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Cake day: March 28th, 2024

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  • This is actually my field of work. The composite method queermunist is referencing is the industry best practice for exterior hazard labeling. NFPA diamonds don’t always or even often give first responders enough information to enter a building, so there’s no utility to multiple diamonds. Responders really don’t care how many chemicals are in a facility so much as what they are, and not many facilities actually using chemicals are set up in such a way that your example of encountering one chemical then another would work. They’re just everywhere, even during normal operations due to distributed storage and distribution systems.

    What these signs do is alert them to the degree of danger inside so they can make decisions, e.g., enter if just flammable, avoid water use, or (most common of all) to act as a reference to ask the building owner more questions before doing anything at all.


  • You have good instincts - that’s also what NFPA recommends. This isn’t a typical presentation as usually it’s one diamond with the worst score of all present chemicals in each category.

    You CAN list them individually but it’s a pain in the ass for both the building owner and first responders. The whole point is to quickly convey the level of hazards in the building for emergencies. They need to know if they need more information before entering. 2+ diamonds doesn’t provide any additional useful data and makes it harder to interpret in a rush.



  • Chlorine trifluoride! Nasty, NASTY shit. Guess which industry I worked in as safety!

    Edit: I remembered this quote about ClF3 from John D. Clark’s book “Ignition!” and wanted to share. For the non-scientists, hypergolic means it’ll ignite on contact with another substance without an outside energy source, like a spark.

    It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that’s the least of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water-with which it reacts explosively. It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals-steel, copper, aluminium, etc.-because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride which protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminium keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes.







  • Your comment nailed it. I just switched a couple of weeks back and it really wasn’t awful. There is a bit of a learning curve, mostly around setting up your system the way you want it, but there are so many good text and video tutorials available.

    Now I have a system that just works, has improved my laptop’s battery life by over 20% (the fan is no longer cranking the whole time it’s on), and actually has greater functionality than when I was on Windows without all the shit I don’t want.























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