ArtieShaw

My husband had a weird job many years ago doing this very thing. He worked (via a temp agency) for the federal government. They reviewed hospital billings for their agency’s workers and send mildly threatening letters if they charged $12,000 for a procedure that averaged $5,000.

It had some success, but some states had outright outlawed this sort of thing. Texas.

Not a doctor, but I’m interested in the subject. I think the current consensus is “yes and no.”

200 years ago, people may have answered yes. Thirty years ago it was popular to discount the idea entirely because germs are what make you sick. Can’t deny that.

Lately I’ve been hearing some acknowledgement that a stress to your body may make you more susceptible or less able to fight off an infection. The wiki article includes a recent study that pointed to poor sewage treatment near the White House in Harrison’s day. For whatever reason WHH wasn’t able to fight that off but the rest of the residents seemingly were.

People have been making the connection of “he stood outside for hours in the snow and drizzle, then caught the dropsy and died” for centuries. I don’t think they lacked for sense or couldn’t make the obvious connection between exposure and sickness. I do think they lacked for microscopes.

Hoping for another Wm. Henry Harrison?

When Harrison came to Washington, he wanted to show that he was still the steadfast hero of Tippecanoe… He took the oath of office on Thursday, March 4, 1841, a cold and wet day.[104] He braved the chilly weather and chose not to wear an overcoat or a hat, rode on horseback to the grand ceremony, and then delivered the longest inaugural address in American history

In the evening of Saturday, April 3, Harrison developed severe diarrhea and became delirious, and at 8:30 p.m. he uttered his last words…

The prevailing theory at the time was that his illness had been caused by the bad weather at his inauguration three weeks earlier.

Things one learns in high school.

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

That was how I was assuming the rationale went. You do see ocean going vessels on the Great Lakes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Lawrence_Seaway

And I think that’s how everyone wound up with the zebra mussels. (Bilge discharge from those ships)

Yeah - it seemed pretty normal for a Parker Bros game from the 70s to come with a couple of inserts that advertised their other games. I want to say the same thing about NES cartridges.

I would guess that this expensive looking piece of probably custom made glassware is used with some highly reactive chemicals where you wouldn’t want to open it up to the atmosphere to add reagents. I could imagine a reflux condenser in the middle. The surrounding ports would each serve a specific purpose.

So - Here’s an imaginary setup: You fill the main chamber with a solvent and maybe some boiling beads and a stir bar. One or more of the ports could be rigged up to include a thermometer or other probe. A sampling probe might be handy, for example. You’d start it up and add one or two liquid reagents via addition funnels connected to other ports. Let it run for however long, then either add the quenching agent or additional reagents.

This suggests that this is a well established (if small scale) process because there’d be no intermediate purification step.

Two and three necked versions of these are pretty common. This vessel is batshit, though. This also leads me to an alternate theory. Similar to one proposal for the roman dodecahedrons, this could be a glassblower’s master thesis.

Classic. A little googling will turn up gold for sugar free gummi effects

A lot of scientists sample the wares. It had to be explicitly banned at my workplace. “Organoleptic testing” was how they put it. There were several incidents, but the one with polyols was extra. (Sugar-free gummi bears will give you the gist of it. Link below) They just get bored and stupid. They’ll check the LD50 (if known), then go to town if it’s tasty enough.

https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonreviews/comments/11otwx0/the_horror_that_is_haribo_sugarfree_gummi_bears/

Night trains are amazing. It’s basically a mobile hotel room that’s a little cramped, but spits you out in another country at 7:00am.

You may be woken by someone yelling something in Romanian at 2:00am when the train stops. And you may be woken for passport control at 3:00am, so try not to be naked when that happens. (Lessons learned)

Some snacks, a bottle of wine, and a good time. Night train!

Right? I think that gave him a reverse Uno card of some kind. Hmmm. That did seem to smooth over some things.

True - and I think that drove a lot of his early popularity. His entire head is unfortunate and his name seems like a cruel joke. He embraced nerd things that are relative to my interests. Basic empathy and compassion kick in when you see something like that. From a first impression, he just seemed to have been dealt poor hand in life.

Then he started talking. Damn.

I honestly can’t let this older one go. But no one seems to be talking about it lately.

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

https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1862257_1862325_1862324,00.html

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-shadow-of-marc-rich

Right. In that episode, Pakleds were snaring the Samaritans. Basically grifting their way through the universe by taking advantage of good Samaritans. OP is still not quite nailing it.

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

I heard a version of this sentiment in 2016. I was sitting near a well-dressed elderly couple at the regional airport. The woman was on her phone, explaining her support for Trump. I’ll paraphrase.

“He knows so many rich people! He’ll appoint them to the government, and they won’t steal from it because they’ve already got so much money they won’t want to.”

I disagree with that statement for so many reasons, but that’s what she expressed. This opinion was boggling enough at the time that it stuck with me almost ten years later.

Back when I had dreams and aspirations, I had a working title for a book called “Universal Solvent, My Ass.” It would have been fun.

That’s an odd question without an easy answer. And the question is vague enough that it probably doesn’t warrant a serious answer.

“Small pharma” plays many roles. One of the most basic is working with “big pharma,” whether in research or manufacturing commercial products.

But I’m going on 30 years on the scientific side of this business, so I’m trying to avoid going into a whole spiel on the topic.

Right? Round isn’t what I’d think to call “a funny shape.” Maybe some folks do though.

Right? Is that part of the belt, or is it a belt adjacent accessory?

It is. And coins are small enough and common enough to be found/stolen/bought and easily carried off as loot.

Plenty of ancient coins were “re-distributed” to the west in the last 20 years from Afghanistan and Iraq. I knew a guy from work who had a small collection he bought while serving.

I also happened to be visiting a local coin shop and overheard an unintentionally funny conversation about loot.

Rando: I have a <lowers voice> ‘German flag’ that I’m interested in selling. Clerk: Those are pretty common, so we probably can’t give you much. Rando: It’s an OLD <lowers voice> ‘German flag’. Clerk: Look, I’m guessing it’s the Nazi one? Those are super common because every soldier brought one back as a souvenir.

If it’s not already apparent, I like coins. And if I were a common soldier wrapped up in a war, I would absolutely pick up any interesting spare change I came across. Wouldn’t murder anyone for it, but if it looked abandoned? Absolutely.

“Earthy” if you will.