This is so wrong. The council claims to have offered everyone somewhere to go, but often they want to place people hours away from everyone they know, or split families up with the father in one shelter 45 minutes by car away.

With few trains and a ridiculous non-linear bus route system that takes “efficient” wandering routes, this 45 minutes is easily an hour and a half or more.

We live near a major bus interchange and our daughters are going to uni in the city. It is 20 minutes by car, and 56 minutes by bus. It would take 3-4 hours of the day for this family to visit wherever they have been placed. While trying to get their life together?

Criminalising homelessness is yet another step on the road to becoming more like America. I should know - I grew up there and this whole situation makes my blood run cold, because it’s what I left 10 years ago.

This article is feeling kind of clickbaitish, as the sources are … odd.

However, restricting blood flow to the brain can also have serious health implications.

While not all pressure on the neck will be fatal, research shows even relatively low pressure can cause death by strangulation.

The first source is a medical journal describing the physiology of the arteries in the neck, and does not seem to include anything about restricting blood flow (never mind temporarily) having serious health consequences.

The second source is a book from 1991 about autoerotic asphyxiation with the quote:

autoerotic asphyxia denotes death resulting from failure of a release mechanism of the device, apparatus or prop designed to attain cerebral hypoxia for heightened arousal.

Which is … not the same as doing this with someone, and doesn’t address the risks of a partner who releases pressure immediately after a loss of consciousness.

The issues around consent are troubling indeed, consent should always be paramount.

I also found it amusing that the beginning of the article said

Although rare, strangulation is the leading cause of death in consensual BDSM play.

Which links to a study that found a total of 16 cases that included strangulation between 1982 and 2020. Rare indeed.

My husband and I dabble in breath play, so I was curious and read a few studies myself. It seems that every case study I could find included atypical circumstances. Things like accidental hanging, or asphyxiation due to bags etc being over the head.

This paper includes a 50 year review of cases for anyone interested. https://benthamopen.com/contents/pdf/TOFORSJ/TOFORSJ-1-1.pdf

It is also worth noting that loss of consciousness due to cutting off blood flow to the brain (cerebral hypoxia) is not dissimilar to the hypoxia experienced by pilots, who even train with repeated exposure to hypoxia in hyperbaric chambers.

I would be curious to know if there were any studies of the long term effects of this on pilots. (My dive into the rabbit hole is done for the day, lol.)

For anyone in a state without fluoridated water, you can get fluoride drops to put in your/your children’s water.

Want to see what happens when you do this?

https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/children-youth/childrens-headline-indicators/contents/indicator-7

Notice the two states with the highest rates of dental decay are Queensland and Northern Territory?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation_in_Australia

Yeah, those states didn’t get flouride in their water until around 2012.

Such a coincidence…

It’s also completely silly because many places have naturally fluoridated water!

The loyalty thing is what kept me.

I was wary of another gaming platform, there were so many and they all seemed the same, I never liked one over the other - they were just means to an end.

A few years back I really wanted to play RDR2 with my friends. It was expensive and I never pre-order, but as soon as it came out on (a small) sale I bought it for all 4 of us.

It was a lot of money for me, but I really wanted the story to play with everyone.

All was well at first, until we had each completed the tutorial and met up in open world. That’s when we learned that the game was based on GTA and the devs do not care about hackers.

We had one fucking with us for over an hour, teleporting us into the air and dropping us, setting us randomly on fire, spawning space ships and so on.

I begged in voice for them to just leave us be, to no avail.

We are all older, we rarely have time to play together. I was crushed.

I was an hour over the return time on Steam, one of the other friends took a bit longer exploring and was even more than that.

I contacted steam anyway and tried to get a refund, and they granted it for all of us.

Later I learned this was a thing in RDR2 and there was now the ability to create private lobbies, but I just can’t make myself try it and give Rockstar any money.

Steam however, won a lifelong fan. They didn’t have to honour the refund, and they don’t have to provide personal support that offers more than just the canned responses, but they do.

I hope Gabe lives forever, or finds another like him to carry the torch after he’s gone.

Signaling in the railway is how they know what trains are where and when. There are a few different types of signaling system, but destroying any part of it will bring everything to a halt until the problem is fixed.

If a signaling system were to be destroyed or disabled no one would need to physically stay there blocking trains only to be arrested.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_signalling

Good on them. For anyone considering the same: destroy the signaling systems.

People have commented that it’s crazy that I have completely disabled all updates on my win10 machine. This sort of thing is why.

Edit: I haven’t had a virus or malware since… I was a teenager. It seems like if you use an adblocker, don’t click links from unknown sources, and are aware of your network activity, you are pretty safe. The writing is on the wall, I am aware that I will need to switch to Linux soon, but I am also aware that Linux has compatibility issues with my particular machine and doesn’t work with certain activities I like to do. I am hoping these issues will be mostly sorted by the time I make the leap.