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Ricin is listed as an ingredient in my hair product (leave-in conditioner). I use about a tablespoon a week, and I don't rinse it out, meaning a small amount of it is always on my skin & my pillow. Is that... bad? Or is it just a translation error for the nontoxic part of castor oil (a common ingredient in cosmetics and hair products).
posted by vanilla.extract at 3:43 PM - 4 answers

I have a backpacking tent (REI brand, circa 2011) that's starting to shed and flake it's lining. I also have an Osprey backpack of the same vintage that's doing the same thing--there's little plasticky rubbery flakes coming off of the lining and getting stuck to whatever's in the bag. Is this just pure PFAS? If so, I should chuck these things, right? [more inside]
posted by stillmoving at 9:47 AM - 11 answers

I need a water retainer and thickener that works a lot like cornflour/cornstarch - it doesn't need to be edible but does need to survive an extremely basic environment. What is cheap and readily available? [more inside]
posted by deadwax at 10:12 PM - 11 answers

Very early in the Covid era I heard a talk or read a paper/article about the potential to develop a sterilising 'vaccine' to sterilise weed plants in-vivo (and in the field). This would be a real breakthrough as it would enable using the useful aspects of some serious weeds (eg growing really fast as nurse plants) while avoiding their spread. Does anyone here remember such a thing?
posted by unearthed at 1:22 AM - 2 answers

What is going on with this black, spongy mass on this branch? Image taken in Minnesota, in April of this year. Is that fungus? Some other arboreal ailment? An animal intervention of some kind?
posted by working_objects at 6:49 PM - 3 answers

I've been noticing large flocks of laughing gulls (hundreds to perhaps thousands) passing over me in the Tampa Bay area in Florida every evening before sunset for the past few weeks. The strange thing is - they're always flying south or southwest. I realize they're in Florida all year round, but why are they always flying in this direction this time of year, and in such large numbers?
posted by Seeking Direction at 5:00 PM - 1 answers

I buy a lot of secondhand items, and discount items from Amazon, the dollar store, etc. My young kids play with these items, in their damp little well-licked hands. What are some general principles to follow, to avoid unhealthy components like lead? [more inside]
posted by vanilla.extract at 2:06 PM - 7 answers

Someone I know experienced severe smoke inhalation during a house fire, and has been in an induced coma for several days. What exactly is the mechanism of such a severe smoke injury, and what might be a reasonable expectation for recovery / outcomes?
posted by anonymous at 2:58 PM - 5 answers

According to Wikipedia, the ancient Greeks "did not produce medical concepts about any symptoms associated with end of menstruation and did not use a specific word to refer to this time of a woman's life". So, presumably sometime between then and the early 1800s when French doctors coined the term. [more inside]
posted by Lemkin at 6:04 PM - 7 answers

Looking for a lucid dreaming app for my iPhone, on iOS 18.3. I haven't read about lucid dreaming in a while, my last research was before phone apps took over the world. So now I'm curious about using one of the various techniques that use sound cues to help the dreamer realize they are dreaming. I do not have an Apple Watch, Fitbit, or any other that other jive. What apps do folks like? [more inside]
posted by 4midori at 9:50 PM - 6 answers

I am taking several meds. With each prescription, I expect the doc to consider any possible negative interactions w/ any other med, and I always ask. But still, I am lately having some symptoms that I don't care for. Are they related? Aside from grilling each provider again, is there a way to have the meds/dosage interactions evaluated?
posted by ebesan at 6:23 PM - 6 answers

Modern phones have accelerometers and gyroscopes in them that continuously collect data about their relative motion and orientation in space. When I show my mug to my phone, it is required that I hold the phone in portrait orientation and upright (ie. with the visible and IR camera package at the top of the device, face pointed at the screen). If the phone has the hardware and software needed to transform the visible/IR scan data appropriately (applying a rotation operation, at least), why is this fixed positioning still a requirement? [more inside]
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:48 PM - 3 answers

Can rechargeable Ni-MH batteries cause actual damage to small electronics? How? [more inside]
posted by katieinshoes at 2:44 PM - 20 answers

I am currently using radar.weather.gov to watch weather radar. Though functional and ad-free, the site is horribly coded : it is maxing out 100% of a M-series CPU core on my MacBook (Activity Monitor/ the 'Safari Graphics and Media' process hits 100% or above) when this page is visible and playing. If I pause and hide the browser window, cpu usage goes back to zero). [more inside]
posted by soylent00FF00 at 7:50 AM - 10 answers

They say the latter “dwarfs” the former, but I don’t know how to interpret that. Would a nested G(G(…G(x))) function filling every Planck volume in the observable universe even be in the ballpark? On a logarithmic scale of increasing enormity, is Graham’s number closer to 1 than it is to TREE(3)? Is it practically indistinguishable from 1? Is TREE(3), like, a whole different strata of reality?
posted by Lemkin at 12:23 PM - 4 answers

I need to be able to get a sense of what the weather was like, this week, last year. I need to be able to look up major Canadian cities. [more inside]
posted by walkinginsunshine at 4:56 PM - 5 answers

What are the odds of 3 people in a randomly selected group of 50 having the same birthday?
posted by Lemkin at 9:59 AM - 28 answers

From the mulch have arisen half a dozen objects that sure look like morels to me. Is that what they really are? [more inside]
posted by Dr. Wu at 9:13 AM - 12 answers

Is there a way to preserve an entire section of a (US government) website (not a single web page) for someone who is not the owner or administrator? Could an individual request that the Internet Archive do so? I am thinking of a fairly niche sub-site (previously at livertox.nih.gov) that lets you research liver effects of specific drugs. I am concerned the site could go offline any time. [more inside]
posted by M. at 5:13 AM - 10 answers

I'm interested in books about paleontology in the American West/Rocky Mountain/Great Plains area. I'm building the itinerary for a dinosaur road trip this summer, including Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Nebraska, and I'm looking for good background books related to dinosaurs, paleontology, geology, and fossils. [more inside]
posted by gingerbeer at 11:45 PM - 11 answers