Agreed. I was in a number of ska bands throughout the nineties, but they all wanted to be third wave. I vastly preferred the sound and energy of first wave.

Don't forget zipper merging. I lived in an area where hundreds of hours spent commuting allowed me to observe the inability to merge was the primary driver of freeway congestion.

Compared to the US 1990s to early 2000s ska revival skanking.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O4260OyOjd4

He died of colon cancer. I can practically guarantee it was.

I'm sadly allergic to alliums. Onions, garlic, shallots: you name it, it wrecks my guts. The massive downside, beyond how they're in everything, is my partner stopped eating them too and couldn't stand them except in small amounts. They lost their tolerance for the flavor, so anything with a normal amount of onions tasted overpowering. I experience the same, so at least I immediately know if something has alliums in it.

I think my point didn't come across. I wasn't making a case that they're not evil, but instead that it's not pointless evil.

There are a lot of "they're fighting regulation just to hurt and kill people" type comments. That's not true as there's no gain in doing so. These types of politicians exist to maximize the gain of their corporate donors, so they'd be wasting time and irritating their handlers.

They're fighting heat regulations to save their donors a ton of money, and I outline why, how, and how the current system benefits them. They're evil, or more specifically heartless sociopaths, because they fight regulation despite knowing this will lead to easily prevented injuries and deaths.

There are many outrage responses here, e.g., because they're evil. The outrage is understandable, but simply ascribing this to evil isn't completely accurate or helpful beyond a little catharsis. There's logic to their actions, and they're making these choices because their donors value profit over the safety and quality of life of their employees. That's the evil. Let me explain the logic since it's one of my areas of expertise.

Tl;dr: complying with reasonable regulations would be more expensive, and that expense will increase as climate change accelerates. Public knowledge of workplace heat safety is generally poor, humans are extremely heat adaptable, and regulations are vague, allowing for significant employer abuse.

The Regulatory Landscape is a Desert
Pun intended. 

Federal OSHA regulations don't cover heat. Full stop. While OSHA has released guidance for working in high temperature conditions, it's entirely optional and unenforceable as no heat specific regulation exists. All enforcement falls under the General Duty Clause, which calls for employers to make a good-faith effort to provide a workplace free from recognized hazards that may cause death or serious injury. This vagueness is intended and actually beneficial as it acts as a catch-all for unregulated edge cases, but falls flat for more complex, consistent issues... like heat. This would be fine in a functional, rational government as the pertinent regulations would simply be added, but look where we're at. 2026. Yeah.

"Heat" is Complex
It often comes as a surprise to the sedantary American public, but humans handle working at high temperatures exceptionally well - more about that later. That same public is quite bad at understanding what constitutes "too hot" as the reality is complex. The best indicator is the wet-bulb globe temperature (WBGT), which accounts for air temperature, humidity, sun angle, cloud cover, air pressure, and wind, and can be adjusted for clothing/PPE type. Based on the intensity of work and environmental conditions, a crew could safely work at 110°F or more in one location but cap out at 75°F or less in another. 

Humans are Great with Heat
Humans are amongst the most heat adaptable animals on the planet. Reasonably physically fit people with appropriate clothing and PPE, unlimited cool water, a shaded or air conditioned rest area, two weeks of progressive acclimation, and sufficient rest breaks can perform 8-10 hour shifts doing even heavy physical labor in hot temperatures with a large safety margin of error. With the right PPE and controls (huge fuck off fans or, God forbid, AC), they can even be reasonably comfortable.

Companies Maximize Profit Based on Human Adaptability and Regulatory Insufficiency
Ideal safety regulations take into account the condition of the average worker, build in a significant margin of error, and plainly describe requirements. Employers would be held to a consistent standard based on metrics like WBGT, and as average WBGT increases, so would their expenses. Based on my industry experience, many employers are ignorant of industry best practices while others simply ignore them, so the cost to meet and maintain regulatory standards would be significant, particularly as the frequency of worker downtime should increase in conjunction with temperature - the thing that keeps going up every year.

In our current, barren regulatory landscape, some employers avoid expense by employee self-selection, where those unable to handle the literal heat quit, and relying on plausible deniability and pleading ignorance in the event of an incident. OSHA fines have historically been fairly low, infrequent due to the lack of clear, specific regulation, and are increasingly less common as OSHA continues to lose funding and staffing over time despite a growing workforce. The math usually works in the employer's favor: those prone to injury tend to quit, those who remain can typically be pushed without injury beyond the conditions regulations would enforce, and the costs of heat-related illness and possible fines are often much less than a comprehensive, effective, and humane heat mitigation program.

Your comment was the firstI have heard about KNF. As an eternally skeptical microbiologist, I suspected it to be similar to many "organic" farming methods, some of which isn't scientifically sound, but just gave it a quick review and it seems to be based on some solid principles. I'll be looking into it for my own garden. Thanks for the recommendation!

Many prescription medications are dead simple to produce, especially the latest biologics. I could make my own professionally and in quantity with only about $500k in startup costs.

I need to do chores today, so I instead used my procrastination energy here! It's the molar of a herbivore. Here's what I have:

Definitely not beaver. Beaver incisors are orange and shaped very differently and it's far too large to be a beaver premolar or molar. Wrong morphology anyhow - beaver pre/molars are plicated and this is not. It's also not from a muskrat based on all the same criteria but the plication.

It's definitely from a bovid, not from a caprid or equid. Equids tend to have these bizarre columnar molars, and caprid molars are too small and the wrong shape. Since you're in Germany, that leaves us with cows and European bison.

It's the first or second molar from one of those based on the two cusps; if it had three cusps, it'd be the third molar. What clinches it is the asymmetrical gap in the roots (called a furcation area). Cows have a gap right in the middle of their first and second molars, whereas bison have an off-center gap in their first molar.

Congratulations, you have a bison M1!

Cow X-ray

Bison X-ray

I got fired for this! Even though it was my lunch break, I was off the clock, and I have a chronic illness that makes working an 8-10 hour day exhausting, I was fired since I was "setting a bad example for the junior staff".

Guess who got an EEOC/disability settlement.

It depends - are their arms broken?

Defend the homeland? That's some Nazi shit.

And wait for an answer. Don't just knock then immediately walk in. I'm nearly fifty and I'm still traumatized by this.

Habitual consumption of even small amounts of processed meat, sugary drinks, and trans fatty acids...

Followed by

The data showed that people who ate as little as one hot dog a day ...

As little as one hot dog a day? I eat like one every few months. How many hot dogs is the average American eating daily?

Supply-side Jesus is the worst Jesus.

I know it'll never happen, I hope she wins and the court awards her one round each in the ring with each of these assholes.

Archive link: https://archive.ph/zRsPM

I'll save you a few minutes: this "never Trumper" Republican flipped to pro-Trump because he thinks his positive reinforcement might temper some of Trump's bad behavior. I wish I was kidding.

Tinfoil hat time: with the police looking increasingly incompetent with no suspect or leads, the first person apprehended who vaguely resembles the shooter is provided with a free ghost gun, fake ID, and manifesto. It's all just too "slam dunk" perfect for me to not question it.