we just need to show them the truth

I once read this on lemmy and it stuck with me. I think it applies here:

The autistic trait that bites me in the ass most often is the unshakable belief that if I can just show someone the truth, they’ll believe me.

True for me, and worse, I never seem to learn.

My family members view is that the people I love don’t deserve to exist.

They mean it. They can get fucked. Political beliefs are beliefs, stop acting like they don’t mean anything to the people who hold them.

What’s your point? Antivaxxers are fuckwits who are trying to kill the innocent. They’d dispute that, but they don’t even understand how vaccines work, so what chance could they have of understanding cause and effect generally? And therefore, why should anyone give a shit what they have to say or what they think?

It’s a little hard to read but I think it says:

• Water
• Quaternary ammonium chloride (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_ammonium_cation, this appears to be a disinfectant/cleaning agent)
• Water softening agent (this is the citric acid, which also acts as an antimicrobial)

There seem to be health concerns about quaternary ammonium compounds, so in looking at alternatives I found reference to hypochlorous acid which is available in product form:

• https://berkshireezbleach.com/
• https://efchlor.com/water-purification/
• https://effersan.com/

Seems safe and effective: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypochlorous_acid

There doesn’t appear to be a reason not to mix hypochlorous and citric acids - it’s not like mixing ammonia and chlorine which makes deadly chlorine gas - but I’m not sure if mixing them would improve efficacy.

Just don’t use hypochlorous acid in your dishwasher, it starts to decompose into chlorine gas (and water, but the chlorine gas is the worry) above approximately 100°F.

The brick was probably just citric acid. Buy a bag from your local supermarket, you’ll find it in the kitchen section probably as a crystalline powder, and dump some of that in the humidifier water to also prevent buildup.

Fun fact, you can also run a larger amount of it through your empty dishwasher instead of those dishwasher cleaner packs; those are mostly citric acid too. Cheaper, and no horrible fake lavender scent or whatever it is they like to put in the packs.

Edit: the bricks could also have been hypochlorous acid which is available from various vendors:

• https://berkshireezbleach.com/
• https://efchlor.com/water-purification/
• https://effersan.com

Read the ingredients of this liquid. It’s probably just a bacteriostatic, meaning it’s simple chemicals designed to keep bacterial populations low between scheduled cleanings.

You can probably make your own by buying the ingredients and mixing them yourself. One of the most important is citric acid which you can get in the kitchen section of any supermarket; dump some in water and it makes a really good cleaning solution, and a few grains goes nice in a drink of water too (just a few grains though, it’s pretty strong stuff).

That is simply not correct in any way, shape, or form.

https://www.nature.com/articles/ni.3069

In addition to housing an extensive retinue of cells of the adaptive immune system, the lungs have other critical defensive abilities provided by the respiratory epithelial cells. Whitsett and Alenghat describe how the respiratory epithelium juggles its role as the surface of gaseous exchange with its ability to actively combat infectious agents and harmful particulate matter. On its most basic level, the epithelium represents a physical barrier that produces mucus, which entangles and sweeps away damaging agents via the action of the mucus ‘escalator’. However, even surfactant proteins, which are involved mainly in diminishing surface tension, ‘moonlight’ as antimicrobial molecules and are able to opsonise bacteria. The respiratory epithelium is also able to directly sense pathogens and respond via the release of antimicrobial peptides or signal escalation of the immune response through their production of the cytokines TSLP, IL-25 and IL-33. Collectively, these innate processes are usually able to maintain near-sterility of the lungs without the intervention of ‘conventional’ cells of the immune system.

It’s not necessarily “more dangerous” to breathe pathogens than consume them, the issue with evaporative humidifiers is that they don’t get cleaned as much as they should so the bacteria keep growing and growing and spraying more and more into the air until they overwhelm your immune system and make you sick. By contrast, you eat something bad and it’s one and done and out of your system (usually, assuming it’s not really nasty).

Well, having the office was nice because I like my colleagues. I’m lucky in that regard though, and as nice as it was to socialise at work, working from home is nicer. Not to mention much much cheaper by every metric. In conclusion fuck ever going back to the office, thank you for coming to my TEDx Talk.