[rubs temples] Do I need to explain depleted uranium again? I don’t wanna explain depleted uranium again. Dammit @dankaszeta.bsky.social The primary bit is covered in the first section of this rant which Cheryl Rofer strongly encouraged me to write. Depleted Uranium, dep-U or DU in comman shorthand, is the remainder after natural uranium has been …
Category Archives: Reference Rants
The Delta Movie File – READY PLAYER ONE
In the long, long ago, in the beforetimes, when Delta’s GoGo In-flight Entertainment System was a thing, I watched many movies on my iPad Mini flying around this world of ours. This, of course, can get a bit boring on long flights even in first class. Delta didn’t rotate their movies often and their catalog …
Radioactive Shrimp
Yes, I saw the story about the FDA recall of shrimp from Walmart because of Cs-137 contamination. Do I know exactly how this happened? No and it is likely to be a while until we get any definitive answers, if ever. But I do have a pretty good idea what happened by which I understand …
CHOOSE YOUR OWN RADIATION ADVENTURE: Anti-Drone Warfare
I’m very proud of all of you for identifying that these are all TERRIBLE IDEAS. The thing about terrible ideas is that they still occur to people. Sometimes staggering amounts of money will be spent to try to make them real and marginally less terrible. [The twenty sixth in an ongoing series of my compiled …
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CHOOSE YOUR OWN RADIATION ADVENTURE: Murder By Nuclide
Only a few of you failed out of counter-terrorism theater club: when you are handed select choices to investigate, the money wants you to investigate those. The money does not appreciate when you question their premises/choices or study things they didn’t pay you to consider. [The twenty fifth in an ongoing series of my compiled …
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Tariffs, BANI and Coffee Agronomy
When enough people ask the same question, it’s probably time to write down an answer, especially when your mom asks. And it’s this: “Will you be raising your BBotE prices because of Trump’s tariffs? How much?” ANSWER: Not at this time, nor can I even guess how much of an increase might be needed if …
My Most Evil Coins
I have often described myself as a human giftschrank. That I keep ahold of the poisonous knowledge that others need to forget to have a happy life, but that it is important to keep around for when we need it. When someone needs to “rediscover” some horrible event to bring cautionary tales back to everyone …
Antique Rot
Man, I could have sworn I wrote down a description of Antique Rot before. When a undiversified town loses it’s economic base, it also loses it’s youth to new opportunities elsewhere. The town and it’s population are now aging and dying. One of the ways to hang on for a little bit longer, maybe squeeze …
Fiestaware & Uranium Glass
Fine. FINE! After the who knows how manyeth time of being asked or having someone referred to me, I am writing this down for ease of reference to just point at. TL;DR version – It’s perfectly safe to possess Fiestaware & uranium glass in your home and to consume food or drink that isn’t acidic with/from/on …
How I Got My Laser Eye Injury
It has been brought to my attention that I have never actually written this story down before, merely told it in person to many students for valuable lessons and also for laughs over cocktails. It is a litany of bad ideas from several people that all came together at once to reach out and zap …
Evolution Of Safety Equipment – The Berkeley Box
For folks that haven’t been lucky enough to experience the “Phil Points At Things That Aren’t There Anymore” Manhattan Project Tour of Berkeley, there is a secondary bit of education that comes courtesy of having 160 years worth of chemistry buildings still standing to point at. I similarly do this for students when getting them …
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CHOOSE YOUR OWN RADIATION ADVENTURE – Kneejerk Spent Fuel Solutions
People who believe they have True Ultimate Power want nice, simple, sound bite executable solutions that obliterate nuance and complications with BOLD & DECISIVE ACTION. Were those actions good and appropriate? Ehhhhhh. [The twenty-third in an ongoing series of my compiled explainers for my CHOOSE YOUR OWN RADIATION ADVENTURE quizzes. There’s never really a right …
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Phil vs. LLMs
Last year, my friend Ed made a post regarding the nascent proliferation of ChatGPT and competitors into various search engines and other products. With a moment’s contemplation after reading it, I just realized how spectacularly bad this could go if, for example, you went to do a search for an chemical’s Material Safety Data Sheet …
BONUS MONEY RANT: Maundy Money
Per the Catholic Church, and other denominations that notionally agree with their calendar, it’s Holy Week. Pretty much every day in from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday has a special name. For example, as I write this, today is Fig Tuesday because important fig related things happened today in the life of Jesus. Tomorrow is …
It’s A Training Problem
When you hand me an incident report and you list “training issues” as a root cause, you just told me that I need to pay MUCH CLOSER ATTENTION to management and the person that wrote this report. Why? Let’s take a moment to look at the Safety Professional’s Blessed Cosmology. Training sits in Administrative Controls. …