ater

u/ater@piefed.world
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Not me, but in the span of a couple weeks I had some really awful experiences with pediatricians. My middle kid was almost three when they had a horrific fever and was complaining about a stiff neck, which is a huge red flag... But the ER sent us home with the diagnosis of "neck torsion." A few hours later we went to a different ER because they had a lump the size of a grapefruit in their neck from an infected lymph node. Required several days in the hospital to get IV antibiotics.

A couple weeks after that I gave birth to our youngest, and at her 3 day check up her doctor claimed to see sores in her mouth and was worried about herpes (despite the fact that neither me nor my spouse have any STDs) so she sent us to the ER... No one there bothered looking in her mouth until after a lumbar puncture. Then someone realized there were no sores at all, but harmless gum cysts that are extremely common in infants. They kept her overnight for monitoring and that morning a med student presented the case to her peers as a cautionary tale to verify symptoms before jumping into an LP.

on Formal education · c/microblogmemes · 23 pts · 65d

I imagine it was also more common when people regularly had fires in their own homes. I bought that same child a pair of pajamas as a toddler that had a million warning tags about keeping them away from open flames because they weren't flame resistant... Not a problem, I tended to keep my babies away from open flames regardless.

on Formal education · c/microblogmemes · 102 pts · 66d

My 9 year old recently asked me what "stop-drop-and-roll" was and I explained it was if you were on fire and she gave me a really skeptical look and asked, "did that happen a lot when you were a kid?"

Six billionaires live in Wyoming, which doesn't sound like a lot, but since the population is otherwise so low that means a billionaire rate of 10.3 per million people; some 10X higher than most other states. Wyoming is almost twice as infested as New York (6.92 billionaires per million people).

on me_irl · c/me_irl · 19 pts · 104d

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - 2 Hs, 2 Gs. The best acronyms are the ones that take several extra steps to explain.

on me_irl · c/me_irl · 15 pts · 104d

Once got a test back with 42 written at the top, spent a while freaking out about how I possibly could have failed so badly. Turned out I'd forgotten to write my name on it, and my teacher had written it in for me... My name is Liz. Served me well during my H2G2 phase.

The parabolic microphone idea sounds interesting! I use the Merlin bird ID app to identify what I can hear, but it's not directional, obviously. I do have a pretty decent digital camera with 40x optical zoom, but you really need to know where to point it, because the slightest change in angle is a big change at a distance.

I can't use any magnifying lenses because I have blind spots that interfere with it. I can use a digital camera, I actually have a pretty good one with 40x optical zoom. But since you need to really know where you're pointing at for long distances, I mostly just use it for bee spotting!

smartphones basically don’t produce toxins during production or when disposed

Er, citation needed? Because pretty much every piece of a cell phone is toxic when recycled (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11270-023-06328-2), even just the plastics used in the casing (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412019332556). There are not nearly enough recycling facilities to handle all the e-waste (https://microjournal.researchfloor.org/impact-of-e-waste-on-human-health-and-environment/) and most of it is shipped to developing worlds to be burned in open air pits.