aarongray

This was a great read. Thanks for the writeup.

Sealing works well if there is not visible mold growth on the item. So like think about sealing an art canvas in a home that had mold in it, but the art canvas was in the living room and the mold colony was in the bathroom under the shower. In that case, any sort of light sealant would trap any possible residual mycotoxins on the canvas so they will no longer float around the air in the home.

But if you have mold growing on unpainted wood joists, for example, because of a plumbing leak, you can't just paint over the mold colony on those joists with a sealant, because it may not penetrate deep enough into the wood, and you can't paint the backside of that joist where it touches the floor / ceiling, and so the mold often will just continue to grow and grow around your sealant. Many paints marketed as mold killers and sealers are totally ineffective at stopping the problem in scenarios like this.

Killing the mold isn't the problem. That's the easy part. Denaturing or removing the mycotoxins is the problem. The mold doesn't make you sick, it's the mycotoxins that some molds excrete that make you sick.

Look at this study that used gamma irradiation, detergent / bleach wash, and steam cleaning to test as ways to remove mold mycotoxins on paper, cloth, wood, and carpet. Unfortunately none of these techniques worked to inactivate mycotoxins, with two exceptions. A detergent / bleach wash worked to inactivate the mycotoxins on paper and cloth, but not on carpet or untreated wood. So porous surfaces must by physically removed and trashed to get rid of the mycotoxins. If you cannot physically remove it (like untreated wood that is a part of your houses' foundation), you must physically sand the mold off while using a HEPA vacuum to clean it all up.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15238314/

HERTSMI-2 is the most accurate. Often houses will pass air spore tests but HERTSMI-2 will catch the problem. It isn't necessary to do an ERMI - that tests for ALL molds in your house. You only need to test for Mycotoxin producing molds, which the HERTSMI-2 does.

This is the kit I recommend for testing for mold: https://www.envirobiomics.com/product/hertsmi-2/

Only costs $130. Buy the Swiffer kit. Vacuum is not as accurate. Clean the whole house, then wait 2-4 weeks, then use the Swiffer kit to collect dust that has settled in the bedrooms and living room. Don't do kitchen or bathrooms.

Interpreting a HERTSMI-2:

0-8: Excellent

9-10: Good

11-15: Possibly dangerous. Deep clean the whole house, especially locations that are rarely cleaned and have settled dust like the tops of ceiling fans, door frames, blinds, etc. Wait 2-4 weeks and retest. If the score is still 11 or above, you have a significant mold problem that needs to be found and remediated by professionals.

16-50: Dangerous. You have a significant mold problem that needs to be found and remediated by professionals.

If anyone is reading this and you think you have mold illness, lyme disease, or fibromyalgia, read Toxic, by Neil Nathan MD. This doctor has been treating patients for decades, and it is the gold standard for how to diagnose and treat the complex health issues that arise from mold exposure.

https://www.amazon.com/Toxic-Toxicity-Multiple-Sensitivities...

Case in point: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6178556/phone-numeric-ke...

Further reading here: https://molekule.science/air-quality-other-pollutants-beyond...

That said though, the Molekule team themselves have said that their device is not optimized for filtering particulate matter, but rather for denaturing mold, viruses, and bacteria. See: https://www.reddit.com/r/molekule/comments/6u7d5y/putting_mo...

This is reflected as well in the testing on Molekule's own website: https://molekule.cdn.prismic.io/molekule/4ec92005-d806-4991-...

And, I will say that they have numerous tests by independent labs. They did do some testing with their own lab and with a lab affiliated with them, but this is far from all the testing they have done. So to say that all their tests were tainted or affiliated with them is simply not true. See: https://molekule.com/papers

1) You're correct.

2) It will not clean the room just as fast, it will take longer to clean the room.

4) COVID-19 particles do travel on water molecules, but they are also airborne. The CDC has admitted this and there is a growing body of research proving this to be true as well.

5) This has not been proven.

Thanks for sharing some background on Molekule, I did not know about this.

I love the enthusiasm and DIY ingenuity here. That said, the post is tagged with COVID-19. The COVID virus particles are .1 to .5 microns in size, and these MERV-14 filters, while certainly better than nothing, are not going to capture a significant amount of these virus particles. A better approach is to not filter the particles, but actually rip them apart at a molecular level. This has the added benefit of destroying all sorts of other contaminents that even high grade HEPA filters will miss, such as mold mycotoxins. A system like the Molekule is a good example of this approach.

https://molekule.com/technology

It has a trackpoint mouse like the Thinkpads <3

Looks like Heroku posted a status page incident, largely retroactively: https://status.heroku.com/incidents/2409

'Close Your Mouth' by Patrick McKeown is the book I used and it really helped me.

I had a similar problem with chronic stuffy nose, recurring sinus infections, and a deviated septum. But Buteyko breathing practice was a big part in me getting better. There were other things I did too, but paradoxically, breathing through the nose (and the uncomfortable "suffocating" feeling that happens when you do this while having a stuffy nose) causes the CO2 in the body to rise, and if you keep this up for a little while, it causes your nasal passageways to expand and the mucus to thin and drain, which actually allows you to keep breathing out of the nose. Breathing out of the mouth on the other hand, has the opposite effect, which perpetuates the vicious cycle.

So, you just have to stick with it and study the exercises and tape your mouth shut if necessary at night. Things will get better, it just takes practice.

You're absolutely right. 'Close Your Mouth' by Patrick McKeown was revolutionary for me. Buteyko breathing is the real deal, unfortunately it is largely unknown in the modern American medical community.

Sorry to hear about your peripheral neuropathy. Check out some of the treatments for dysautonomia. There are some cutting edge treatments that have been developed over the past few years, they just haven't become mainstream knowledge or trickled down to the medical schools yet.

The two most effective approaches are using neuroplasticity exercises to retrain the limbic system (cheap, but time consuming - an hour a day for 6 months): https://ansrewire.com/ https://retrainingthebrain.com/

Or doing microcurrent neurofeedback (costs ~$150 a session, do one session a week for a couple months): https://microcurrentneurofeedback.com/

Essentially you have got to get the brain producing the proper amount and type of brain waves again, and then once you have that, slowly work back into exercising while trying to avoid triggers and push / crash cycles.

If you're interested in Biomarkers for Long Covid and ME/CFS, look up Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (CIRS). MMP-9, MSH, ACTH, TGF-beta 1, Cortisol, Glutathione, and Vasoactive Intestinal Peptide are a few of them. Lots of research here that was started by illnesses triggered by mold mycotoxins and lyme disease - the initial trigger is different than Covid - but the end result in terms of biomarkers and dysregulation in the body is the same. Doctors have been using these protocols to successfully treat patients for a few years now, but it just hasn't trickled down to the mainstream medical community or the medical schools yet.

Further reading:

- https://www.survivingmold.com/Publications/2493-Treatable_me...

- https://www.survivingmold.com/docs/Shoemakers_Protocol_for_p...

- https://www.survivingmold.com/Publications/CIRS_diagnostic_p...

Tell your friend to look into dysautonomia. There are some cutting edge treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome, they just haven't become mainstream knowledge yet.

The two most effective approaches are using neuroplasticity exercises to retrain the limbic system (cheap, but time consuming - an hour a day for 6 months): https://ansrewire.com/ https://retrainingthebrain.com/

Or doing microcurrent neurofeedback (costs ~$150 a session, do one session a week for a couple months): https://microcurrentneurofeedback.com/

Essentially you have got to get the brain producing the proper amount and type of brain waves again, and then once you have that, slowly work back into exercising while trying to avoid triggers and push / crash cycles.

In mentoring relationships, usually the mentee sets the agenda. In a coaching relationship, usually the coach sets the agenda... Code review is a pervasive example of coaching being confused with mentoring.

I can't speak to e-ink but regarding screen time addiction, I used Gray-Switch (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vegardit.g...) to turn my phone display black and white, and immediately my phone use decreased by 66%.

I was fortunate enough to have two parents that let me stay at home and homeschool until high school, then they sent me off to learn from others. They taught me how to do almost all of those things in your list as the opportunities presented themselves. Did we disagree? Yes. Did I hate gardening a lot of the time? Yes. But then my parents would play video games with me after we were done which I loved. We learned how to give and take, how to do what each other enjoyed, and how to do life together. Now that I'm in my thirties, working from home, and have a little family of my own, I'm trying to replicate my childhood as much as I can. I think you have a great dream, I say go for it!

Kids can homeschool and cover all the same courses taught in school in 1/3 of the time, which leaves a lot of extra agency for the things the author talks about - doing meaningful work from a young age, exploring the world, self-directed learning, etc. etc.

Humans don't have to bioengineer a weaponized virus on purpose for a lab to be what created the virus. One common thing that happens in these research labs is that viruses can jump from one lab culture to another and swap genetic material to make hybrids that are more contagious for example. This might explain the furin cleavage site in the spike protein that helps SARS-CoV-2 pry its way into human cells.

Further reading here: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/03/18/1021030/coronavi...

The grow / marketing step is the hardest part for technical folks and where most side projects fail in my experience. Building the product, figuring out if it makes sense financially, these kinds of things will probably be easy for you. Finding enough customers to make any meaningful amount of money is the killer. I would focus on answering that first.

Speaking as someone who lives adjacent to Bessemer but who does not work at Amazon, you need to understand that Bessemer is a dying city, a slum. These were the best paying jobs that many of these workers had had in their entire lives, it is no wonder that a majority of them decided not to bite the hand that was feeding them.

Haha I was wrong, I see what you were saying now. I thought you were saying that resistance == unaffected. But you were saying that the price of real estate rises when inflation occurs, so buy it before inflation happens. My bad. :)

Home prices in my area are up around 15% over the past year.

Real estate has clearly been shown to not be resistant to inflation over the past year.

There is no shame in being an average or below average software engineer. I would know, I am one myself. The key is to remember that we have one of the best jobs in human history.

You get paid an incredible amount of money, you can work from just about any place you want - from the most modern cities to a remote cabin in the countryside - and you have great job security. You can work for yourself as a freelancer and control your schedule, or work as an employee and have structure and security. If one place doesn't treat you well, there are countless other places that will hire you.

Not everyone gets to be above average or amazing at their job, so stop comparing yourself to other people. But if you really can't stop comparing yourself to other people, compare yourself to people in other trades. There are expert chefs, top 10%, and their job pays far less, demands far more hours, and is much more cutthroat than yours. There are musicians, athletes, artists, and performers who have spent almost every moment of their free time practicing their trade since they were kids, but they struggle to pay the bills or even find someone to hire them at all in their desired line of work. Just accept that, and forget about job titles. Don't find your identity in your title or in how you stack up compared to your peers. Just find a place to work where you can learn every day and that pays the bills, and then enjoy the life that you have inside and outside of work. You may never be a Mozart of software engineering, but that's really okay. You can still make beautiful, useful things and build a rich life being average. :-)