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Joined 7 months ago
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Cake day: March 31st, 2025

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  • Manufacturers, knowingly or unknowingly, use commercial-grade PG when making cough syrups to cut costs.

    i’d note that there’s zero technical reason why DEG would end up in PG. reaction of water with ethylene oxide gives you ethylene glycol, diethylene glycol and higher analogues and these are then separated by distillation. propylene glycol is made from propylene oxide instead, and it’s more expensive than ethylene oxide. diethylene glycol has little use on its own, at least compared to other glycols

    however,

    The physical properties of diethylene glycol make it an excellent counterfeit for pharmaceutical-grade glycerine (also called glycerol) or propylene glycol




  • so the way i understand it, at first refinery strikes had little impact because other refineries still had slack capacity. but even before that slack capacity was gone, it had a further effect that now fuel was not prepared in places it used to be, so it had to be hauled longer distances. meaning logistics is strained and some fuel is used to haul it, and also now fuel production is more concentrated

    at some point that slack capacity was gone and fuel went from not where you need it to not existing at all. there already were shortages in some regions. that and still large demand for fuel for farming caused decrease in exports. there was a refinery that only produces products for export, and its output wouldn’t be directly usable as fuel (they only distilled crude into fractions, still high in sulfur etc) but it was also hit so exports from it don’t matter because these are none

    at any rate these developments are on borrowed time because it only takes maybe half year to repair more advanced parts of refinery, so under certain droning intensity they can just roll on. everyone involved knows that, and looks like situation will get worse for russians



  • …and that means retirees will literally starve and live on the streets? I don’t think it will. It will just be less luxurious.

    you might think that japanese boomers have generational wealth in form of real estate. this is not really the case, especially for rural population. houses aren’t built to last, lose value like motherfucker and are commonly demolished after 20-30 years, in part because people don’t like second hand, in part because there’s no point of building anything sturdier if typhoon or earthquake takes it. there is some newer construction that is intended to last longer, but it’s not a very common thing. so a reverse mortgage type thing won’t exist there, and yeah lots of people will get shafted by these conditions














  • It’s not. He-3 is supposed to be maybe one day used in fusion power, but we’re talking about tons of this stuff. Not only scale is off, also He-3 burning requires much higher temperature than D-T fusion, and this is just around in next 20 years pinky promise

    People who think that it’s a big deal also take Ray Kurzweil seriously, it’s scifi noise

    In practical terms, when DHS wanted to get He-3 neutron sensors, they bought out entire global supply for multiple years, for an application where only grams are needed and it’s not used up. It’s made from decay of tritium currently and it’d be less energy intensive to make it the usual way