What goes around, comes around. From wikipedia:
In 1940, at the age of 51, Midgley contracted polio, which left him severely disabled. He devised an elaborate system of ropes and pulleys to lift himself out of bed. In 1944, he became entangled in the device and died of strangulation.
Christ, I have no idea one man was responsible for both leaded petrol and CFCs. What a dumpsterfire of a legacy.
Touch of schadenfreude when the vid gets to the bit about him getting polio then accidentally necking himself in his DIY adjustable chair…
It’s May 6th - World Accordion Day
but for those who like the sound (the video shows the construction of a boat for the fiddler’s grandfather, a Whitby fisherman)
TIL that the wife’s maniac cousin has in all likelihood blagged a job with her current employer but in London.
God help the capital’s bachelors.
Will she be moving in with you 
For a while, quite possibly.
She’s brought her her personal brand of alcohol-fuelled mayhem here several times before.
Let me know when you’re all in The Dog and I’ll ask sis to film it for posterity
death can be bought very cheaply…
There was a very sad feature on Newsnight the other night on the impact of fentanyl in San Francisco.
Found it
Now been removed.
Oh…
basically for £10 you could get a ‘flap’ which was 15% fentanyl, 5% heroin plus god knows that else (laxatives, sugar…). As a drugs novice (like the reporter) it would be totally lethal but the guy would happily sell it to you - you’re a grown adult, what you put in your body is up to you, plus ‘I have to eat’
Not sure why it’s been removed as it’s not sensational or gory like many other vids…
I saw it and thought it was a very good insight into magnitude of the problem. That’s why I’m not pleased that it’s gone.
Fentanyl is deadly. Even handling it is seriously dangerous. It’s cheap and thanks to China it’s widely available. An overdose death by a dealer is seen as “a good advert” as addicts think the gear from this dealer must be strong… it fucking is. 50- 100 times stronger than pharmaceutical diamorphine which is considerably stronger than street heroin.
When the Wench started on fentanyl patches for pain relief, the pharmacy gave her one hell of a talking to about how to handle stuff if the kids managed to touch the wrong side of the patch for example. It’s also the only meds we’ve had that cannot be binned, they need to be returned to the pharmacy for processing.
Great story. Artists starve the world over. See La Colombe d’Or.
It kind of surprised me that Fentanyl became a street drug. When I worked in operating theatres in the early '80s, we used it as an intra-operative analgesic - its advantage being its very short period of effectiveness. This made it ideal for particularly painful kinds of surgery - and that matters because your body will still have a pain response even when you are heavily anaesthetised - and that can result in tachycardia, arrhythmia, hyperventilation, hypertension, arrest, &c. Fentanyl prevents this, but because of its short period of activity, it doesn’t usually interfere significantly with recovery from anaesthesia - which is important because opiates can severely depress respiration and delay a full return to consciousness…
So the idea of a street drug whose ‘benefits’ wear-off in 30 minutes seems fucking insane, never mind the fact that it’s potentially lethal. There’s an even more potent relative called ‘Alfentanil’, which I suppose is also in circulation now…?
Madness.