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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • healthetank@lemmy.catoScience Memes@mander.xyzah, conservation
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    3 months ago

    People who go hunting don’t go by “off the top of their head”.

    Now I can’t speak to the laws in California for hunting, but in Canada they have pretty crazy strict laws regarding illegal hunting, including seizure of anything used in the act (trucks, atvs, guns, boats, etc), removal of gun license, and huge fines.

    A quick google search shows the method they’ve used, and have been using for the last decade as an attempt to stop the spread: Barred owls are much more aggressive, and playing their calls can lure them in to fight, in a way the spotted owls don’t, so you don’t need to just go based on visual differences. Here’s one article about the removal process up to now with an interview of a biologist who’s pro-hunting.

    Relocation of the barred owls isn’t feasible, because no matter where you send them, there’s probably already owls there, and relocation often results in the animal dying off anyway.

    What’s the alternative? Watch as the spotted owls are out-competed and go extinct due to human development and habitat destruction? To me, that seems worse. We already hunt to maintain populations of animals in other species - deer spring to mind. Since we’ve eliminated many of the deer’s predators, we need to maintain that role, which includes setting hunting targets each year. Why are these owls different?


  • Not everyone there agrees with helmet less riding, though they do discuss the disagreement over the effectiveness of helmets for those, the stats say 1/3 of serious bike accidents involve brain injuries. That’s some huge numbers!!!

    We wear helmets to do dozens of other activities for sport or leisure - ski/snowboard, skating, mountain climbing, spelunking, white water sports. Additionally, the article says those engaged in cycling for exercise or sport almost all wear helmets. Why is there such an aversion to wearing helmets while biking?

    In my lifetime skiing I’ve seen an enormous change in people. When I was younger almost no one wore helmets. Now, it’s rare to see someone not wearing a helmet.

    GoTransit’s Burloak Drive grade separation project would disagree, as it features a painted bike lane at level with auto traffic, despite having built an elevated sidewalk.

    I said it was easy, doesnt mean its always implemented. Ive designed a handful of roads to have designated bike lanes or fully separated bike lanes. Every time we do any Active Transport, I’ve advocated for fully separated systems or physical barriers between. 90% of the time, the decision to cut them has come after resident input/discussion. Often the Townships I work with don’t have the resident/political backing to justify narrowing vehicle lanes to improve bike traffic - because that is what is required. Unfortunately we still don’t have enough public backing to push through these.

    Hell, one job I’m working on is on a “designated bike route” and residents fought a separated path so much that the city scrapped it and went with the Advisory Bike Lanes.


  • I’m not totally convinced that the helmets are the best value here, even if money was available to grant every American citizen a helmet.

    What?? Beyond cars, riding something moving ~20km/hr is still super dangerous without a helmet. Slightly off the trail and hit a tree or post? Icy conditions and you wipe out?

    Even something as simple as a road speed design change (ie just changing signs without changing ANYTHING else on the road) are ~500$ a sign. As soon as you get into more complex changes, but still on the easy side (ie Advisory Bike Lanes, where the only change is painting lines to allocate specific space for bikes) run ~$15/m for each line painted. On a typical advisory lane, thats 4 lines ($60/m) plus 500$ per sharrow symbol which are spaced every 75m in each lane.

    Even at an expensive helmet ($100), Helmets are by far the cheapest method of personal safety you can do. ( For example, Toronto has~5397km of roads and a population of 2.93 million. To even do a simple repainting on those roads is ~$400mil. New expensive helmets for every single person in Toronto is $293mil.

    I work in civil engineering. It’s not too hard to include bike design on new roads **when they come up ** (which is only every 20yrs on average) but arguing that its more cost effective? Definitely not true.




  • Really? Every single item is wrapped in plastic at your grocery store? No loose apples, cucumbers, potatoes, or leafy greens?

    If those are all wrapped in plastic, then look for what options have less plastic. Avoid double wrapped items, for example, or anything marketed as single servings.

    I feel like none of this is that hard to come up with. It’s unfortunate you don’t seem interested in an actual conversation. Hope you have a better rest of your day.


  • You should blame them and still choose options with less plastic where possible? I don’t see where this idea of black and white, one or the other comes from

    Where it’s feasible given your financial and geographical means, avoid food wrapped in plastics, foods shipped from far away, and meats. Not every single item in the store comes in plastic. It will require adjusting your habits, for sure.

    No need to demonize anyone for not being able to if it doesn’t work, but every time you choose something better, it’s an incremental step forward.

    At the same time, send an email or phone call to the grocery store manager. Write to your local politician and push for laws regarding stricter use of plastics, more comprehensive recycling programs, or funding and grants for local farmers.

    Simply being angry online and not changing your own habits or lobbying for change isn’t actually improving anything.


  • Not the person above, but Corporations are built around the idea of selling something. The biggest way to reduce your environmental impact is to not buy shit. Doesn’t matter if the shit is eco friendly, more shit means more emissions.

    Corporations don’t pollute for shits and giggles. They pollute because they want to make stuff for us to buy. Shell doesn’t just make pollution, they pollute on the way to producing gas.

    If we cut back on how much gas we use, Shell pollutes less because they have less gas to sell.

    That doesn’t absolve Shell of their role in chasing profits over environmental protection, and there’s plenty of space for demanding better and holding them accountable, but acting like these corps pollute just cuz is disingenuous. They pollute because we want shit.



  • I’ve used the system pretty regularly. To be fair, I live in a small city (150,000) within the golden horseshoe, so definitely better care compared to many throughout rural areas.

    In the past few years I’ve had the birth of a child including all the various follow ups and shots, a stress test, blood work to rule out several heart issues, a halter monitor test, an ultrasound of my heart, three sets of baseline blood work, and four family doctor appointments.

    The biggest fee at each was parking.

    I don’t disagree we have tons of room for improvement. Our contributions each year (ie personal amount of taxes we pay for healthcare in Ontario) have not been sufficient to keep up with the growing and aging population. We desperately need greater cancer screening and diagnostic services, as prevention and early detection can save billions in future chemo/rad or operations. Rural areas and family doctors need a rework, as many people are without one due to fewer and fewer docs entering that field.

    That said, I would never take the US system over Canadas. The enormous stress illness would place on a family doesn’t seem worth it for the meager tax savings, and the low wait times seem to only be avoided in the US system by paying out of pocket, which is not feasible for many.




  • Not the person you were responding to, but this article definitely has some big problems, the largest of which is they don’t cite any sources. None. That’s a significant problem for a ‘scientific’ article.

    The first claim - Women hunted too - they present good evidence for, and a number of other studies have shown that many other societies had more integrated roles.

    The second claim - Women are better at endurance than men - is shaky.

    If you follow long-distance races, you might be thinking, wait—males are outperforming females in endurance events! But this is only sometimes the case. Females are more regularly dominating ultraendurance events such as the more than 260-mile Montane Spine foot race through England and Scotland, the 21-mile swim across the English Channel and the 4,300-mile Trans Am cycling race across the U.S.

    Looking back at the placements, I agree women are definitely doing well, but they’re not what I’d call dominating. Women’s 1st place is placing ~5-10th overall. Impressive, for sure, but not dominating. They again, provide no sources, years of the race, or names of these women.

    The inequity between male and female athletes is a result not of inherent biological differences between the sexes but of biases in how they are treated in sports.

    An enormous leap. This is a great theory to test and analyze, or link to others who have tested it, but not something to state as fact in a scientific article.

    As an example, some endurance-running events allow the use of professional runners called pacesetters to help competitors perform their best. Men are not permitted to act as pacesetters in many women’s events because of the belief that they will make the women “artificially faster,” as though women were not actually doing the running themselves.

    Once again, I’m curious what races. I’m involved on the running scene, and have never heard of this rule before. Google results didn’t show anything either. Once again, a distinct lack of sources.

    Women are definitely capable of doing super endurance events, but they are not the equivalent of men on setting records for any race I’ve found. See below for a few ultra endurance races I know of.

    One called “backyard ultra”. Basically you do a lap of 6.7km each hour until everyone else drops out. World records are all men by a long shot - https://backyardultra.com/world-rankings/

    Fastpacking, a slower event than the backyard ultras, involve hiking/jogging through hiking trails while carrying what you need. Definitely slower pace, and I’d argue closer to what I’d imagine with a long, days-long hunt would be like for ancient tribes. FKT, or fastest known times, are often found at this website. Looking at all the times, men carry a significant lead in both supported (ie someone else carries your food/water/sleeping gear), and unsupported. As an example, look at the Appalachian Trail – https://fastestknowntime.com/route/appalachian-trail

    Even the RAAM shows solo male records much faster than women: https://www.raamrace.org/records-awards

    The thing the article failed to mention (and the thing I think is key) is that women excel at doing these things, typically, with less energy burnt both during and after the races. This is hinted at, implied, and signalled, but never outright stated.

    Women on the whole are smaller, and tend to have better insulin responses (as mentioned in the article) which means their blood sugar stays consistent during exercise and after. Consistent blood sugar means less wasted energy. Larger heart and lungs, combined with higher type 2 muscle fibres compared to women’s type 1 (from the article) means, again, less wasted energy and more efficiencies. Less muscle damage, as mentioned in the article, means less to repair, which means more saved energy. In a hunter/gather society, this saved energy can be significant.

    With modern access to food, that evolutionary advantage seems to vanish, and the article doesn’t even touch on it.


  • Women are definitely capable of doing super endurance events, but they are not the equivalent of men on setting records for any race I’ve found.

    One called “backyard ultra”. Basically you do a lap of 6.7km each hour until everyone else drops out. World records are all men by a long shot - https://backyardultra.com/world-rankings/

    Fastpacking, a slower event than the backyard ultras, involve hiking/jogging through hiking trails while carrying what you need. Definitely slower pace, and I’d argue closer to what I’d imagine with a long, days-long hunt would be like for ancient tribes. FKT, or fastest known times, are often found at this website. Looking at all the times, men carry a significant lead in both supported (ie someone else carries your food/water/sleeping gear), and unsupported. As an example, look at the Appalachian Trail – https://fastestknowntime.com/route/appalachian-trail

    Even the RAAM shows solo male records much faster than women: https://www.raamrace.org/records-awards

    The thing the article failed to mention (and the thing I think is key) is that women excel at doing these things, typically, with less energy burnt both during and after the races. Women on the whole are smaller, and tend to have better insulin responses (as mentioned in the article) which means their blood sugar stays consistent during exercise and after. Consistent blood sugar means less wasted energy. Larger heart and lungs, combined with higher type 2 muscle fibres compared to women’s type 1 means, again, less wasted energy and more efficiencies. Less muscle damage, as mentioned in the diagram, means less to repair, which means more saved energy. In a hunter/gather society, this saved energy can be significant.

    With modern access to food, that evolutionary advantage seems to vanish, and the article doesn’t even touch on it.


  • Worth pointing out that there is lots of existing races that would compare “sustain exertion for longer”.

    One called “backyard ultra”. Basically you do a lap of 6.7km each hour until everyone else drops out. World records are all men by a long shot - https://backyardultra.com/world-rankings/

    Fastpacking, a slower event than the backyard ultras, involve hiking/jogging through hiking trails while carrying what you need. Definitely slower pace, and I’d argue closer to what I’d imagine with a long, days-long hunt would be like for ancient tribes. FKT, or fastest known times, are often found at this website. Looking at all the times, men carry a significant lead in both supported (ie someone else carries your food/water/sleeping gear), and unsupported. As an example, look at the Appalachian Trail – https://fastestknowntime.com/route/appalachian-trail

    EDIT: The thing the article failed to mention (and the thing I think is key) is that women excel at doing these things, typically, with less energy burnt both during and after the races. Women on the whole are smaller, and tend to have better insulin responses (as mentioned in the article) which means their blood sugar stays consistent during exercise and after. Consistent blood sugar means less wasted energy. Larger heart and lungs, combined with higher type 2 muscle fibres compared to women’s type 1 means, again, less wasted energy and more efficiencies. Less muscle damage, as mentioned in the diagram, means less to repair, which means more saved energy. In a hunter/gather society, this saved energy can be significant.

    With modern access to food, that evolutionary advantage seems to vanish, and the article doesn’t even touch on it.


  • I can speak to this as I’m just going through it now.

    I’m a young male in good health. I started having weird heart palpitations randomly starting last year. Had them four times, but they normally go away after 20ish mins. GP reviewed me, said it seemed fine, but to go in to ER if anything about them changed (ie more frequent, more intense, lasted longer).

    Last friday they went on for an hour, so I went in. Entered at 11am.

    Was triaged within 15mins, including an ECG. Once they confirmed it wasn’t an active heart attack, I sat in the waiting room for two hours. I then saw a doctor, got a chest X-Ray, and bloodwork taken within 45mins. I proceeded to sit in the room hooked up to the vitals monitor for four hours while they ran my bloodwork, and the ER doc came back. He sent me a requisition for a cardiologist and told me to take aspirin until I saw the specialist.

    I saw the Cardiologist on Wednesday, and he’s explained he’s not concerned given my lack of other risk factors. He’s now sent me over for an ultrasound and 36hr halter monitor next Monday. He said unless something weird comes back or he wants another test, he won’t see me again, and I should follow up with my GP 2 weeks after I finish the halter monitor.

    So within 3 or 4 weeks I had a full range of tests done, and my biggest expense was $7.50 parking for the 30min cardiologist appointment, which I was actually unironically complaining about to my wife last night.


  • 14,000,000,000 / 365)/24 = 1.6 million per hour divided over 1,350,000 million employees give or take.

    You’re paying employees 24hrs a day, 365 days a year. They should be paid, assuming standard full time (which most of them are not), 40hrs per week, 52 weeks per year or 2,080 hours.

    14,000,000,000/2080 = 6,730,769 per hour over 1.35 million staff = a raise of $5 per hour, putting the new hourly rate at $20/hr. Not way higher, but worth noting.

    Additionally, as I mentioned above, the assumption of 40hrs per week for all staff is highly unlikely to be accurate. I looked, but wasn’t able to find any hard data, just anecdotal stuff. Most staff I know in fast food places work ~30hrs per week, if they’re ‘full time’, so the number is likely higher than I’ve shown.

    Therefor it is entirely possible, even without touching the CEO pay, to pay $20 per hour to all staff.



  • Ehh, reading the article makes it clear that the farmer fucked up.

    Best case, he gave it a thumbs up to show he read it and then forgot to ever follow up or reject the contract. However it seems like he had previously accepted and executed contracts via text, which reduces this likelihood.

    Worst case, he did the thumbs up to show he agreed to it, and now is trying to back out either because he can’t make the deadline, or because the price of it has shot up.

    Neither case is great for the farmer. Contracts can be made from whatever form - verbal contracts are perfectly acceptable, so I’m not sure why people are freaking out about this. If he had said “Agreed”, or “yes” in response to the text then that would be taken as confirmation of the contract too.