cynar

Give it a couple of grenades, and let it go out in glory!

I know, first hand, how strong the illusion is, that depression causes. It's like having a mountain poised to avalanche down on you. You just want to escape, even if it's via extreme means.

The key is that it is still an illusion. It's a paper tiger, once you get a handle to fight it, it dissolves like mist. Most people who attempt suicide, due to mental health, are not dealing with a steady chronic condition. They are at a crisis point. If they receive appropriate help, clawing their way back is perfectly possible for most.

There are exceptions, but they are quite rare. I would bundle them with terminal illness, though proving that is a lot harder. It's also a balancing act between being OK with dying, and being of sound mind to make that decision.

No, there's obviously a veteran, paid as little as possible, to put the strings on and stuck a "made in the USA" sticker on! It's creating domestic jobs! (/s)

Many places make it illegal to allow police to intercede. In most places, the police can intervene if they believe a crime is about to be committed.

There is a huge line between someone who is terminally ill, and wants to die on their own terms, and someone having a mental health crisis. The first should be legal, but still needs support and checking, the 2nd need immediate help.

You joke, but this was legitimate concerns raised in many places, when slavery was abolished. It was often phased out slowly to allow businesses to adapt.

It's at least better than nothing, but far from perfect.

"No-one is the villan of their own story."

They think they are doing more good than harm. It's fucked up, but it's still helpful to understand how they view the world. It makes it easier to predict and counter them.

To them, it's like you threatening to beat up the local priest, while on the way to a major aid drive, because he parked wrongly. They are stepping into stop you interrupting the Lords work! Of course they will be rewarded for that!

That's also just the electrical portion of our mind. There are whole levels of chemical, and chemical potentials at work. Neurones will fire differently depending on the chemical soup around them. Most of our moods are chemically based. E.g. adrenaline and testosterone making us more aggressive.

Our mind also extends out of our heads. Organ transplant recipricants have noted personality changes. Food preferences being the most prevailant.

The neurons only deal with 'fast' thinking. 'slow' thinking is far more complex and distributed.

The explosive often wasn't enough to damage a full steam engine. What it could do was terrorise the crew and guards. The ones I heard about didn't have a detonator. The guards had a habit of burning dead rats to get rid of them. Often in the fireplace of the guard shack. The goal was to throw fire and hot metal into the guards gathered around to stay warm.

The other advantage of a rat is that most guards wouldn't look too closely at it. Someone with lumps of coal might have them looked at, if they are caught. They are stealing coal, after all. Someone hunting rats, for food, the other hand? Poor and disgusting, get out of here and take the damn rats! You have an excuse to be there (other than sabotage) and nothing they will want back.

If your pads are lifting, you're overheating the board.

A couple of tips that can help a lot.

Don't underestimate the importance of flux. Cheap boards often have a lot of crap on the copper. Flux burns this off, allowing for quicker, better joints. Most solders have flux in them, some more than others. Beyond that, you can also buy rosin flux very cheaply. It's amazing for cleaning up particularly bad, or sensitive, components.

Have confidence when heating. Most newbies tend to 'dab'. They are scared to overheat the component or board, and so try to add a little heat at a time. This is actually FAR worse for heat. The heat spreads out into the components and glue, causing problems. Instead, you apply heat once. The iron stays in place until the joint forms. If you back off, you need to wait a few minutes until everything is completely cool to the touch. No tap-tap-taping.

The last point of note is to check your lighting. Most beginners struggle to actually see what they are doing. In low light, our pupils open up, to allow more in. This reduces our depth of field, and makes it harder to focus clearly. You want daylight levels of light on your workpiece. There are several apps that let you measure light levels. You might be shocked at how low it is. Multiple directional lights are the best option. You want it focused to maximise brightness, but multi source to avoid harsh shadows.

You might have figured out most of these, but hopefully, some of it will be of help.

They came for the trans ~~and I did nothing, because I am not trans ~~ and I fought back where I could. Because fuck that shit, we know there this dance will end otherwise!

It works well enough here. It's bigger than a microgram, and smaller than a kilogram. With the numbers we are working with, being within several orders of magnitude would be an impressive answer.

The boltzmann brain hypothesis. Given enough time, a spontaneous brain, identical to yours, will form. It will experience for a short period before dying (nothing says it needs to be on a planet, or even in a body).

The weirdness of true infinities.