Ethanol is a naturally occurring substance, humans and many animals have specifically evolved ways of processing it. In moderate doses it does no harm.
It's almost impossible to avoid ingesting some alcohol during the course of a natural diet, and that includes if you avoid fermented food such as bread, let alone beverages deliberately brewed to be alcoholic.
Isn't the problem of poisoning caused by Methanol and not Ethanol?
Gemini says this:
"Ethanol is the type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages (beer, wine, spirits) meant for consumption. While ethanol is safe for moderate consumption, methanol is extremely toxic and can cause poisoning, blindness, or death, even in small amounts."
Ethanol can be used as a temporary measure in methanol poisoning as it temporarily outcompetes methanol in the metabolic process. So it's only useful until proper medical help arrives when better alternatives such as fomepizole are administered. Even then there is no guarantee of success.
Methanol is still metabolized to dangerous formaldehyde and formic acid by the liver's alcohol dehydrogenase. The logic of giving ethanol or fomepizole is to slow down the rate of production methanol's dangerous metabolic byproducts so less damage is done, nevertheless those dangerous metabolites are still produced.
Ethanol's first-pass metabolite is acetaldehyde and it is still toxic but not to the same degree as those of methanol.
It is incorrect to say ethanol is an antidote for methanol poisoning. Using ethanol is a last-ditch stand to try and take some minor control of an otherwise out of control situation. There's nothing subtle about it—it's a blunderbuss approach that often doesn't work well because replacing one poison with a less toxic one is a pretty hit-and-miss process.
Antidotes counteract poisons, that's not what happens when you give ethanol in methanol poisonings.
> The logic of giving ethanol or fomepizole is to slow down the rate of production methanol's dangerous metabolic byproducts so less damage is done, nevertheless those dangerous metabolites are still produced.
Who cares if dangerous metabolites are "still produced" when the danger has been limited? It's like claiming that blood transfusions don't help with shock because the patient still lost the same amount of blood.
> Using ethanol is a last-ditch stand to try and take some minor control of an otherwise out of control situation.
This is some weird-ass over-elaborate synonym for antidote.
> There's nothing subtle about it—it's a blunderbuss approach that often doesn't work well because replacing one poison with a less toxic one is a pretty hit-and-miss process.
I don't even know what this is supposed to mean. This all reads like AI slop.
> Antidotes counteract poisons, that's not what happens when you give ethanol in methanol poisonings.
You literally give it to them to counteract the poison. You're using a idiosyncratic version of the word "counteract," which doesn't relate to the health or survival of the person poisoned, but has a lot to do with the absolute levels of "dangerous metabolites produced."
"This is some weird-ass over-elaborate synonym for antidote."
I did not say or infer that ethanol should not be used in the treatment of methanol poisoning.
Giving ethanol to counteract methanol poisoning is not a simple fix like giving naloxone for a herion OD (which works effectively in minutes), it's more complicated and often involves multiple procedures such as hemodialysis and strict monitoring of ethanol levels (assuming one knows what that level should be, ipso facto, how much methanol was consumed and whether it was coconsumed with ethanol—facts often not readily available in an emergency department).
The almost flippant assumption that ethanol is a fix all panacea for methanol poisoning by many who've posted here is just irresponsible. Fact is methanol OD is a major medical emergency and in no way should it be played down.
If I have to be the bringer of unwelcome truths then so be it. Shooting the messenger generally makes things worse.
> A 10% ethanol solution administered intravenously is a safe and effective antidote for severe methanol poisoning. Ethanol therapy is recommended when plasma methanol concentrations are higher than 20 mg per dl, when ingested doses are greater than 30 ml and when there is evidence of acidosis or visual abnormalities in cases of suspected methanol poisoning.
Under
> 7.4. Antidotes and Elimination Enhancement
> 7.4.2. Ethanol
A therapeutic blood ethanol level of about 22 mmol/L (100 mg/dL) is recommended.
...
>If ethanol was coingested with methanol and the blood ethanol level initially was >22 mmol/L (100 mg/dL), the bolus dose of ethanol can be skipped.
It's like you didn't even read your own source.
They are calling it recommended for certain conditions, and saying you can skip parts of treatment for co-ingestion!
Then in the conclusions section
> Despite its extensive use, methanol poisoning remains a critical public health concern globally, often resulting from accidental or intentional ingestion and outbreaks linked to contaminated beverages.
They've called out contaminated beverages, not outputs of distillation.
You've been had by misinformation and now you're peddling lies.
> Ethanol is the most commonly used antidote to block the metabolising of methanol. Ethanol works by competing with the metabolic breakdown of methanol, thereby preventing the accumulation of toxic byproducts.
And those who don’t almost always only set a minimum price, so you can still pay more if you want. And if you buy on BC Friday [0] (next is February 6th), Bandcamp doesn’t even take a cut of the revenue.
> And if you buy on BC Friday [0] (next is February 6th), Bandcamp doesn’t even take a cut of the revenue.
Bandcamp Friday is such a fun day, I always have +5 purchases lined up from the previous month, and usually keep track of the social media of the artists I buy from that day, and many of them post something really wholesome about how much they made on that day :) Such a fun time all around.
I’ve wanted something like this ever since the early Napster days. Patreon is the closest thing but that puts an onus on the artists to produce content all of the time. If some of my favorite less popular artists had their Venmo in their Instagram profile I would probably use that.
I bought the vinyl release which also came with the digital download of an album last year. When the vinyl arrived, there was a handwritten personalized thank you note from the artist. Best of all worlds
this wasn't the point ... the point is that the whole thing is getting more and more political and less technical and fun.
I was at the camp and some congresses in the past and they where always fun but nowadays it seems like it's like a political movement event for certain strands and ideologies and way less fun and interesting things (thou there are gems) and it seems that you have to think a certain way or at least accept certain positions even if it's not your position because otherwise you are silly or something else.
IMHO, CCC is completely defanged as a political institution. They went along with contact tracing because the local app was open source and somewhat secure and many of the regulars in local spaces people will cause lots of drama if you don't wear a mask in 2025.
Most local hackerspaces I visited are basically green and leftist queer safe spaces where adults run around with stuffed animals. If that's what you're looking for, great, I'm not judging, it just doesn't click with me. I used to visit hackerpaces during my travels but regardless of how open and kind I approach a new place, once they ask me to mask up or inquire for my pronouns things just don't end well, even if I'm really polite in explaining my position. That's not the tolerance and open mindedness I encountered around 2009 during my first C3.
Still, I wish everyone attending the best of times. There's so many people there that I imagine you'll be able to find the right folks if you're there and look around.
Not looking for a debate or inciting hate towards anyone here.
Culture changes. Hacker culture in Europe changed too, young people are moving up and taking positions in local organizations. You didn't change with it, and you're not open to accepting that change, so you are feeling out of place - that's simply how this works.
A lot of those people will feel welcomed and will be treated with respect that they don't usually get everywhere else. They decided to embrace that, it comes at a cost - like you feeling weirded out and not showing up - but they're probably fine with that being your problem to figure out.
I've moved on, all good, change is perfectly fine. I just think they lost something that made CCC special. Got my own decentralized trusted circles now. I think I made it quite clear that I wish anyone still attending these events and spaces all the best regardless.
CCC always has been explicit far left/green, looking at its history, as other people in here have mentioned.
I think it would be fair to say that the club as a whole has become more open about that, I think that's more owed to a lot of folks driving initiatives feeling like the walls are closing in on them though and I can't exactly fault them for that :)
I can fully relate ... back in the days there wasn't much (at least I don't remember) of "this kind" of ppl and everything was just hacking. However I can imagine what you mean.
At the end this growing craziness does not change any time soon so you are right ... "finding the folks that fit you" is maybe the best advice (and this hasn't to be the CCC).
Fortunately the interesting talks are often recorded so nobody has to attend who don't want in order to get the interesting stuff.
I really do appreciate your willingness to live and let live. Too many people from all perspectives are missing that ability when it comes to non-critical things, and forget that they can just… not hang out with the people they disagree with.
The other comments below you seem to be willingly ignoring that you did the mature/kind thing and just wished them well and moved on, whereas a less mature person would have caused a ruckus.
No problem. And FWIW, I’m what I’d consider a highly left-wing person. I only say that to give a sample that not all of us are like that. But I recognize that the loud ones get the attention.
I draw the line on live-and-let live only when the other person’s ideology poses a physical threat to me or my liberties, or those of other folks. But what you describe is how things ought to be - if you don’t feel like hanging around leftists, who the hell cares? I probably wouldn’t want to hang out in a highly conservative space, but I also don’t care if they hang out without me.
Yeah, it's really not wierd that people thinking that using secure technologies, firewalls and privacy to defend against infections on their electronics would also strongly support using a firewall to defend themselves from disease in the physical space.
The fact that your opinion usually comes together with other incompatible political opinions of folks that's been running those spaces for decades doesn't help either.
They didn't change. You however became something they always despised.
>it's really not wierd that people thinking that using secure technologies, firewalls and privacy to defend against infections on their electronics would also strongly support using a firewall to defend themselves from disease in the physical space
On the other hand, there is a discongruency when people who are against control and surveillance start implementing control and surveillance because the particular purpose sanctified the means. Something that previously seemed non-negotiable, culturally fundamental even, was toppled.
> using secure technologies, firewalls and privacy to defend against infections on their electronics
Why not use secure technologies, firewalls and privacy to defend against infections in general?
Isn't it also clear who benefits from this decreased trust in politics, or the apathy in politics? It is always the same group: the far right authoritarians.
You just gave the best example of how these interactions usually play out. You know basically nothing about me and yet you assume to know exactly "what I've become" and that I deserve to be "despised" based on 2 statements that don't tell you anything about me because I never explained my positions in depth.
I spent more than a decade in and around 2-3 local hackerspaces and some of the best practices and infrastructure I introduced/built are still in place. You really know nothing about me to arrive at this conclusion, thereby proving my point that the culture has shifted - not me.
> Most local hackerspaces I visited are basically green and leftist queer safe spaces where adults run around with stuffed animals.
So what? You’re not being asked or expected to feel empathy - just show tolerance. Which is the easiest virtue to develop - just ignore behavior which doesn’t threaten you.
If someone is doing their own thing - wearing a MAGA hat, a rainbow t-shirt or carrying a fluffy toy - it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. Why does it bother you unless they’re getting in your face?
What is "so what" supposed to mean that isn't covered already by the exact sentence afterwards? Why even come at me with "tolerance" when that's exactly what I haven't been receiving, as I laid out in the paragraph you selectivity quoted. What's your point exactly?
> Synonyms of bigot
> a narrow-minded person who obstinately adheres to their own opinions and prejudices
especially : one who strongly and unfairly dislikes or feels hatred toward others based on their group membership
I merely shared a behaviorial observation of something I find odd. At no time did I react with prejudice or hate towards any particular group.
We might be the same age; I remember that defacing conservative websites was already a C3 thing about 20 years ago. Back then, it felt good to punch up against authoritarianism. Hackers hated Bush and his Patriot Act just as much as many hate Trump now. In Germany, the CDU is of course the perennial enemy.
But what happens when authoritarianism does not come from the right, but from the left or center? (Not a contradiction: East Germany was an "anti-fascist" totalitarian state as recently as 40 years ago.) Sadly, I think we have been slowly moving in this direction since Covid, where I was genuinely shocked that many of my "leftie" friends had turned into government drones (from my perspective), while they were deeply disappointed that I was now a "right-winger" (from their perspective).
The more aware they become of how unpopular some of their politics are, the less they believe in democracy as a concept, while I'm still jealous of countries that have proper referendums and freedom of speech. Hate Speech laws are accelerating this divide.
Anyway, I think that these are the dynamics that are driving many people apart who all simultaneously claim to not have changed in decades. The CCC is still doing a lot of great work, but I do feel it drifting away from me because it is not so much about punching up than about punching right.
The authoritarianism quick clearly and explicitly comes from the far right, Putin and Trump. Claiming anything else is ridiclous, its not even hidden anymore. Its a clear outright endorsment.
Back in the Bush days it was about defending freedom but being to invasive about doing it. Nobody was talking about Bush they do about Trump. And the CDU of old is certaintly not the modern AfD.
Claiming the lefts action in covid even approches the lines of thought out of Trump, AfD or Putin isnt a serious argument.
That is not what I said at all. My claim is that, regardless of what the authoritarian right is doing, the left has become more tolerant of authoritarianism itself, especially to 'save democracy' (which is again reminescent of the GDR, starting from its very name).
As to why this split is happening, I'd argue it was easier to be anti-authoritarian when we were in the opposition, just as today's AfD reliably votes against Chat Control or other power grabs because it makes them look good at no cost. But the left has become a dominant force due to its long march through the institutions, and some want to use this power to crush the enemy (debanking, police raids for milquetoast internet comments). Others look at the internet compass from your sibling post and decide they'd rather hang out with people in the libertarian right than with _any_ kind of authoritarian.
Just to be clear, I'm not saying the CCC is an authoritarian organization. But I doubt they'll ever be too critical of our intransparent "Trusted Flagger" system, for example, because they know it would anger many in their crowd. 20 years ago we'd have agreed that this kind of crap only happens in China.
Hacking and politics was always deeply intertwined in Germany/Europe. Especially the CCC has always been at least as much a political organization as it is a hacker community.
Hey, at least you can reasonably argue that the political content has been headed downhill since the more aggressive days of the past. Do we see wikileaks or the likes anymore? Not really.
Without direct action it's just nerds reading out their blog posts about politics, which couldn't be less interesting.
There has been plenty of direct action in recent years, but I can't really think of any on a global scale. Lots of smaller things on a German level, like journalists reporting about infiltrating a Great Replacement conference hosted by the second biggest political party here.
Sure, but it is unarguably much more boring stuff than it was years ago. I attend almost every Congress with a variety of groups, and there's certainly been a culture shift over the years from lots of anarchists who had no qualms with breaking the law to much more corporate scaredy-cats.
Congress seems to keep growing so perhaps this is just serving a broader audience. But knowing a lot of long-time attendees, I'm certainly not alone in thinking Congress is starting to be less interesting than it used to be. I'm certainly not trying to say the event sucks though, there's still a plenty of interesting stuff happening.
Back in the old days, you could sit down at a table in the hackcenter and do stuff that was more of the exploratory pentesting kind. Because everyone around you understood. Because there were strict "no-photos" policies in place. Because all people were technical and in it primarily for the technical challenge.
Nowadays you cannot do that anymore, because most visitors are non-technical. Nobody respects the photo policy. Everyone judges your actions through their political lens. Instead all the "action" happens elsewhere and CCC became much more about social stuff, talking and politics. And of course about policing and judging other peoples' politics.
I'm not just referring to the talks, but the whole event. But we used to have groups like wikileaks heavily featured, they certainly weren't worried about too many eyeballs.
>like journalists reporting about infiltrating a Great Replacement conference hosted by the second biggest political party here.
And making stuff up that was never talked about there to start a political movement to get that party banned? Yeah nice democracy and journalism there.
Actually I can't ask a court whether you were at that conference without knowing your legal identity - care to share? And why should I expect the court to have a complete list of who was there, and to answer questions about that list? Seems much easier to ask you, and it's strange you don't want to answer.
What are you talking about? Pure nonsense. Discussions about "great replacement" never happened, that's an undeniable fact proven by court records and news media are not allowed to repeat these claims (324 O 439/24, 324 O 524/24, 7 W 78/24).
You might want to check your own source there. Seems to be the opposite of what you claim. The complaints were dismissed and the media is allowed to report.
You might want to read the post again, the court claimed it not as a journalistic news article but as an opinion piece. And it's not the final verdict.
The user had more arguments than just "it's all politics". What level of scrutiny does his statement have to hold up to? Because as far as I am concerned this is not here to find scientific truths.
I don't know man. It's always the same debate: It's either "too much politics" or
"no change at all" whenever this issue comes up and the "nothing changed" crowd keeps on reminding everyone that C3 "was always like that". I'm not requesting a scientific study but if you're this convinced that nothing changed despite may old school attendees chiming in to confirm the opposite, perhaps it would be helpful to compare old and new schedules.
I find it strange you didn't latch on to the original comment, which has the exact same problem you complained about, but reacted to the response. The best action is to ignore threads and sub-threads you don't care about and leave others who do to their fun.
well, it has a lot to do with people growing up during cold war and german reunification.
There were many stories where people lost faith in politics (e.g. after Chernobyl), so people gathered together to do stuff on their own. I think being "social" (to all people), decentralized and mistrusting authorities is just a left thing. so that's just a natural thing imho
That chernobyl and western politics is in any way connected is due to decades unscientific fearmongering. And Berlin has always been a hotbed for that.
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