Strangely, was never an issue for me. I usually wear thick rimmed plastic ones, the metal in the screws was never pulled into the machine.

But, if I was getting an MRI of my head I would take them off. Mostly because they didn’t fit. But they could also distort the images or, worst case scenario, absorb the radio waves and heat up.

Ramp-down isn’t really possible. The idea behind the super cooled coil is that once activated, it takes almost zero energy to maintain the (very strong, like 300,000x more than Earth’s) magnetic field. A super cooled coil can keep an electric current for a very, very long time. The magnet is ALWAYS ON, and the door into the room has a big warning about it. All employees in the same building as the MRI should be trained to Read The Fucking Sign. Cop should have, too.

It would take a huge amount of force to pry the gun free. I would argue the risk of prying the gun free and it discharging is much worse than the cost to reactivate the magnet. If the gun was hot, I don’t know if they could have even cleared the magazine at that point. The bolt or magazine may have been stuck in place.

During the very early days of COVID I walked into the magnet room with a homemade reusable mask. It had a twist tie in the nose to keep it from fogging my glasses. I was 10 feet away from the magnet when I felt it start to be pulled free from my face. I’ve never noped out of a room more quickly in my life…

I love these stories so much. Anytime a metal object is sucked into an MRI, they experience “projectile acceleration”. Since the strength of magnetic pull increases the closer an object gets, objects will accelerate rapidly. I’d argue a live rifle stuck to the MRI is an emergency. The gun could have discharged. Then I’d sue the hell outta the city.

I worked in MRI for many years. There’s a big, red button behind a plexiglass access window that releases all the liquid helium which keeps the superconductivity of the big-ass magnetic coil. It’s called a quench, it’s loud, dangerous, and only to be used in life-or-death emergencies, e.g. person is trapped between an oxygen tank and the MRI. Pressing the button kills the MRI and it can cost millions of dollars to reactivate it.

I worked with these things for almost 10 years. The urge never abates, we just learn to manage it.

Don’t sell yourself short. It’s a salty lump of fat.

+1 for Swiss method decaf. I had a roaster in my old neighborhood that had great decaf

Elite Dangerous but cars. Love it.

Subdermal is a lot easier than implanting in other compartments, e.g., intracranial. For example, hormonal birth control exists as an implant.

But, there’s fascinating research into how the brain rejects implanted electrodes, e.g., neuralink. Lots of work has been done developing materials that are less likely to be rejected by the brain and the brain’s immune system. For example, electrodes can be coated in chemicals to make them less harsh to the body, and flexible materials can be used.

I love my Etymotics. Bit pricey but so comfortable. I wore them for years as a musician and now for live shows.

Haven’t paid for a single thing past the license.

Foundry is amazing. I used Roll20 for years (5e and a bit of PF2e), found it to be a bit unintuitive, albeit free. You can do most things in the system, but the plug-ins available for Foundry are miles and leagues better. Also, macros are a bit tough. I can’t imagine running PF2e in the system for very long, especially for complex classes like Alchemist or Thaumaturge.

I’m currently a player in a Fantasy Grounds campaign (5e). As a player, it’s fine. I don’t like the interface very much, but it’s fine for 5e which is already a pretty light system. Panning on maps, targeting enemies is frustrating and I feel like I have too many windows open at any given time.

Been using Foundry just shy of a year, DMing 3 games. It’s amazing. Plug-ins for anything you need - ranging from DM QoL upgrades like Simple Calendar, atmospheric upgrades like music bundles, the always incredible Pathmuncher, and class-specific tools like the Thamaturge package. The built-in Compendium for PF2e makes DMing so easy, I can look literally everything up and most things have macros pre-built. Hosting from my PC was a bit harder, but doable.

Currently learning how to make custom macros, which has been tough, but there’s a huge community and usually you can copy-paste details from other abilities.

Do you have any specific questions about the software?

I’ve been chasing the high from Elite Dangerous on my HOSAS setup for years. Thankfully, the recent updates have breathed some new life into the game.

X4. Come for the arcadey spaceflight simulator, stay for the galactic-scale empire building, leave for another save file once the Xenon start sending multiple I-class battleships against your Teladi allies but they cannot muster the strength to repel them and the entire gate network falls because you were too busy solving the Paranid Civil War.

Unfortunately there’s a lot of truth in that statement, especially in the case of rare disease. It’s really difficult to convince a company to spend billions to develop a treatment that will only cure 1 in 100,000 people without letting them charge an arm and a leg, and giving them a very long exclusivity deal so they can continue to charge high prices. So much of that cost to develop is due to the dozens of other failed drugs and formulations they tried on their way to success.

I don’t have a solution for the problem, and I’m always a little suspicious of anyone who claims it’s easy to solve. I think the UK has a decent idea, the NHS basically decides if the cost of a drug will be covered by insurance by comparing the expected benefit and the current cost. If the ratio is too skewed, they refuse to cover the medication. In theory, this should be an incentive for a company to charge less. In practice, it leads to some companies choosing not to market in the UK.

Here’s a bit of hope for you, scientists have figured out how to trick the body into producing any protein or antibody they want, through technology like gene therapy and mRNA vaccines. We’re about to cure a lot of diseases that used to be 100% fatal. Diseases that kill kids and adults alike.

Most things seem to be getting worse these days, but at least we’re making progress in other areas.

Unironically, I had to delete this game from my phone because I wasn’t getting work done. This game slaps.

Throwing in my $0.02, a correlation study is technically an option, where you look at differences as microplastics increase in concentration. But. my instinct is you would see some really unfortunate covariance - that is, another variable that increases (or decreases) at the same time as microplastics and is known to impact your variable of interest, e.g. socioeconomic status.

It’s baffling to me LaRose got away with this. Luckily, every street corner has a pair of signs - either Trump/Vote no OR Harris/Vote yes. Makes it easy to remember.

Jfc just spent 15 minutes trying to cancel a newspaper subscription this morning. Shame I couldn’t wait six months to do so.

For those interested in more, I found this People Make Games video to be super interesting. https://youtu.be/lYaDXZ2MI-k?si=pxrioKZq_S7ka9il