Berttheduck

Everyone dies. Only certainty of life.

As part of my job in the hospital I often interact with dying people and their families. Palliative care - caring for people in the last period of their lives, in the UK focuses on patient experience and patient priorities. We generally aim for as pain free and as comfortable an end as possible and have medication which can usually make this a possibility.

The dying process for most people is a lot like falling asleep. They get more and more sleepy and spend less time awake. Eventually they go to sleep and the breathing starts changing with bigger gaps between breaths and eventually the breathing stops.

If it’s done well it’s a peaceful process with minimal pain and agitation.

If this is something you are concerned about it might be worth talking to your doctor about it. We have the RESPECT process in the UK which is a guided conversation about things important to the patient around the end of their life with medical recommendations for what is appropriate (not every treatment is appropriate for every patient).

Googly eyes on everything!

I think I’m a pretty kind and outgoing person. I’m also decidedly socialist, pretty much at eat the rich levels. So I think the world would change for the better, get some huge taxation going on the mega rich and funding for stuff like UBI. Dramatic shifts to renewable energy. People would probably stop killing each other. I can’t imagine doing that to someone else not in self defence.

I commute to work by bicycle and think cars are useful but good public transport is better so that is probably handy.

Down sides I’m a habitual comfort eater and love food so the obesity problem might get worse.

I have picked up HEMA historical European martial arts. It’s sword fighting. It’s super fun. Everyone at my club is a massive nerd as you might expect. It’s good exercise and genuinely fun. The down side is the kit is pretty expensive. At my club we have a newby joining session with a discounted attendance period which builds to a safety test before you really need to get safety kit which gives people a chance to try it before they spend hundreds on jackets and masks (and swords!).

What did you think? I am hearing mixed things.

The first time was when I was about 7 my little sister started choking on a fruit pastel so I did some back slaps and she spit it out.

I eventually went into health care so quite a few since.

Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Do I know how to use the technology?

I would hope that in 100k years, assuming humans are still basically human, the tech would be user friendly enough I’d be able to use it.

I’d want to try and improve the world with it. Give free power and clean water to poor countries. Help with medical research.

Hell it might come with a built in library so I can download that to researchers.

That is an even cooler extension to the sharks are older than trees fact which I enjoy.

They have weird butt muscles and use the poop as trail markers if I remember rightly.

Yeah the race towards fascism is terrifying.

Very similar, we can diagnose and manage patients in most cases and recognise when we’re out of our depth. We are dependent practitioners so work with a consultant. Currently we can’t prescribe but this is planned to change at some point. We don’t rotate like resident doctors do so provide more continuity for the nursing team and patients.

I’m a physician associate in the UK. I love helping people and making a difference. It’s great when my actions make someone’s life better, be that patient or colleagues. The team I work with are really good people. I love medicine: it’s problem solving, the interpersonal aspects, the continuous learning, the kindness and dedication of the people I work with.

I hate basically everything else. The PA role has had loads of bad press recently and there’s a legal case ongoing about the national review that was done so there’s huge amounts of uncertainty as to what the role will look like in future if it keeps existing at all. So no idea if I’m going to get to keep doing what I love long term. The NHS is basically on its knees after a generation of underfunding and poor management at the highest levels, what with the previous conservative basically trying to sell it off for profit so we don’t have enough resources to do things properly.
The system is set up to basically abuse its staff, the culture in the NHS is one of going above and beyond and putting yourself out to help others. Which is how the whole thing is still running to be honest, but that means that it’s really easy/ expected to stay late or to pick up too much work. If someone retires or leaves it’s even odds that they get replaced these days so there’s more work for less people.

The orphan of Kos in Bloodborne. Could never quite get it right, got so close several times but even with help that crazy bastard is just soo fast and difficult to predict. I tried for like a week, 30 or more goes. It really annoys me because Bloodborne is my favourite souls game.

Unfortunately that is often how drugs for the brain work, or don’t in your case. There is often a lot of trial and error to find something that works for you. They also take a good couple weeks to even start working properly which doesn’t help.

That sounds like anhedonia which is a major symptom of depression. You should consider seeking help.

Regular sleep, exercise and reaching out to others who care about you can all help outside of professionals though.

Journaling helps me to quiet my mind and organise my thoughts. It lets me track my mood and trends over time. I do some gratitude journaling which helps me to be more positive. I also use it for like annual review things looking at bigger picture things.

On a larger scale yes very much so. It’s mushroom zombies which gives them some cool variants and interesting ways to have threat rather than just the shambling hoard.

On a small scale is about a journey made cross country in the apocalypse by two people and their relationship.

I’d recommend both the games, though the first is better, and the TV series as very enjoyable and worthwhile.

This is a great list. A couple to add: Necromunda is an FPS which plays like Titanfall 2 in 40k, so excellent moment to moment gameplay, some really cool levels and set pieces highly recommended. The proper old school Fire Warrior which is an FPS I played probably 15 years ago no idea if it holds up today. If you have VR Battle Sister was pretty fun nothing special but holding and using a bolt gun up close was awesome.

The Kurzgesagt video about this is really, definitely worth a watch.

My guess is detail and economy of scale. Airsoft guns commonly use the design of a really world gun either licensed or legally distanced so can be very close to reality in looks. Airsoft is also quite a popular hobby so many manufacturers are involved. You are also looking at an M4 variant which is the single most popular Airsoft gun in the world. There are literally hundreds of variants running from cheap manual springs to high pressure air tanks and costing thousands. Prop guns are more niche, they are detail orientated and don’t need to function the same way. Maybe they make a pop and eject a case from the side of the gun which is more complex to do mechanically than send a little plastic bb out the barrel. There are less people buying each type of prop gun though so it will cost comparably more per item even if it technically doesn’t do as much.