CPU Abuser posted:

I've been using bar soap (Lever 2000) as a shaving lubricant/protectant for the last 30 years. It beats every purpose made shaving cream I've ever tried like a rented mule.

Cup Runneth Over posted:

Who here still has yet to get any variety of COVID two full years after the pandemic began in force and what brand of respirator are you using atm?

Still cycling between my 3M 6800 and Secure Click atm

Tzen posted:

let it be mild friend

genericnick posted:

Thanks. I'm pretty mad about it. My brother was pretty wiped out with fever Monday, but still came over last week after testing negative. Good work there. Let me introduce you to the concept of a false negative.

Platystemon posted:

With a name like that, I expected it would use space age technology (read: synthetic detergents, first marketed in the fifties), but no, it’s just a bar of soap.



It’s mostly (sodium salts of) tallow, with some palm kernel oil for cleansing power and for bubbles.

There’s some glycerine present naturally from the reaction between the oils and lye, but it’s a nice touch to add more. Many commercial soaps do not. The glycerin as well as the PEG are humectants that help make the soap slippery.

The most interesting ingredient is the maize starch. It places above water in the ingredient list, and given that the water required to make that bar is at least ten percent, that’s a lot of starch. It’s not unheard of for hobbyists soapmakers to add starch, but it’s pretty uncommon, especially in high amounts. I don’t know that properties it would add. I’ll have to try it sometime.

Sodium chloride hardens the bar. Titanium dioxide makes it a brilliant white. Fragrance and water need no explanation. The rest are preservatives, though it’s unusual to see so many used together.

All together, I wouldn’t recommend the recipe for a shaving soap, but I can see how it does better than most bar soaps. As mentioned, the added glycerine and PEG help. Tallow is the traditional shaving soap base with good reason, usually with a little coconut oil, but palm kernel oil is almost interchangeable.

Where it differs from shaving soaps is that it’s purely sodium hydroxide based. Shaving soaps almost always use potassium hydroxide. Potassium salts make a soft soap that is far more soluble in water—good for shaving soap, bad for bar soap.

Pingui posted:

largest risk factor is the rare occasions where pressure is building on the backside of the building (reversing the draft to go from the staircase and into my apartment)

genericnick posted:

Thanks. I'm pretty mad about it. My brother was pretty wiped out with fever Monday, but still came over last week after testing negative. Good work there. Let me introduce you to the concept of a false negative.

Cup Runneth Over posted:

Who here still has yet to get any variety of COVID two full years after the pandemic began in force and what brand of respirator are you using atm?

Still cycling between my 3M 6800 and Secure Click atm

Nocturtle posted:

That sucks. The rapid tests really are garbage. Even worse some people heard the rapid tests are unreliable and think they might just have a false positive while symptomatic...

Hope you get through it without problem.

Cup Runneth Over posted:

Who here still has yet to get any variety of COVID two full years after the pandemic began in force and what brand of respirator are you using atm?

Still cycling between my 3M 6800 and Secure Click atm

Business Trombone posted:

(..)
NPIs work as long as you don't slip up.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/03/20/world/covid-19-mandates-cases-vaccine#hong-kong-flight-bans posted:

Hong Kong will lift its bans on flights and cut quarantine times.

Hong Kong announced on Monday that it would lift its ban on flights from nine countries on April 1, just one of the restrictions it plans to relax as experts and government officials say the worst of an Omicron-driven wave might have passed.

Hong Kong’s leader, Carrie Lam, said on Monday that vaccinated residents would only have to quarantine for seven days, down from 14, upon arrival from overseas. The isolation for travelers had been one of the strictest in the world and had discouraged many from returning to the Chinese territory of 7.4 million people.

She also suspended plans to have every person in the city undergo P.C.R. testing and moved up a deadline to receive booster shots to May 31. The extra dose will be necessary to enter public places, including supermarkets and shopping malls.

For most of the pandemic, Hong Kong has sealed itself off from the rest of the world and required travelers to quarantine for as long as three weeks in a hotel, mirroring policies in mainland China.
(..)

Pingui posted:

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/598968-some-states-pull-back-on-daily-covid-reporting posted:

Some states pull back on daily COVID reporting

As COVID-19 cases fall across the U.S., some states are scaling back their reporting strategies after dropping pandemic-related requirements such as masking.

South Dakota ended daily COVID-19 reporting on Friday and will pivot to weekly updates. With a seven-day average of 35 daily cases, the state is experiencing some of the country's lowest per-capita spread, The Associated Press reported.

Other states that have made the shift to weekly reports include Arizona, Hawaii, Kentucky, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma and South Carolina, as well as Washington, D.C., according to The New York Times.

Experts expect a continued slowdown of reporting cycles as COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths begin to decline, the newspaper added.

“We’ve moved to a place where we don’t need to know the absolute numbers,” Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, told the Times.

“We can still monitor trends for people who are getting tests in public settings. We still have a good sense of where the absolute numbers are going,” he added.

Meanwhile, other experts fear that less reporting may present problems in the event of a possible future uptick in infections.

But on Sunday, Chief White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci said that he did not think the U.S. would see another surge in infections with the latest variant, though he said an uptick was likely.

"Hopefully, we won't see a surge. I don't think we will. The easiest way to prevent that is to continue to get people vaccinated. And for those who have been vaccinated, to continue to get them boosted, so that’s really where we stand right now," Fauci said.

Pingui posted:

"Dismantling the alarm probably won't backfire"

Anthony Fauci posted:

"Hopefully, we won't see a surge."

genericnick posted:

lmao I got Covid

McCracAttack posted:

Can't see if you don't look.

Platystemon posted:

With a name like that, I expected it would use space age technology (read: synthetic detergents, first marketed in the fifties), but no, it’s just a bar of soap.



The most interesting ingredient is the maize starch. It places above water in the ingredient list, and given that the water required to make that bar is at least ten percent, that’s a lot of starch. It’s not unheard of for hobbyists soapmakers to add starch, but it’s pretty uncommon, especially in high amounts. I don’t know that properties it would add. I’ll have to try it sometime.

Sodium chloride hardens the bar. Titanium dioxide makes it a brilliant white. Fragrance and water need no explanation. The rest are preservatives, though it’s unusual to see so many used together.

Business Trombone posted:

Teaching younger kids in person for 90% of the last 2 years, we had a mask mandate but it ends today
I've been getting weekly PCR tests for most of that time, kids started getting weekly PCR tests at school in August 2021. I've lost count of how many confirmed exposures I've had but uh a whole bunch. 200+ easily after Omicron.
I wore lovely masks March-June 2020, Powecom KF94s from June 2020-October 2021 and Auras since then. Built a Corsi cube for my classroom in November. Obviously also not going out and doing dumb poo poo like eating inside.

NPIs work as long as you don't slip up.

Zugzwang posted:

Did they block you or something?

Koirhor posted:

the governments of the world have executed the largest eugenics program in human history and gotten away with it

Cup Runneth Over posted:

Who here still has yet to get any variety of COVID two full years after the pandemic began in force and what brand of respirator are you using atm?

Still cycling between my 3M 6800 and Secure Click atm

CPU Abuser posted:

Some of the multi-blade cartridge razors that have emerged over the last two decades really do have insane service lives.

I use a 5-blade Schick cartridge razor. The carts are good at least a month, longer if I push them.

It's just barely possible to cut yourself with one of these, but you really have to put some work into that mistake in order to make it happen.

I'm still using the first "handle" section that I bought back in 2014. Of course, I've changed cartridges at least 80-100 times since then.

Note that the "handle" doesn't look like the one just below. The design has been tweaked several times in the last 8 years. Most of the tweaks, oddly enough, have actually been improvements.

But latest-production cartridges still fit it.

Cup Runneth Over posted:

Who here still has yet to get any variety of COVID two full years after the pandemic began in force and what brand of respirator are you using atm?

Still cycling between my 3M 6800 and Secure Click atm

Cup Runneth Over posted:

Who here still has yet to get any variety of COVID two full years after the pandemic began in force and what brand of respirator are you using atm?

Still cycling between my 3M 6800 and Secure Click atm

not_superiority posted:

Isnt maize starch just corn starch? Iirc that's for fragrance help. I don't add fragrance to my personal care products but I've seen it discussed before?

I haven't looked at the label for a bar of lever 2000 in years, oh my goodness it looks like it hasnt changed at all. It's the same from when my mom brought it home and it caused one of the worst eczema flare ups I had in my teens. I thought it was the fragrance alone.

It wasn't until last year that I started seeing some research come out that titanium dioxide can cause flare ups after years and years of being told I'm nuts for thinking that something so harmless and in everything could cause an allergic reaction. Golly gee maybe that's why I can't wear most makeup products either.

Cup Runneth Over posted:

Who here still has yet to get any variety of COVID two full years after the pandemic began in force and what brand of respirator are you using atm?

Still cycling between my 3M 6800 and Secure Click atm

Rutibex posted:

buy a generic safety razor dear god those disposable razors are the greatest rip off in all of capitalism

Pingui posted:

"Dismantling the alarm probably won't backfire"

mdemone posted:

32 out of 80 faculty/staff absent today.

If only there were some context in which we could understand this.

Rutibex posted:

buy a generic safety razor dear god those disposable razors are the greatest rip off in all of capitalism

Pingui posted:

Something to keep in mind with skincare products (in particular), that is often entirely overlooked: It doesn't have to be allergenic to prompt a skin reaction. Allergic reactions are when your immune system goes on the attack on a foreign substance, but irritants can easily cause reactions outside the immune system.

Cup Runneth Over posted:

Who here still has yet to get any variety of COVID two full years after the pandemic began in force and what brand of respirator are you using atm?

Still cycling between my 3M 6800 and Secure Click atm

Cup Runneth Over posted:

Who here still has yet to get any variety of COVID two full years after the pandemic began in force and what brand of respirator are you using atm?

Still cycling between my 3M 6800 and Secure Click atm

not_superiority posted:

contact dermatitis is an allergic reaction, and post those initial bouts of contact dermatitis, after it causes sufficient damage to my skin, I'd develop atopic dermatitis/eczema flare up. i also struggle with dyshidrotic dermatitis and after a stretch of dealing with all of those at the same time my top layers of skin are just a disgusting infected mess

your statement's still true though

not_superiority posted:

contact dermatitis is an allergic reaction, and post those initial bouts of contact dermatitis, after it causes sufficient damage to my skin, I'd develop atopic dermatitis/eczema flare up. i also struggle with dyshidrotic dermatitis and after a stretch of dealing with all of those at the same time my top layers of skin are just a disgusting infected mess

your statement's still true though