, seeking out his stuff. Was super excited when he got this column.

That did not last long. He can not be more infuriating than about politics. He is an expert in his field and is entirely overconfident outside it. He's using language to enforce the class boundaries, rather than break them.

He is shaming people for being excited. He's calling out racism while ignoring that it's misogyny at play. People started to get excited over Hilary too, they just had to hide it. Pantsuit Nation, remember that? Now we don't have to hide it. With the adde excitement for a fresh face breaking new ground, for someone willing to fight.

@quantensalat

1) Communicate your thought in as few words as possible. Make a game of it.
2) do not document the thoughts necessary to come to your conclusion.
3) use lists where practical, not paragraphs.

School teaches you to write in a certain style, vs how to focus and develop the content or thought.

Writing for someone who knows more than we do is very different than someone who knows less that we we do.

The puff, the explanation, the stretching of concepts are all designed to impress a teacher or professor. In writing for someone who knows less, all those writing skills get in the way of a newbie understanding the concept.

@thepoliticalcat In a 2D sense or a 3D sense?

A lot of dyslexics are so strong in their 3D world view they struggle with 2D representations of the world.

It's why b and d get confused. Same shape in 3D.

Am sure you've tried, but does Google Streetview help?

With my severely dyslexic kid, making sure they can orient themselves to landmark helps considerably.

#dyslexia win!

I just had a coworker seek me out because of my dyslexia. Asked for my special dyslexia powers. They were working on engineering concept that needed to be clear to construction workers for safety. Stuff that can kill you.

With my dyslexia, I make the same kind of interpretation mistakes the field often makes. I just don't have the working memory easily process (badly written/presented) written material, doing so by force of will rather than ease.

Through experience am able to diagnose and articulate where my working memory screws things up. Mainly by "how much am I needing to study to understand it."

Was able to quickly help them figure out what was wrong. This info here needs to be clarified so it isn't conflated with that info over there. This is the mistake people can make.

And poof, a plan to fix.

Always feels good when you know you may have prevented someone else's screw up that could have killed someone.

Neurodiversity for the win.

My garden right now. Heaps of flowers. Hard to believe this was a wasteland of lawn a year ago.

The California poppies were volunteers. I love how many bumble bees they attract.

#bloomscrolling #NoLawn

@MelodyCooper @MarkHoltom I heard of a story about how, in a remarkably preserved town, they kept finding knives on high shelves. The male archologists/anthropologists went with the classic religious explanation - place knives closer to the sun or if worship.

Once women came into the field they had a very different and practical idea - out of reach of children.

@DeliaChristina @pooserville @courtcan @mekkaokereke My asshole aunt lives in Rockridge. She is the kind of person who will correct you, because she doesn't want to cop to living in Oakland. She lives in Rockridge. 🙄

I wish known then about the red lining then so I could have asked her place still had the racist covenants. If she ever corrects me again I will. She's one of those who thinks she isn't racist but actually is.

When ever I hear Rockridge I think of my aunt's bullshit.

It is a pretty area but oof, the people.

@argv_minus_one @clarkiestar I'm an engineer with #LongCovid. Doctors have surprised me.

Not a 1:1 comparison, as an engineer I need to be able to walk up to a structure or system and figure it how it works and if a problem is safety related or not. I need to know how to build on someone else's work.

Doctors are drilled on a series of pre-determined scripts. XYZ symptoms and test results, ABC diagnosis, perscribe 123 medication or refer elsewhere. The prior science did the thinking and insurance will only back those treatments. Evidence based medicine is rigid and unthinking.

Go off script, something new to science, and a normal doctor can't figure out what to do, or have the time. Insurance won't pay. Life is not TV.

I've got far, far more professional discretion than a doctor does, and my work is critical to public safety. Medicine also accepts a far higher death and injury rate than is allowed engineers.

The reality of what medicine is today surprised me.

@Porcia @quixoticgeek Leaks aren't the only thing.

Natural gas is flammable between 5-15% gas in air. It is actually rather challenging to get uncontrolled concentrations to ignite, if you remember those episodes of Mybusters. It certainly can ignite but is fairly limited in practice.

Hydrogen has a flammable limit of 4-74%. You also can't scent it like you can natural gas because of that tiny molecule issue, so leaks are incredibly hazardous and difficult to detect.

Outside of industrial applications hydrogen is just too dangerous. The best I've heard of is mixing with natural gas, but that doesn't actually solve the problem.

Right now there is a huge split between gas only utilities and joint gas and electric companies. Gas only companies are hoping for a hail mary with hydrogen and funding scare tactics around keeping gas ranges, while joint utilities are exploring electric conversions.

Eventually electric utilities will need to buy out the gas ones and convert the customer be to full electric.

@BethanyBlack I think it because there was simply so much immigration. Immigrant stories are more recent and powerful. My husband's family has immigrants and natitive New Mexican roots, so culturally New Mexico and Mexico is very strong, talked about and obvious.

By contrast I am mostly American English. My earliest ancestor came over in 1688. The most recent immigrant I could find was Irish and came over in 1792. Scottish. Welsh. Maybe French Huguenot. We don't have the same strong cultural traditions, like making tamales after Thanksgiving.

@breadandcircuses It's like the British landlords during the Irish Potato famine. People starved while Ireland produced a grain surplus. The rights of the rich to earn their money was more important than the lives of the starving Irish. Food was exported while people died of starvation.

All the excuses you hear about climate change were used against the Irish - they are lazy and not minding their personal carbon foot print, oh sorry, farming their potatoes well. The Irish need to pull themselves up by their boot straps so they don't starve. The market needs to rule and famines are natural. Even: it is good and natural to reduce overpopulation.

I'm far too cynical today to think that things will change before crops start to fail, given what it took to get Britian off corn subsidies. The corn laws subsiding grain exports didn't end until 1 in 10 people died.

@thomasfuchs Personally I think there are several underlying causes, which is why diet and meds work differently in different people.

Antihistamines for mast cell activation did squat for me, but work wonders for others.

But in retrospect for me, every measure I took that helped control my insulin levels helped, while others failed. Most of my symptoms aligned with hyperglycemia, down to the incredible thirst, 130 oz a day. But without the high blood sugar or A1C.

Covid left my lungs scarred so I will never be what I was, but that is easier to deal with than that fatigue.

Edit: adding missing word

@thomasfuchs You do need a balance though, without the hard science available yet. I'm an engineer, and the woo-woo stuff drives me nuts. So much BS out there

My story. Long covid made me bed bound for months. I could not stand more than a minute or two, and they looked at giving me oxygen. I was living and working from bed.

Over time, I found that a careful diet avoiding carbs and sugar controlled it. If I cheated the fatigue would return like clock work, along with heat palpitations. I absolutely hated it but it worked.

Metformin has been shown to help reduce long covid risk by controlling insulin, so it is likely I hacked my way there. Who knows yet. The science can't happen fast enough.

I then got covid again and it cleared out my long covid. I like to think my diet helped but who knows.

I hate the randomness of this disease.

@feditips Any chance for the fiber arts? Knitting, sewing, quilting, weaving, and embroidery are all art forms.

It is so strange to me that the things we are most familiar with, clothing and fabrics, are so neglected as crafts and arts.

Yet many people can't tell hand embroidery from what is produced by machine. Imagine not being able to appreciate a painting vs. its print.