teslabox

My neighbor has a live rat trap that he doesn't need to bait anymore. The rats are doing their thing exploring, they go into the trap looking for food, and triggers the trap mechanism. When he finds a rat in his trap, he removes it to the woods outside of our neighborhood.

Senestech [0] sells an EPA-approved poison that only targets the rat's ability to reproduce. I mentioned this company previously [1], looks like their product line has expanded in the last year or two.

[0] https://www.senestech.com

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19233500

Edit: My grandfather had a semi-feral cat that he encouraged to stay around his cabin.

My dad lost two sets of sparkplug wires to pack rats [0], circa 2016-2017. I recall him sharing that the auto store staff told him the bioplastics used to insulate the wires tastes like peanuts. He switched to a different brand, and didn't lose another set.

Searching now I found this website about the soy-based wire problem: https://www.howtopreventratsfromeatingcarwires.com/2017/02/1...

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42074028

There are old studies on the hazard of blue light. I found a few of them on https://scholar.google.com - I suspect they’re hard to find if you don’t know about specific keywords to include in your query.

The blue light problem has to do with how high energy blue photons interact with specific substances found in minute quantities in our eyes, leading to inflammation.

The bad LEDs can also be improved with yellow or amber film, which is more accessible to most people than desoldering.

I found a German company that sent me a free sample of their amber film. As I recall their market was semiconductor manufacturing, but I can’t find them again. Amazon has a variety of films that should work.

Low pressure sodium lights were more efficient, but they emit a single wavelength of orange light. These lights were strongly disliked by people who liked to admire their car in the streetlights (I suppose).

> residential streets mostly had lamps with white fluorescent lights,

… they used CFLs? The spiral fluorescents were invented in the 1980’s, I guess. I speculate the residential street lights used mercury vapor bulbs, which had a longer expected lifespan than fluorescents.

> But still, I'm wondering: what about curtains, window blinds etc.?

You need a good blackout curtain to deal with light pollution through your window.

I’m not well-read on the old lighting research, but I’ve come across some explanations for why humans actually do much better with amber outdoor lighting than white. One of these points relates to how our pupils expand and contract with the amount of light available.

Blue-white LEDs have become the replacement for High Pressure Sodium [HPS] traffic lights because that's what the LED light companies have to sell. In the early years of the transition to LED streetlights they had to sell blue-white LED streetlights because warmer LEDs were not competitive with HPS on the basis of lumens-per-watt.

Most of the people who understood the advantages of blue-free amber HPS light over white metal halide lights retired, and this little tidbit of information didn't get passed to the next generation of city employees.

> and because people do not care.

People care, but they don't know why they hate the blue-white LED replacement lights. I've complained to the city about their new lights, but have not gotten any responses about why they haven't deployed LED lights with a safe spectrum of color.

This comment about unsafe blue-white headlights got a few upvotes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42444111

The shift to unsafe high-blue lights is simply a matter of forgetting what was figured out. In the 20th century the lighting companies (GE, etc) had all the money in the world, and spent a lot on R&D. They figured out how to get the most efficient lights possible for their customers. The scientists figured out exactly how blue light causes inflammation in our eyes. There are good reasons why cities used orange High Pressure Sodium [HPS] Bulbs for street lights: HPS is very energy efficient (as good as most LEDs), and they emit light that is almost blue-free.

Then LEDs were invented by companies that didn't have that old R&D. The automotive industry gradually switched to LEDs for the advantage of not needing to replace bulbs (but lights that fail are now >$1000 to replace instead of $5)

Instead of putting safe low-blue LEDs on their cars (~2400K), auto manufacturers are using 4000K to 5000K LEDs. These have too much blue light.

To understand modern lighting, the term "spectral power distribution" is quite helpful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_power_distribution

Relative Spectral Power Distribution graphs show how much of each color of the rainbow is in a given source of light. Incandescent bulbs are mostly Red-orange-yellow light with a bit of green and even less blue. 5000K fluorescent or LED bulbs are mostly blue light with just enough red orange and yellow to trick people into thinking the light is 'white'.

I emailed Daniel Stern a few years ago and asked, essentially, 'why aren't auto manufacturers putting safe lights on their cars?' The essence of his reply was that the automotive engineers still know how to design safe headlights, but there were other considerations in play. I took this to mean that the marketing department told the engineers, "cars with safe headlights don't sell anymore, so you need to design headlights with blue-white LEDs." Daniel's response also helped me realize that the worst of the headlights on the road in 2017 were LED retrofits, where people bought LEDs to replace the halogen bulbs their vehicle's headlights were designed to use.

The shift to unsafe lights started in the 80's or 90's, when luxury brands started putting High Intensity Discharge lights on their vehicles. These lights have more blue light than the old incandescent and halogen headlights. Headlights with more blue became associated with more expensive cars, even though blue light is terrible for humans at night.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_discharge_lamp

Daniel has a webpage about how France used to require yellow headlights: https://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech/lights/light_color/...

The rest of Europe didn't require yellow headlights, and there was a problem of having to put cadmium in the glass, so France got rid of their requirement.

I submitted an AskHN a few years ago, but it didn't get much traction: Ask HN: What prevents the automotive industry from using safe LEDs? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27334405

In 2020 I sat down to think about why blue light at night is so terrible, and sort of figured it out.

I use yellow glasses for driving at night, and low-blue bulbs (amber and orange bulbs, and a dimmer switch on halogen bulbs) for lighting inside at night.

Interesting information on your links. There are some local businesses that have hazardous amounts of blue lights, so I might get some of these orange glasses. Commenting here as a bookmark. :)

Albertsons/Safeway was purchased by private equity [0]. They used the terms of the merger to 'cash out' - my understanding was the PE firm has already drained Albertsons' cash reserve.

Checking on the twitter, apparently they're using what cash Albertsons has left to do a share buyback, and are going to sue Kroger [1] for sabotaging the merger by not addressing the regulators' concerns.

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-19/cerberus-...

[1] https://www.albertsonscompanies.com/newsroom/press-releases/...

My understanding is the RDA is the bare minimum to avoid obvious symptoms of deficiency, and that everyone does better with 500 to 1000mcg. I think there's a case to be made for being cautious about getting too much supplemental iodine - I've read reports on /r/iodineprotocol of people who started taking mega-doses and aren't doing so well.

I take 400-600mcg of iodine every other day. This is 2-3 drops in water. The carrier is ethanol. Pure iodine doesn't dissolve in water, so the drops become a cloud when dispensed into water.

What kinds of magnesium and iodine did you use? Do you live in a goiter belt?

1mg == 1000 micrograms. RDA for iodine is about 150mcg for teens and adults, 220mcg for pregnant women and 290mcg for lactating women. I think the Japanese diets contain 1000-3000mcg (1-3mg).

Smallpox was able to be eradicated because it’s a disease that people only get once, and which does not have an animal reservoire.

The smallpox vaccine was intradermal, rather than intramuscular. Resistance to inoculation was reduced because it was just a scratch, rather than an injection.

The elimination project concentrated its efforts on outbreaks. Dr. William H. Foege developed a “ring vaccination” strategy to target vaccination around outbreaks rather than mass vaccination.

My dad lost 2 new sets of spark plug wires to pack rats. He switched to a brand that didn’t taste like peanuts.

Lost an antilock brake sensor recently. We bought a rid-a-rat (flashing light that makes the area seem unsafe), but that only protected half the engine bay, so I put a light bulb on an extension cord on the other side and put it on a timer.

[0] https://www.ridarat.com/

US Navy Admiral Hyman G. Rickover was said to have observed, "There are only two kinds of ships: submarines and targets".

In the modern era of low-cost drones and missiles, all surface ships are sitting ducks. The US Navy has missiles to shoot down aircraft and missiles, but these were designed to shoot down expensive Soviet aircraft. I think these missiles cost $1-2million each. A modern inexpensive attack drone goes for <$10,000.

A $2M missile vs. a $2,000 drone: Pentagon worried over cost of Houthi attacks - https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/19/missile-drone-penta...

Warships that can deploy helicopters are still useful for disaster response: When Disaster Strikes, Send the Enterprise: https://sendtheenterprise.org/

Edit: "According to the U.S. Navy, the Dwight D. Eisenhower carrier strike group expended 155 surface-to-air missiles, 135 land-attack cruise missiles, nearly 60 air-to-air missiles and 420 air-to-surface weapons during what it called a "historic" combat deployment." - US Aircraft Carrier's Near Miss With Missile Fired by Middle East Rebels, https://www.newsweek.com/us-news-aircraft-carrier-missile-fi...

McDonald's was bullied into changing its fryer oil by Phil Sokolof [0], who himself was tricked into believing his 1966 heart attack was caused by saturated fat. This article says Sokolof paid for ads to bully McDonalds in 1988: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-01-22-op-1193-s...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Sokolof

I said McDonald's was 'tricked' in ~1990 into switching to vegetable oil. This was trickery both because the fries became less healthy (Omega-6 oils are inflammatory, etc), and less tasty. Malcolm Gladwell's podcast McDonald's Broke My Heart is about how the fryer oil switch made McDonald's fries soggy: https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/mcdonald...

The 2002 article you linked to is about how vegetarians believed the switch to using seed oils as the fryer oil made McDonald's french fries compatible with their dietary philosophy. Those lawsuits were in the late 1990's or early 2000's, which was well after the 1990/1992 fryer oil switch.

Thanks for bringing up the early 2000's lawsuit against McDonald's by vegetarians - I was not aware of that. My point was that Ancel Keys' holy war against saturated Fat was an important part of the cascade of science-mistakes that resulted in the obesity epidemic which took off around 1980 (weight started inching up in the "post WWII" period, but didn't take off until ~1980).

Beef tallow was standard practice for fryers, until it was mostly replaced with “vegetable oil”.

> vegetarians or people who don’t eat beef were mad.

I think you’re referring to the vegetarian who sued Buffalo Wild Wings for still using beef tallow in their fryers, even after the restaurant industry had mostly switched to industrial seed oils.

https://www.drovers.com/news/vegetarians-lawsuit-over-beef-t...

> It did not stem the tide against the rise in obesity, which began in the 70s, largely due to the explosive growth of cheap fast food and junk food, lobbying, and a lack of education around food and health.

There was a series of science-mistakes that cascaded into the obesity epidemic. Ancel Keys kicked off the chain by slandering saturated fat.

I think there was a protective factor in the food supply that was reduced in the latter half of the 1970’s. Around 1990 McDonald’s was tricked into replacing their saturated frying oil with polyunsaturated oil...

Ruminants can eat things that humans cannot eat or should not eat. Bacteria in the ruminant stomach can bio-hydrogenate the unsaturated oils in their feed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38437204

Dairy cows are an efficient means of converting calories into a form that humans can use.

Thanks for the youtube channel link.

Read yesterday that one strategy for getting rid of a timeshare is to make sure it’s in the name of the old person who owns it. After they die the probate administrator sends a letter to the timeshare company, ‘no one wanted to take over this contractual obligation, so we’re returning it to you.’

https://tugbbs.com/forums/threads/diamond-owners-both-deceas...

My HN comment, linked to as [0], was on a submission about the history of NovaMin - iirc it was originally used for soldiers in Vietnam, then came to be used for repair of teeth.

You can do your own experiment: $10 for a tube, plus $6 shipping. If you have sensitive teeth it’s worth a trial.

I learned about Novamin a few years ago [0], and ordered BioMin Restore [1] to give it a try. I'm now a devoted customer. There are other Novamin/hydroxyapatite toothpastes, but I only have experience with this one brand.

I think this company's latest news is the version of their toothpaste that has fluoride [2] is now FDA-approved for sensitive teeth, so they're going to be able to sell it in the United States specifically labeled to help with sensitive teeth. If you live in Canada or the UK [3], it looks like you can order this now.

Just noticed a blog post on the UK site: Why you shouldn’t over-prescribe fluoride to your patients - https://biomin.co.uk/news/article/why-you-shouldnt-over-pres...

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26669660

[1] https://drcollins.com/collections/toothpaste/products/biomin...

[2] https://biomintoothpaste.com/

[3] https://www.biomin-toothpaste.com/products/biomin-f-75-ml / https://biomin.co.uk/

> M-Discs have solved it.

I have an M-Disc writer and some M-Disc DVDs, so I took note of this submission ~2 years ago:

PSA: Verbatim no longer sells real M Discs, now puts regular BD-Rs in M Disc packaging - https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/yu4j1u/psa_ver... / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33593967

I had some more R134a added to my car recently. The mechanic said when he had his shop, he would have completely evacuated the system to measure how many ounces of refrigerant were still in the system. He also said the old R12 systems were less leaky than R134a. R12 was phased out because of the ozone layer.

I think refrigerator and AC repair companies are required to capture and recycle the refrigerant - they don’t seem to have the equipment to capture and measure refrigerant like auto mechanics.

R22 (phased out refrigerant for home AC) has chlorine in it, while R134a doesn’t have chlorine, making it easier on the ozone layer. R134a is being replaced with R1234yf.

The best refrigerant is CO2, but this has the greatest tendency to leak.

> But HVAC supply shops will sell them to you, you don’t need to be licensed or anything to buy them.

My local HVAC supplier doesn't sell to non-licensed people. I think they don't like dealing with returns from people who don't know what they're doing. I needed a 24vac transformer once. My dad used the same HVAC company for his office for a long time, they still remembered him, and had the part I needed in stock.

My brother's capacitor went out, but we found the part he needed at a local Grainger branch. https://www.grainger.com/category/motors/motor-capacitors

Two summers ago my AC didn't sound right. IIRC the outside unit was clicking on and off. I pulled the breaker. Eventually I decided the problem was with the contactor (a switch controlled by 24vac). I took pictures of where the wires were connected and pulled the contactor. For no particular reason I started taking the old contactor apart, and found a cricket in the middle. I removed the bug, cleaned out the cricket residue, put the contactor back together, and returned it to the outside unit. My AC system resumed working perfectly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contactor

I picked up a Honda snowblower for my dad's house this past winter. He shares a non-maintained road with his neighbors, and for the past few years I've helped them with shoveling. Dad always tried to do his part with clearing the snow, but wasn't able to shovel this year, so he opened his wallet.

In February I got a call from the snowblower shop that their first shipment of wheeled snowblowers had arrived. If I wanted to wait they were supposed to be getting a shipment with tracks. I measured the percent grade of our driveways and roads and decided we needed the tracked version.

Our snowblower arrived two days before a pair of back-to-back storms that dumped almost 2 feet of wet, heavy snow. It's a game changer. I asked the one neighbor, who'd said previously "the only snowblower I'd buy is a Honda" [1], what he thought as he was plodding along behind the new snowblower : "You didn't cheap out, and it's the right tool for the job."

The other neighbor was out shoveling around their car, to hopefully be able to get out for her daughter-in-law's surgery. We blasted through the steep part of her driveway. I got a text message that night: 'where did you get that thing?'

The advantage of Honda's tracked snowblower over their wheeled version is that there's a lever-operated piston that adjusts the height, while the wheeled version has no adjustment.

Over those two storms, we probably would have spent at least 12 hours shoveling (breaks included). The snowblower cleared the road in an hour.

As someone says below, it's important to drain the gasoline at the end of the winter, so it doesn't gum up over the summer. Even if there was a battery-powered two-stage snowblower, why would anyone get one? It'd be a waste of lithium.

Edit: When my mom & her husband moved to Flagstaff, their first two-stage snowblower was whatever Costco had for sale that winter. It worked for a few years, then threw a rod through the block on a particularly heavy storm. He returned the unit to Costco, read up on snowblowers, bought himself a big Ariens, and was completely happy with it.

His Ariens used a motor from Tecumseh. Tecumseh went bankrupt around 2008 and got split up [2]. Somewhere I read that Tecumseh's engine manufacturing was relocated to China, and that all the post-2009 Ariens use Chinese engines. Someone said the Chinese Tecumseh engines aren't so bad, because they got all the IP about how to make them properly. Or maybe Tecumseh's engine design was obsolete, needed to be redesigned to comply with emission regulations, and the new Chinese Tecumseh engines are better. ???

Harbor Freight sells knock-off Honda engines, as their Predator engines. There are some youtube videos that compare genuine Honda engines to the knock-offs.

Edit2: Found some forum posts that tells of how Honda's approach to manufacturing engines has changed over the years [3].

[1] https://powerequipment.honda.com/snowblowers / https://www.reddit.com/r/HondaSnowblowers/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tecumseh_Products#Gasoline_eng... / https://www.snowblowerforum.com/threads/made-in-the-usa-vers...

[3] https://www.snowblowerforum.com/posts/1733694/ / https://www.snowblowerforum.com/posts/1733738/

I salvaged some dandelion roots from one of my beds. They're currently bunched together in a plastic pot - I ought to find a place to put them. Dandelions are easy to grow because they grow themselves back from the roots every spring. Dandelion broth is simple to make: chop up the greens, boil them for an hour, then strain the fiber.

Dandelion nutrients: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/169226/n...

A magnesium supplement is easy to make with carbonated water and magnesium hydroxide. Purebulk sells powdered magnesium hydroxide, otherwise every grocery store sells this as a liquid laxative in the pharmacy. This pdf has the directions: https://www.afibbers.org/Wallerwater.pdf

The building was separated from the land. The new "owners" have to pay a land lease.

My grandparents bought the lot next to their house. A business leased the land from them to build a business, then walked away from their building after 10 or 20 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lease#Leases_of_land

Hypers have to hype to sell things (in this case, red LEDs), but the best photobiomodulation is available for free: go outside, close your eyes, and point your face at the sun. Your eyelids will screen out the harmful UV and blue light. Your eyes are transparent enough for the red light to reach your brain.

Red light boosts our metabolism by refreshing the enzyme that has the red metal (copper). Cytochrome c oxidase [0] is "the last enzyme in the respiratory electron transport chain".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytochrome_c_oxidase

A submission from 1.5 years ago is about how morning exposure to deep red light improves eyesight: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34609625

People who live in places where the sun goes away for the winter usually benefit from supplemental light provided by an electric sun. Incandescent heat lamp bulbs are an affordable source of red and infrared light. These bulbs have more of the red spectrum and less of the blue.

From the submission:

> PBM is thought to work through the mitochondria. Our cells—and those of animals, plants and fungi—contain tiny structures called mitochondria that generate the energy we need. Mitochondria have a chain of proteins that juggle electrons, and one of them, cytochrome c oxidase, contains heme and copper that absorb light, especially in the red and infrared part of the light spectrum. So, we shine one such light on living tissue, it gets absorbed by mitochondria’s cytochrome c oxidase, and what we get is a veritable biological domino effect that seemingly benefits every part of the organism.

Acetaminophen and ibuprofen are said to both have pro-inflammatory properties. My understanding is aspirin is basically safe, and naproxen (Aleve) is not terrible.