Oh, I’m into hucows, lol. I’m just also autistic

Not if you’re stealing it. I almost went down a whole rabbit hole allegory, but I actually think that’s pretty clear. They didn’t consent to giving milk to you, just like the cow does want to give milk (at least at first), just not to the farmer.

Maybe that’s why they’re so bumbling :(

Oh yeah, I was a worrier before working exclusively with people who got the worst result from the dangers constantly around us, but I try not to let it spiral.

I also used to be a smoker, which weirdly makes it easier to dismiss worrying about other things.

Yeah, that’s absolutely fair. It was fully banned in the EU in 2005, which is still way too late, but much better. Several individual countries had banned it earlier, but I don’t know how many or how effective that actually is in the single market.

I was handling all types of latent claims with long term exposures which aren’t exclusively toxin based, but it was mostly environmental/workplace poisoning, like lead paint, asbestos, printing chemicals, or radiation. One of the things I realized is that we’re either all fucked, or we’re more resilient than we expect, because most of us have a lot more casual contact with serious carcinogens than we think we do.

I try to lean towards the latter while still taking appropriate precautions, but none of us gets out alive. If I loved working on old cars, I’d probably do it despite the risks (but I’d definitely do a wet clean with as fine a mask as I could find and a disposable smock, then I’d immediately shower and get rid of my rags afterwards), because I think it’s better to use your time in a way that makes you happy than preserve a life that doesn’t fulfill you.

Anyway, that got very off track from the original diversion, but it was a fun chat. And now I’m going to throw a pair of dishwashing gloves in my trunk.

I’m sorry to tell you this, but asbestos was banned in brake pads in the US in 2024. There were restrictions in the type and processing of asbestos in the 80s, and most manufacturers stopped in the 90s, but it’s definitely still out there, especially if you’re working on a classic car, a junker that someone chose the cheapest parts for, or any kind of industrial vehicle (the last one isn’t likely for non mechanics, but most people I know who work on their own cars are working on one of the first two).

That said, I don’t think a few exposures over a lifetime are likely to cause mesothelioma. I hesitate to even say that, because it could happen with one fiber, but the vast majority of people who develop mesothelioma had multiple exposures, either very early on (eg. children of mechanics who did the laundry every other day for years), along with comorbidities (smoking, drinking, using a wood/peat stove, etc.), or on a daily basis for years and years.

I’m not saying that it’s not a danger or that you shouldn’t treat it very, very carefully (almost as delicately as you’d handle an open vial of fluorine), but I do always wonder if it would be better for everyone to do themselves it every couple of years instead of giving all of the risk to mechanics. They should have better PPE and knowledge about how to handle it than lay people, but A) we won’t really know if the PPE was effective until people have been using it for forty years and then do or don’t develop mesothelioma, and B) there is unfortunately a lot of pressure on people, from both peers and employers, not to advocate for best practices and sufficient PPE, which, along with a culture of machismo in many trades, means that people aren’t actually as protected or careful about disposal as the industry reports that they are.

But then again, given that these are brakes we’re talking about, I absolutely don’t want lay people fucking up their brakes and endangering everyone. The best solution imo would for 60+ year old mechanics to volunteer to do it (or even for the government to create a program for retired mechanics to work one day a week part time for as long as they’re capable/willing without any impact on their retirement benefits/social security). It takes several decades to manifest, so they’re almost certainly to die of something else first.

Nah, I have a very low tolerance for a patronizing tone, but a pretty high one for being ignored, and the language barrier makes me seem even less knowledgeable, so it’s a recipe for condescension if I’m the primary communicator. My husband would love it if I let loose on them in English, but that feels like giving up a little.

We just laugh at them together afterwards and if they’re too awful, we find a new place.

Yeah, I’ve helped others with brake jobs, and it’s no fun. That and my experience with handling asbestos claims are also probably pretty big factors

I’m not that into or familiar with cars, but I can do what I consider the basics: replacing lightbulbs/wipers, changing oil, changing tires, jumping/replacing a battery, etc. I moved to a new country with a different language, where very few people do their own auto work.

I’m a woman who doesn’t know any of the vernacular for mechanical issues, and so they just completely ignore me. My husband seems like he might be into cars, but he was astonished when I changed his headlight for him while we were dating. Now we just go together. They only talk to him, but I make the decisions (he used to pay €200 for the headlight replacement, which he considers normal and which I find profoundly overpriced- I won’t do my own brakes, because I don’t want my last thought to be about how I shouldn’t have done my own brakes, but it’s very easy to figure out if you did the light right).

Oh, that’s some old school antisemitism :(

Not your comments, others on the post.

How many billionaires you know who got arrested for holding up a 7/11? Checkmate atheists

Well, yes. This affects the whole world though.

Not just for chipmakers, but for mris

The woman’s DNA is not involved. Women are born with all the eggs they’ll ever have. By the time a girl enters puberty, her eggs have already degraded to a degree before it was even possible to use them, because that’s just how things work. That doesn’t mean she’s somehow past her prime before puberty even starts.

You won’t be considered geriatric for about forty years. You might have a geriatric pregnancy, but that’s just the terminology. Like how an eighty year old can have juvenile diabetes, it doesn’t mean they’re a juvenile.

You probably haven’t yet reached your mental prime yet, but yes, you might be at a disadvantage sprinting against a 22 year old at the same activity level. That’s only really relevant at the highest levels of athletics though, and you can still be healthier than you were in your twenties.

I’m older than you are, and my sisters are more than a decade older than you are and none of us is experiencing this. None of our doctors (in three very different areas) prepared us for this. If it were normal, even if we didn’t personally experience it, wouldn’t our doctors warn us about it? All of the women in this thread are telling you that they didn’t have anything like this, isn’t that something to consider?

You might not have anything that is showing up on a test you’ve had done so far, but isn’t it worth looking further into whether you could have normal energy levels?

Even if they don’t find anything wrong, making your doctor understand that you’re not experiencing a normal level of fatigue might let them help you. I had a carpool buddy with idiopathic narcolepsy, which just means they don’t know what causes it. He was prescribed stimulants and worked with his doctor to figure out lifestyle adjustments that helped (like carpooling, so he could drive while alert in the morning, but didn’t endanger himself in the afternoon. He’s the only person I’ve ever seen be so tired that he sounded drunk while sober after a full night of sleep.

When I do that, I try to vote on both comments, so the other person doesn’t get that association.

That’s because those foods are made with distilled food colorings that are designed to be as tasteless as possible.

The colors in fruits and vegetables often reflect their vitamin content/taste.

There are dozens of us… DOZENS

The …poopoo hole?

Think about how awful covid was, even for a lot of people who didn’t get seriously ill. Now imagine if we knew nothing about where it came from or how to prevent or heal it, and nobody, absolutely nobody could reliably give any insight.

Then it lasts for seven years, nearly halving the population, before coming back seven years after that. In a place where seven is a religiously significant number.

I would have gone fucking nuts too.