What things am I a dumbass about?

Had someone contact me because a browser interface was ‘down’ and it was actually a cert issue. It surprised me that in an IT context, this person didn’t have a basic understanding of SSL certs. They didn’t even know how to add a cert exception.

It got me thinking, what basic ubiquitous things am I a dumbass about outside of IT?

Ive seen lots of ‘fun facts’ compilations, but it would be better to get a wide range of subject suggestions that I can spend 30 minutes each or less on, and become a more capable human.

Like what subjects would plumbers consider basic knowledge? Chemical interactions between cleaning products and PVC pipes?

What would an accountant or a landscaper consider to be so basic its shocking people can live their lives without knowing any of it?

For most areas of expertise, its difficult to know even what the basics are to start with.

luthis,

What we need really is a skills tree for real life. Then it would be much easier to spot the things you’re level 1 in.

krash,

I work in IT and I need this. This field is vast and sometimes it’s hard to know what you don’t know, or how well you know what you know.

Sure, there’s certs, but they just show how well you’re familiar with that particular field (or worse yet, that you know how to pass that particular test).

Helix,

I work in IT and I need this.

roadmap.sh

solarvector,

Processes

Super generic, most people interact with them in some form all the time both at work and personal without a second thought. Very few understand what makes a good process, especially when there is a handoff involved.

Oh also communication. Everyone does it so a lot of people must be really good at it right? Yeah…

luthis,

Good one, thanks!

ott,

Could you give a brief overview (or detailed if you want, I’m curious!) of what you think makes a good process? More specifically, what makes a good process and what makes good documentation for said process?

luthis,

Even better, just some handy keywords to plug into google and we can open up that box of knowledge ourselves!

solarvector,

Mostly it’s about best practices I think, and getting a feel for them. Try starting with something simple, like making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Describe how it’s done, each step. Think about where it’s efficient, where there’s extra wasted action, or time. By the time you’re done you’ll be considering if your butter knives are stored in the best spot, if you should get everything out at once, or one at a time. Do you have enough inventory? Is having extra inventory a waste? Is it worth washing knives afterwards or get extra so you can wash a batch at a time instead?

Then, go back through from the perspective of a child that has never seen your kitchen. Do the steps still make sense? How can you make it more simple, less effort? Finally, when I mentioned hand off… How do you ensure that your child laborer is going to deliver a pb&j of sufficient quality? Who determines quality? Production time?

Once you start thinking that way, everything is a process that could be considered, with inputs and outputs, quality control issues, potential waste, efficiency improvements, etc. It applies to data just as much as a sandwich for example, and office jobs are all about taking information, changing it a little and sending it on. Each step should transform in some way (capturing who does what, to what, at each step can help). Understanding the complexity instead of assuming simplicity so you can analyze it, but then distill it back down to something that is actually simple and understandable.

Anyway, hopefully that helps some in thinking about it a little differently.

For googling key words: quality management, process mapping, process analysis, lean, ?

Unfortunately there’s a lot of corporate shit, buzzwords, and SEO that have accumulated so it can by hard to find good info (like everything else now?)

agamemnonymous,
@agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works avatar

Ho boy, I’ve been working through Goldratt’s greatest hits, and just the question of inventory opens a whole rat’s nest of considerations. Like what even is inventory? I mean, -hits pipe- even time is inventory, man.

krash,

Thank you, this was a really interesting read. Would love to see a tutorial series on processes by you!

auzas_1337,

This is really interesting and a good way to think about a bunch of things. I’ll try it out. I do pay some attention to processes, but not to granular detail.

This is a very rationalistic worldview though. Surely you don’t look at everything as a process?

solarvector,

Hah, no, definitely not a 24/7 thing. More that it can be a useful exercise.

Helix,

Don’t brake in curves, whether you have a car or bike. Especially in slippery conditions.

luthis,

More fun fact than subject…will file this one under ‘safe vehicle handling’

Helix,

Oh most people can’t drive. Recently read an article 90% of drivers overestimate themselves. I know I’m above average but by far not a good driver. I still try to become better.

luthis,

For sure. I’ve done several high level driving courses for work. TL;Dr drive slower, increase follow distance. You may arrive 30 seconds late but it would eliminate the chance of so many accidents. Learning to ride a motorbike made my driving way better too.

Helix,

You may arrive 30 seconds late

I’d even doubt that. If you take an average and factor in that you might at one time have a crash due to your shitty driving, you’ll always arrive infinitely faster.

Helix,

Learning to ride a motorbike made my driving way better too.

Oh there’s a good video I’d recommend about cornering on a bike: you’re leaning the wrong way by F9

luthis,

Way ahead of you haha F9 is awesome!

auzas_1337,

I know this yet I still do it. I guess this should be preceeded by “gauge your entry speed”.

azertyfun, (edited )

The much more general I’d give is don’t brake at speed. Well do if you have to, but afterwards look back and see how it could have been avoided with better planning. Outside of a handful of situations (offramps, downhills, some wild speed limit changes, and of course coming to a complete stop) engine braking is more than sufficient for any driver that actually anticipates and maintains a safe following distance. Not only is it much safer, forces you to think ahead, but it also greatly reduces fuel consumption.

It’s also IMO the best way to ride a motorcycle spiritedly on the road.

(However you should also know how to perform an emergency stop. Whether you’re in a car, on a bicycle, or a motorcycle, get on a straight and train for the hardest possible stop. It might save yours or someone else’s life someday. Crazy that some drivers don’t even know what their ABS feels like!)

Helix, (edited )

Always use a one lead voltage meter tester when working on electricity. Don’t trust your breakers. Don’t trust light switches.

luthis,

‘Electrical safety’ for this one I think?

Helix,

Sure. Also invisible electricity in general. If you can see it it’s many times not a good thing.

Hazzia,

Adding to electrical safety: even if your breaker box is switched off, unless your utility powered off your location entirely, it STILL HAS ELECTRICITY RUNNING TO IT

luthis,

Always assume it’s live…

Helix,

Exactly. Works for guns as well.

Raffster,

deleted_by_author

    •
    Helix,

    They kinda work as anti-death sticks for me.

    ShepherdPie,

    Are you talking about the meters that simply detect whether wires are still live or not? Definitely a good backup to double check that you’ve shut off the right breaker.

    If you’re talking about a single lead multimeter to measure voltage, I’ve never heard of such a thing and don’t know how that would even work.

    JakenVeina,

    There’s literally no such thing as a one-lead voltage meter. Voltage is, by definition, the difference in potential energy between two points.

    Any tool that can give a voltage reading with one probe has a second probe you’re not considering, or is estimating voltage based on a some assumptions about current or some other factor being measured.

    Helix, (edited )

    This one can detect voltage with a single lead and also works as a voltage meter if you use two leads: www.benning.de/…/voltage-tester-duspol.html

    It also has an inbuilt motor to distinguish leaking voltage from continuous AC.

    Sorry if I didn’t use the correct English terms and that wasn’t clear enough.

    In Germany you simply call it a Duspol and every electrician knows what you mean. Didn’t research enough into the English description but it seems it’s a two pole voltage tester with one pole voltage detection mode.

    cypherpunks,
    @cypherpunks@lemmy.ml avatar

    xkcd#2501:

    XKCD 2501 “Average Familiarity”

    luthis,

    Exactly this

    jballs,
    @jballs@sh.itjust.works avatar

    I’m constantly amazed at how many people don’t understand the concepts of basic finance and how compound interest works.

    Years ago, I brought my laptop with me to buy a car so I could plug all the numbers into a quick amortization schedule. The sales person offered me a choice of $1,500 cash back or 1.9% financing instead of the typical rate a few percentage points higher.

    I plugged the numbers into my spreadsheet and saw taking the cash back would cost me a couple grand more than the lower finance rate. When I told him I wanted the finance rate instead of the cash back, he mentioned that I was the only person he’d seen not take the cash back.

    Maybe he was pulling my chain, but in my experience, the average person doesn’t know what compound interest is, let alone what an amortization schedule is.

    teawrecks,

    That’s wild. When I was getting a mortgage for my house, the lender was like “your interest rate is X, but if you pay $Y you can add a ‘point’”. I’m like “wtf is a point?” Turns out, it’s a roundabout way of saying, higher down payment = lower interest rate.

    It already wasn’t obvious what their jargon meant, so for you to have a sales person offering the exact opposite of what my lender did, actively bribing customers to take a worse deal for themselves, it’s just…scummy.

    jballs,
    @jballs@sh.itjust.works avatar

    Yeah, buying points is a bit different though and again is a great example of why everyone should at least have a basic understanding of how to make an amortization schedule.

    Buying points isn’t exactly the same as a higher down payment, because that money doesn’t take any principal off your loan. It’s basically paying interest up front, giving the lender a lesser amount now rather than a greater amount later.

    Shit gets complicated real quick, so plugging it into an Excel spreadsheet makes it much more clear.

    teawrecks,

    Cool, see I didn’t even know about that difference lol. To me it amounted to “do you want to pay us more up front for a lower monthly rate”, which just sounded like the same thing as a larger down payment.

    luthis,

    amortization schedule

    Thanks! excellent suggestion.

    ShepherdPie,

    You can also use an interest calculator or multiply the payment by the term length to see how much over the purchase price you’ll pay in interest.

    This is why it’s important to haggle over the purchase price and not the monthly payment. Never ever negotiate over the monthly payment, or you’re likely to get stuck with a 96-month loan at 23% interest.

    jballs,
    @jballs@sh.itjust.works avatar

    My mother in law bought a truck the same week I bought my car. I mentioned that I got a 1.9% interest rate. She got a 22% rate!!! I was absolutely floored when I found out what she did.

    IMongoose,

    22% is insane, that should be illegal honestly. Pretty much bought it on a credit card.

    jballs,
    @jballs@sh.itjust.works avatar

    Yeah I was absolutely disgusted when I found out. It made me realize that there’s definitely a “poor tax”. If you don’t have good credit and/or aren’t informed enough to pay attention to interest rates, you’re basically going through life on hard mode.

    Bitrot,
    @Bitrot@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

    That’s also why you never buy a car near a military base.

    jballs,
    @jballs@sh.itjust.works avatar

    Lol that just reminded me of the /r/justbootthings subreddit. So many stories of 24% APR loans on Dodge Chargers.

    ShepherdPie,

    Have you told this story before, possibly on reddit? I swear I’ve read this verbatim including the part about the laptop and “I was the only person who took the lower APR.”

    jballs,
    @jballs@sh.itjust.works avatar

    Maybe, but it would’ve been years ago.

    grabyourmotherskeys,

    With each year that passes since the re-telling it gets exponentially more interesting.

    jballs,
    @jballs@sh.itjust.works avatar

    Could just be we’re old as fuck to the point that we find amortization schedules and saving money interesting.

    ShepherdPie,

    The interest in this story is definitely compounding.

    Shady_Shiroe, (edited )
    @Shady_Shiroe@lemmy.world avatar

    EDIT: Sorry didn’t mean to reply to your comment, I’m on mobile, can’t tell posts from comments.

    I believe knowing a little bit on how a car works helps you understand why maintenance is important or from getting scammed at mechanics, I loved old commercials like these that explain in such an easy way. www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYAw79386WI

    Some skills I wanna pick up is how to micro solder, I deal with a lot of tech and sometimes you just need a type c port replaced and soldering iron is not the easiest tool for tiny pins.

    Tar_alcaran,

    Some skills I wanna pick up is how to micro solder, I deal with a lot of tech and sometimes you just need a type c port replaced and soldering iron is not the easiest tool for tiny pins.

    Good news, the broken component is a common 2 dollar chip!

    Bad news, it’s an SMD, and in the middle of a giant block of plastic and 2 more circuitboards.

    bloodfart,

    For microsoldering: you want the quick 861dw or one of the knockoffs and a bunch of tips. Sometimes you can get away without a microscope but usually you need one of those too. You need a swing arm mount for it because you often won’t be able to position your board under the objective of a tabletop mount.

    You 100% cannot get away without a fume extractor. You’re gonna need low melt solder and flux, so you also need to be wearing disposable gloves.

    You need a board holder because once all the solder in the area is liquified you don’t want the heavier parts sliding off the board because it’s propped up on a piece of wood at a ten degree angle.

    If you wanna extend the amount of work you can do with just a decent iron: use flux and low melt to get everything on your usbc liquid at the same time so you can lift it off the board.

    Shady_Shiroe,
    @Shady_Shiroe@lemmy.world avatar

    I found that using a soldering iron to be unweildy, which could either be a bad iron or my poor skills. I was thinking of maybe investing in future for one of those hakko hot air rework stations and see if it is any easier. Right now that’s on hold, but totally something I want to try in the future, maybe as a hobby.

    bloodfart,

    Start with the hakko 888 or the weller equivalent. Learn how to solder big stuff first like tinning wires without burning up the insulation, big through hole joints according to the nasa guidelines, bell splices etc. it’s easier to see and judge how things are going with big stuff because you can see it better.

    Use different tips to see what they do.

    Remember that soldering is just brazing. You’re joining two metals by introducing a third.

    Don’t start with a project you want to finish, just join a bunch of junk together, pull parts you don’t care about from old circuit boards and put different parts in their place.

    Make little sculptures out of your trash.

    Cheat with different kinds of flux till you don’t need to anymore.

    Do the same things with smd parts.

    It takes a long time to get good at soldering and no matter what anyone says you can’t just jump past the iron to hot air.

    I mean, it’s possible. You’ll just never be able to fix mistakes or bridges you make with the hot air.

    luthis,

    Learning about cars, engines and motorbike maintenance at this stage in life really opened my eyes. I could have easily been a mechanic or an engineer if I had the access to this knowledge when I was younger.

    Now I do as much of my own maintenance as I can, and I’m pretty sure my engine will hit 400K before I start getting serious issues. None of it is overly complicated or difficult, and saves me money in the short and long term.

    Shady_Shiroe,
    @Shady_Shiroe@lemmy.world avatar

    I was fortunate to have a dad who had the tools, space, and time to teach me how to do repairs, with the things he taught me I can save a lot of money buying a beat up car and fixing it up for usually 1/3 to half the price of a used one.

    Junkdata,

    As someone who works with tech, here is my 2 cents on basic knowledge.

    If your computer is “not working” restarting the computer can generally fix 80 percent of the issues. We are not trying to make you mad, this is literraly first thing I am doing if you present me a problem.

    Stop downloading things from unknown sources.

    Use generic effects/fonts on your powerpoint. Just because you bought something cool doesnt mean it will magically transfer when you pass your presnetation to another computer for your presentation. (Microsoft does not migrate your paid effects)

    For gamers Stop playing pvp on your pc/console on wifi, are you a mad?

    Everyone in general We are at an age of computers. Learn how to type, it will save you tremendous amount of time, literally.

    grabyourmotherskeys,

    Do… do people really buy add-ons for pp to enhance their slide decks?

    Junkdata,

    Yes, i have seen it happen several times and i get blamed why its not showing on the show laptop. The moment i ask, “did you purchase any add on effects?” i feel like a customer service telling a customer your credit card was denied.

    grabyourmotherskeys,

    That’s just wild. I’m in meetings with slides constantly and never heard of this. We’ll, now I have a new rabbit hole to go down (as in “finding the most ridiculous of these”).

    Junkdata, (edited )

    It definitely makes you laugh once you see it.

    op_maroon,

    FYI you can embed some Truetype fonts in PowerPoint and word (not on mac)

    JeeBaiChow,

    If people say ‘i have excel competence’, the difference could be between ‘i can resize fonts and do tables for my company forms because I don’t know how to do them in word’ to ‘fully modelling a business plan for a Telco, including it’s subsidiary units’. Make sure you test for the level of competence you’re after.

    Learn a new formula every now and then, or at very least learn to read other people’s formulas, then google what you don’t know. Literacy in any field is the result of a long process of learning.

    (Reread your question) Outside of IT: if an appliance stops working, it’s sometimes just a fuse that needs replacing. It’s cheap and easy to do.

    luthis,

    ‘Basic appliance troubleshooting and repairs’

    Thanks !

    idiomaddict,

    If someone tells me they’ve mastered excel, they’re either overqualified for any job I’ll ever hire them for (I’m not in IT) or lying.

    Toribor,
    @Toribor@corndog.social avatar

    Using pivot tables will make people think you’re a wizard.

    TheFresh16,

    Recently been picking up some basic PowerQuery and my goodness is it a game changer

    boatswain,

    If you’re pulling on a rope really hard, don’t wrap it around your hand to get a better grip. If it starts to pull away from you, you won’t be able to let go, and if someone runs up to help and starts hauling on the end, your hand is going to be in a world of pain.

    exocrinous,

    What if there’s no reason for it to pull away?

    0_0j,
    @0_0j@lemmy.world avatar

    don’t wrap it around your hand to get a better grip

    I’m listening…

    Wirlocke,

    This is typically why education and experience are still needed if you’re self taught.

    I know from learning programming that people online don’t explain “common sense” problems. So many times you’ll look up a problem and see people talk about huge refactors or complex niche fixes when in reality you misplaced a single line of code.

    andrewta,

    Or forgot a ;

    Bigoldmustard,

    It’s really easy to understand diabetes but it’s not something a lot of people grasp quickly if it doesn’t affect them.

    First, when you eat carbohydrates they are converted into sugar by the body. Your cells want that sugar, but they don’t want too much. Too much sugar in the blood can damage blood vessels, leading to all sorts of issues ranging from annoying to fatal.

    Insulin is like UPS, it delivers the sugar to the cells, also facilitating its entry into the cells. Normal people’s pancreas release an appropriate amount of insulin to match the amount of sugar in your blood and keep your blood sugar in a safe range (70-120, guidance on this varies this is not medical advice).

    Type 1: Pancreas is damaged, often by the body’s immune system, and can no longer produce insulin. It’s genetic, and it doesn’t usually present after adolescence. The only treatment for type 1 is insulin. If you don’t have a pump you take a 24-hour insulin for a baseline and then a short-acting insulin for your meals. You usually have a carbohydrate to insulin ratio. 1 unit of insulin to 15g carbs is pretty common for a starting point. If you have a pump it just releases a slow drip of insulin as a base and then you program your ratio for meals.

    Type 2: Your cells become insulin resistant and your pancreas responds by upping the amount of insulin it produces. Eventually it can’t keep up and your blood sugar rises. There is a period of time where you can avoid developing type 2 with diet changes. There is a period of time where you can just take pills. The final stage is using insulin injections like a type 1.

    Finally, insulin is really expensive (or was, I think there’s legislation lowering prices in my state). The retail price without insurance of 2 insulins, needle tips, and blood testing supplies can easily be $1200/month. That’s the price you pay to eat without dying as a type 1.

    I’m just a simple guy but if making that much money off people who literally have no other choice isn’t evil I’m not sure what is. Do we deserve to be able to eat? Tough call I guess.

    1D10,

    When you understand that in the grand scheme of things we are all profoundly ignorant, everything becomes much more interesting.

    Anytime I think " fuck I don’t know how to do that" I remind myself that I can learn it, and then learn at least the basics.

    While I may not be the font of all knowledge, I am the overflowing urinal of useless information.

    z00s,

    A lot of the IT guys I know have little to no knowledge of mechanical stuff. Learn to fix your car

    PlexSheep,

    I don’t have a car

    z00s,

    Lawnmower, whatever. Learn how to fix a tap / toilet / anything a round the house.

    Bitrot, (edited )
    @Bitrot@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

    Martha Stewart’s Homekeeping Handbook.

    It will tell you how to iron your clothes, pick table linens, care for paintings, deal with water damage after a natural disaster, pick between a laser and inkjet printer, fix a cartridge faucet, and install a dimmer switch.

    The Army should issue it to new recruits.

    Tar_alcaran,

    My car is electric. The repairs I’ve done to it have required almost zero car-fixing-skills.

    Helix,

    Could you please go into detail?

    Tar_alcaran,

    Apart from tire changes, electric cars have few typical car problems.

    There’s no oil to change, a lot of the braking is regenerative so the brakes last a LONG time, they have very few pumps, hoses, filters and pipes just cables that don’t really wear out. No cam belts or spark plugs.

    Basically all I do is swap the pollen filter and wiper blades. There’s an occasional brake fluid check (not really a DIY thing for me) and I’ve had damages (busted mirror, broken charging cable).

    I’ve also done a battery swap myself, which does require a garage, but only because you can’t lift the thing by hand.

    Helix,

    Which car is it?

    Tar_alcaran,

    2013 Nissan Leaf, and coming up om 260k km.

    Toribor,
    @Toribor@corndog.social avatar

    This is definitely a weak spot of mine although at this point it is somewhat willful. I can do some very basics like swap filters or change a tire but I’ve never found a need to grow beyond that considering my vehicle is reliable and regular maintenance like oil changes are so cheap and accessible.

    Pulptastic,

    I don’t trust the minimum wage oil change folks with my $40k vehicle. I would trust a mechanic but it’s cheaper and easier to DIY and I trust myself to do it correctly.

    AngryCommieKender,

    Learning to blacksmith is fun as well

    Contramuffin, (edited )

    Microbial pathogenesis here. This one’s a fun one for me, especially since COVID revealed just how illiterate the average person is about diseases. Here’s a couple that I think should be common sense

    • Not all bacteria cause disease. In fact, very few bacteria cause disease. Many bacteria are even helpful to us, so you should really weigh the pros and cons of taking antibiotics if you’re considering using antibiotics.
    • Antibiotics don’t work against viral infections. You’re getting all the downsides of killing helpful bacteria and getting none of the benefits
    • Do not blindly trust your immune system. Your immune system works 100% of 50% of the time. Many white blood cells take the philosophy of murdering everything in sight just to be safe. This can and often does include killing important cells in your body that just happen to be nearby the site of infection. Even if you survive the infection, you will be weakened as a result. If you can avoid getting sick in the first place, avoid getting sick.
    • Vaccines work. I don’t really know what else to say about this one.
    • Viruses and bacteria aren’t hard to kill. There’s many compounds that can kill viruses and bacteria. But humans aren’t hard to kill either. The tricky part is figuring out how to kill viruses and bacteria while also keeping the human alive. Basically: don’t drink bleach. It will kill your bacteria or virus but it’ll kill you too
    • E. coli isn’t a usually bad bacteria. Actually, it’s a very important bacteria that helps us digest food. The reason it gets such a bad reputation is because it’s relatively hard to kill, which makes them a very good way to quickly check if there’s a possible food/water contamination. In other words, the presence of E. coli itself isn’t bad, but finding E. coli does suggest that there might be other, more dangerous bacteria.
    • DO NOT EAT MOLDY FOOD. The fuzzy part that you see is just the fruiting body of the mold, analogous to a flower on a plant. The real body of the mold is an invisible network of roots that tunnel through the core of the food. Even if you cut off the fuzzy portion, you’re still eating most of the mold.
    Tar_alcaran,
    • Viruses and bacteria aren’t hard to kill. There’s many compounds that can kill viruses and bacteria. But humans aren’t hard to kill either. The tricky part is figuring out how to kill viruses and bacteria while also keeping the human alive.

    Relevant XKCD: xkcd.com/1217/

    AngryCommieKender, (edited )

    I don’t even have to click it to see the stick figure pointing a gun at a microscope slide petri dish

    Contramuffin,

    We usually refer to petri dishes as being for bacteria. We do grow cancer cells in dishes, but these ones are specifically made to grow mammalian cells. We just call them dishes

    bob_lemon,

    you should really weigh the pros and cons of taking antibiotics if you’re considering using antibiotics.

    Is that a choice you can make where you’re from? Here in Germany, that is entirely the physician’s choice to make. You cannot get them without a prescription. Although I guess you can ignore the doctor if they tell you to take them. But if you don’t trust your doctor, get another doctor.

    breakingcups,

    Hello neighbor! I’ve had them prescribed, but when asked if it was really necessary or if I could give it a bit longer to see if my body could deal with it on its own, my doctor got a big smile and told me he could. Then he said that the dominant demographic in my area is very persistent and pushy in demanding antibiotics for the slightest thing so he’s gotten a bit too used to prescribing them.

    PrincessLeiasCat,

    I never knew this about mold and tunneling. You convinced me to just say no to mold.

    Pulptastic,

    I’ve read that on hard cheeses I can cut off the visible mold.

    Contramuffin,

    Not worth the risk, to be honest. You don’t know how deep the mold has penetrated into the cheese, and without a microscope, you will never know if you’ve shaved off enough to fully remove the mold.

    Also, mold spores are all over the place. They float around in the air. You breathe them in all the time. If you got visible mold growing on a cheese, there’s a good chance that there’s not-yet-visible mold growing in other spots, too.

    John_McMurray,

    You can, it’s fine

    thrawn21,
    @thrawn21@lemmy.world avatar

    I’ll confess I do this with some regularity. If I unwrap a piece of cheese and see it’s moldy, well I’m not tossing a nice hunk of aged gouda in the trash! I’ll slice the mold off, then do a sniff and nibble test. If it still tastes moldy, keep slicing until it doesn’t.

    I’ve done this since I was a kid, so who knows if it’s actually safe, or if I’ve just spent decades rolling the dice and getting lucky.

    idiomaddict,

    Can you explain the E. coli point a little more?

    Is it that because it’s hard to kill, it’s a good indicator of the initial contamination, meaning it’s essentially stickier than other bacteria and leaves a longer record that there was contamination?

    Because otherwise being hard to kill makes it seem like it would be a bad indicator to me, in that it would return a lot of false positives (though maybe that’s the goal in this case).

    meekah,
    @meekah@lemmy.world avatar

    I think false positives are preferable in that context. I’d rather have a lot of false positives than any false negatives at all when it comes to poop water

    Contramuffin, (edited )

    With regards to food and water safety (really, this applies to all safety regulations), you would rather get false positives than false negatives. It’s better to be overly cautious than to be under-cautious. Because if we’re under-cautious, then someone might get sick. So we actually want to pick a common, hardy bacteria that’s easy to grow. There’s several other reasons why E. coli is such a good indicator bacteria, such as:

    • it grows quickly, so we can get test results quickly
    • it’s remarkably easy to distinguish E. coli from other bacteria, so much so that you don’t really even need a microscope. The less technical expertise is required for water testing, the better.
    • they’re usually safe, which lowers the amount of training required for water testers, and also lowers the risk of disease in case a test gets mishandled
    • they’re generally more resistant to water treatment than other bacteria, typically being the last to die. So if we killed E. coli, that’s a good indicator that we’ve also killed the other bacteria
    GarytheSnail,
    @GarytheSnail@programming.dev avatar

    DO NOT EAT MOLDY FOOD

    Fuck you, Bleu cheese 4ever!

    watersnipje,

    Could you say something about why it’s bad to eat moldy food, and why it’s bad to kill the good bacteria in your body? I know your intestines can function less well, is there anything else?

    BaumGeist,

    I am not a Microbial Pathogensist, so I’ll just use the internet’s preferred method of saying something confidently that is probably wrong on some pedantic level and having actual experts climb out of the woodwork to correct me, but…

    Mold isn’t a single organism, it’s actually a colony of many individual microbes that work together, most of the time; there are exceptions since the word “mold” is a lay term as much as it’s a scientific term, and the common usage doesn’t have the same rigor applied (“if it’s slimy/fuzzy, it’s mold” kinda reasoning).

    The colony aspect is important, because you’re probably inhaling mold spores and eating tiny amounts of mold every day. The microbial aspect means that eating a whole colony has the potential to infect you even if your body kills off 99.9% of the microbes.

    As to why an infection is dangerous depends on the type of mold. Some take up resisdence in specific organs and starve the organ cells of vital nutrients, others are carnivorous and eat your tissues/cells, others may eat beneficial bacteria or starve them of vital nutrients, some secrete toxins that are relatively harmless in small doses but deadly with a full-blown infection—penicillin is a great well-known example of this: it’s the chemical the mold uses to kill off bacteria competing for the same resources—, sometimes it’s just the immune system’s response that’s dangerous.

    If you want an example of what such an infection does on our scale, look up everyone psychonaut’s favorite: Ergotism. The Ergot fungus grows primarily on cereals/grains and secretes chemicals that are psychoactive in humans (one of which is the precursor that Dr. Albert Hoffmann first derived LSD from). Unfortunately besides mind expanding insights into the nature of reality, it also comes with a nasty infection that can cause convulsions, painful burning/tingling/freezing sensations, diarrhea, vomiting, gangrene, psychosis, and more.

    That all being said, if you accidentally swallow a bite of moldy bread, you probably don’t need to freak out and call poison control/EMS; just don’t regularly eat moldy food and expect to have your immune system stave off a full-blown infection for long.

    Contramuffin,

    Regarding moldy food, it’s because you’re taking a gamble on what exactly the mold is. There’s many types of mold, and some can produce very toxic compounds. Eating the mold can poison yourself. Of course, if you know that it’s a safe mold, then you can eat it (that’s how cheese making works). But as with all things in microbiology, things tend to be complicated very quickly, and it can be pretty hard for amateurs and even professional microbiologists to accurately distinguish between safe and unsafe molds.

    With regards to killing helpful bacteria, you are correct that one of their uses is that they help improve the efficiency of digestion. This is a very young and growing field (and also not entirely in my field of expertise), so many things I say might be outdated. The second most obvious downside to killing helpful bacteria is that they prevent actual harmful bacteria from growing out of control. There are several bacteria (in particular, C. dificile) where taking antibiotics actually makes the infection worse, since the antibiotics kills off the helpful bacteria that were helping to contain the infection.

    Scientists also have found semi-recently that bacteria in your intestines have an incredible amount of control over you as a person. Your body even has a sort of hotline that connects from your intestines directly to your brain, called the vagus nerve, and the bacteria in your intestines use this to communicate with your brain. For instance, scientists have found that the type of bacteria in your gut can influence the onset and severity of autism symptoms. One current hypothesis for autism is that the body, during development, somehow messes up the composition of bacteria in your intestines, and that in turn messes up the development of the brain. I seem to recall reading papers that linked bacteria to other neurological diseases and disorders, but I don’t remember completely.

    Another is that the bacteria are known to be linked to obesity. Scientists have found that if you give 2 people the exact same foods in the exact same amounts, one can develop obesity and one won’t. Whether someone develops obesity or not is highly predictable based on the composition of the bacteria in their intestines. As a matter of fact, scientists have even found that if you replace an obese person’s bacteria with bacteria taken from a healthy person, then the obese person will begin to lose weight, even if that person hasn’t changed anything else.

    The bacteria in your intestines are also known to be in constant communication with your immune system. I believe the immune system uses the bacteria in your intestines to train when you’re young. But this back-and-forth extends well into adulthood. Scientists found that bacteria can control the development and activity of white blood cells. That, of course, leads to differences in things like fighting off infections and killing cancers.

    The bacteria in your intestines are incredibly important, and we’re only just now beginning to understand what they do for us. That’s why I say that you have to weigh pros and cons. If you think you’d be fine without it, I recommend not taking antibiotics. But if the infection is severe, then it’s worth dealing with the downsides. Talk to your doctor if you’re unsure - he probably knows more about what situations are severe and which aren’t. But what you definitely don’t want to do (which I know many people tend to do) is to pressure the doctor into prescribing antibiotics. Antibiotics aren’t a wonder drug, and people shouldn’t be immediately jumping to antibiotics as a solution to their infections

    watersnipje,

    Thank you! That helped to give some more insights into why exactly it’s bad, I knew it was but not sure through which processes. My doctorate was in neuroscience, and around the time I left academia, the gut microbiome-brain axis research was really starting to ramp up. It was the big buzzword at the time. But since I left to work in the industry, I haven’t really kept up with the developments in the gut microbiome neuroscience field.
    I really wish they’d find a better way to treat chronic cystitis than through antibiotics, but so far it’s the only treatment that really reliably helps.

    Helix,

    why it’s bad to eat moldy food

    For starters, it’s poisonous and tastes like shit.

    0_0j,
    @0_0j@lemmy.world avatar

    The real body of the mold is an invisible network of roots that tunnel through the core of the food. Even if you cut off the fuzzy portion, you’re still eating most of the mold.

    What?!

    idiomaddict,

    I work at a bakery. The number of people who ask for half a loaf of bread (normal to buy in this area, but they’re not pre-cut), then get upset when I pick up a whole loaf so I can cut half off is mind blowing to me. I’m also not a native speaker and autistic, so I’m wary of being inadvertently way too rude if I comment on it.

    meekah, (edited )
    @meekah@lemmy.world avatar

    People are fucking idiots lmao. What, you don’t bake your half loaves, with the crust missing on the flat side?

    Jimmycrackcrack,

    I… Huh!? What do they want?

    intensely_human,

    They want a loaf baked as a half loaf in the first place. They don’t realize all the half loaves are full loaves cut after baking.

    They don’t realize that baking is a process that can only produce full loaves.

    watersnipje,

    People this stupid are allowed outside on their own? Wtf did they expect?

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