j4k3

I was hit by a couple of SUV's in a crash while riding a bicycle to work 2/26/14. I have chronic spinal issues. I haven't really allowed hope to know me since 2017. A lot happened then. I kinda fell apart and had to come to terms with my limitations and disappointments from people I really needed to rely on. Hope became a destabilizing force; a danger I needed to protect myself from.

I've seen over a dozen neurosurgeons, and several pain management specialists. I've had physical therapy until I was broke. Never once did a doctor actually try to break down the problems or recommend someone who would. I complained about how I could be in tremendous pain just before a MRI but within a few minutes of lying flat, I felt fine. No MRI has ever shown anything major wrong with me. I even went as far as bribing the tech and radiologist with coffee shop gift cards and stuff to try and get them to take extra time and effort. Still nothing ever helped.

Today, I put on a corset thing for the first time. I haven't been able to turn my head left in over 10 years. As soon as I tightened this thing, I can turn my head left again and there is no restriction that I can feel. I haven't sat upright at a table in a straight chair in over 10 years, but I did so today. I was so elated about sitting there I wrote this stupid long reply to someone. I didn't know what to do with myself. Normally the pain would kick in and stop me, but I just kept going.

I'm laying in bed now out of habit and caution, but for the first time in many years I feel anxious about staying here, capable, like I could get up and do something without the punishment of major pain.

I feel like a scared abused animal nearly unable to move out of this mental space; to allow hope a place in my mind. I have no idea where this ultimately leads. My inner cynic wants to laugh at the ten years of my life wasted when all I needed was a simple brace; all those reputable doctors failing at something so fundamentally simple; that my own uneducated intuition eventually lead me here on my own.

I asked here when the idea to try this first crossed my mind. Y'all pushed me to try it. Thanks. I still hesitated for whatever reason, but now I'm trying it. I'm scared to even admit it, but this feels different, it feels like hope, and that is something I really needed.

A picture of the beach after sun down, light waves, sparse twilight clouds reflect an orange horizon chased by a lavender blue sky. In the distance a small rock jetty crosses the image faintly; origin unknown. Beyond, in the distant horizon, Catalina Island commands the Sol's interregnum in bronze silhouette.

chippy (plural chippies)

Noun

1. (UK, Ireland, Commonwealth, slang) A carpenter. [from 19th c.]
2. (slang, Western US) A prostitute or promiscuous woman. [from 19th c.]
3. (UK, Ireland, informal) A fish-and-chip shop. [from 20th c.] Synonym: chipper
4. (Australia, slang) The youngest member of a team or group, normally someone whose voice has not yet deepened, talking like a chipmunk.
5. (New Zealand) A potato chip.
6. (demoscene, informal) A chiptune.
7. (US) A chipping sparrow.
8. (slang) An occasional drug habit, less than addiction.

chippy (comparative chippier, superlative chippiest)

Adjective

1. (Canada, UK) Ill-tempered, disagreeable.
2. (Canada, sports) Involving violence or unfair play.
3. (of wood) Tending to form chips when cut, rather than larger, more usable pieces of wood.
4. (dated) As dry as a chip of wood.
5. (archaic) Feeling sick from drinking alcohol; hung over.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/chippy#English

This one is going to be ACTIVE. Hope I can keep up.

I was thinking about trying some sewing for headphone covers and a strap. I can easily disassemble the existing materials and reverse engineer them. I would rather try to learn parametric iterative design of textiles and alter the fit of the pads based on a pattern. Anyone have any experience with this application?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tHInlFfMcM

Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:19 What's inside a desiccant bag?
01:54 Sponsor
03:19 Clay desiccant
04:57 Indicating desiccant
06:53 The problem with desiccant
10:26 Get rid of your desiccant bags?
11:06 Drying desiccant
14:38 Drying in a microwave
16:40 How much energy does it use?
19:34 Drying the bags in a microwave
21:48 Do you damage your desiccant in the microwave?
23:18 Summary

I'm surprised Stephan did not mention that bentonite clay is commonly used for cat litter.

The participation seems way down recently. What did I miss?

pastiche

Noun

1. A work of art, drama, literature, music, or architecture that imitates the work of a previous artist, usually in a positive or neutral way. (Coordinate term: parody)
2. A musical medley, typically quoting other works.
3. An incongruous mixture; a hodgepodge.
4. A postmodern playwriting technique that fuses a variety of styles, genres, and story lines to create a new form.

Verb

1. To create or compose in a mixture of styles.

Etymology

• Via French pastiche, from Italian pasticcio (“pie, something blended”), from Vulgar Latin *pastīcius, from Late Latin pasta (“dough, pastry cake, paste”), from Ancient Greek παστά (pastá, “barley porridge”), from παστός (pastós, “sprinkled with salt”). Doublet of pasticcio.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pastiche

Etymology 1

• Learned borrowing from Latin cum (“with”).

Preposition

1. Used in indicating a thing or person which has two or more roles, functions, or natures, or a which has changed from one to another.

Etymology 3

Adjective

1. Clipping of cumulative.

Etymology 4

Noun

Abbreviation of cubic metre. (ex: The density of cement is 1440 kg/cum.)

For further definitions omitted see: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cum

Why this one? Because I used it in a joke and some apparently did not know the primary use as a preposition.

This is mostly intended as a question for people with severe chronic issues of a magnitude that significantly alter their function to the point of relying on others for basic needs. However, anyone is welcome to reply. From personal experience this type of pain is hard to describe and hard for others to understand, especially the psychological side.

So I'm asking because I really don't understand how cannabis works for anyone as pain relief. I have also been on most available opioids and they largely have no effect. They only impact my focus in such a way that I do not care about doing anything or about the pain. It is like they impact anxiety, but that does not do anything for the underlying physical issue. In some cases like tramadol, I get so disconnected from my typical self awareness that I could spiral into a dumber version of myself like being in a figurative pit I cannot escape.

Seriously, I use a few games and the times it takes me to complete harder levels to gage how pain or meds are impacting my cognitive function. Long term I use the scope, depth, and my project completion capabilities to gage if I am acting like myself long term. This is what has pulled me off of several meds long term; I simply was not myself in capabilities. The meds made me care less about the pain, but I am interested in a more productive life, not caring less about the thing that is ever present. The only drugs that made the pain go away are the kind that require constant monitoring in the Intensive Care Unit in a hospital.

Am I an outlier here; simply more self aware of the way pain treatments alter the mind and only indirectly impact the real issue? Does caring less satisfy your needs? Is anxiety a large part of your functional life?

I have several gel ice packs to throw out and would rather make use of them if possible. Some leak and others have been collected for various uses (chronic health related). Is the gel the same stuff used for plant seed starters or anything like that?

Sure, I could search the web and find lots of people selling ads with their impractical MacGyver anecdotes galore, but that says nothing about what is practical and worth actually doing versus conventional alternatives.

A shower thought after my PT ride today was: Let's assume biology is the ultimate final technology to master after a complete scientific understanding of biology, chemistry, and physics is achieved in a very distant future, (full elemental cycles balance becomes possible and ultimate energy efficiency).

So my thought was, could it be possible to create a biological thing by influencing the forces that could create the desired outcome in deep time? Is it possible to define an ecosystem in such a way that one can predict how it will evolve in stages? Like the ecosystems of the dinosaurs are thought to have been far less complex than the world of today. If one were to predict the path of increasing complexity, could one predict an outcome or at least a spectrum of possible outcomes?

What kind of culture would it take to plan on this kind of scale? Like, if you appreciate the technology of today, it was the product of designs someone started several centimillennia ago, so we take pride in the future creations we make possible centimillennia from now. I'm thinking the primary application would be to assess the spectrum of a distant world to then tailor a payload that would terraform a world, but other note niche applications may be possible

Probably another dumb question to ask here, but whatever. It is the kind of marble that gets lost in my brain. I just had this idea of nature as a really bad technologist that only exists on geologic time scales. What if we figured out how to do the same job but better.