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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • I think there’s only 2 ways to actually kill a cast iron pan. Dropping from a height that causes the brittle metal to break, or putting lead in it. Obviously no one puts lead in their cooking vessels, but small pots are/were used to melt lead to pour in bullet molds, so if you find an old used pot, it’s good to check for lead.

    Also, ceramic linings can get chipped.

    You can mistreat bare cast iron horribly, never seasoning it, washing it in the dishwasher, or whatever, and it won’t get irredeemably damaged.




  • Weather is global, so agencies like the NOAA collect data from satellites, weather balloons, weather stations, buoys, etc. all over the world. NOAA’s data is a bit like GPS: paid for by US taxpayers, but used for the common good across the globe. Shutting them down wouldn’t just hurt weather prediction in the US, it would hurt everyone. Other developed countries can absolutely predict their own weather, but if they can’t include the volume of data generated by the US, their accuracy will suffer (and obviously likewise if the US couldn’t use EU data or whatever).


  • On the weather front (lol) one of project 2025s goals is to break up the NOAA. They want to do it specifically to hamper the ability for anyone to show the ongoing effects of climate change. If anyone thinks this is a conspiracy theory, it’s an actual conspiracy, and here is the direct quote from project 2025.

    Together, these form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity. This industry’s mission emphasis on prediction and management seems designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable. That is not to say NOAA is useless, but its current organization corrupts its useful func- tions. It should be broken up and downsized.


  • When I buy supermarket eggs, I refrigerate them because they are washed (in the US). When I get unwashed eggs (from a farm or a friend), I still refrigerate them and just wash them prior to use. I don’t have to refrigerate them since they have the cuticle intact, but refrigerating them still makes them stay fresher longer, so if I have the space for them, why would I not?

    That said, the eggs already come in a carton, so I’m not going to transfer them into a separate container in my fridge for no reason.


  • I wouldn’t consider these huge issues, but there’s 3 areas where I think the miir design suffers relative to the chemex. The pourover part looks like just a single wall. Obviously the chemex is, too, but according to a quick look on wikipedia, stainless has ~10x the thermal conductivity of borosilicate glass, so your brew chamber is going to cool more quickly. No clue if it would be enough to make a difference in brew temp, though.

    The stainless carafe part sounds good, too, but stainless travel mugs almost always get lots of coffee residue buildup, and it’s a bit of a process to get them properly clean to the point where you don’t smell it. I always end up washing with baking soda and/or citric acid a few times. Glass stays cleaner, and it’s also easier to see how clean it is.

    Lastly, it might just be me, but every once in a while, my scale times out if I’m doing other stuff while making coffee, or I’ll make coffee without a scale. It’s really nice to be able to see visually how much coffee there is in the carafe.




  • Community canneries still exist, but they used to be way more popular. In rural communities where people grow a lot of their own food, people can their own food, but pressure canners take a lot of time for a single batch to come up to pressure, cook, and cool.

    Community canneries have much bigger pressure canners where you could feasibly can everything in one batch. It’s also really enables people sharing surpluses, trading, etc.

    Many hobbies are better shared, too. If you have 20 people sharing a super high quality “item”, they will have a better experience than if each of those people had to buy their own crappy versions.

    Basically, a whole lot of things can be “libraried”.





  • No, as much as high school guidance counselors try to tell you different, there’s nothing magical about any STEM degree that will reliably get you a job.

    For most jobs, the “filter” is getting the job itself. Not having a relevant degree might prevent you from getting a job, but having the degree doesn’t mean you will be selected. There are exceptions like getting into medical school really sets you on a pathway where as long as you stick with it, you should end up with a job, bit that’s cause it’s really hard (and expensive) to get into med school, so that part is the “filter”.

    You might hear of a particular skillet being really hot that guarantees you a job, and that does happen, but it is really ephemeral. By the time you get a 4 year degree, the landscape may have changed.

    You can absolutely get a job with a 4 year hard science degree, but you can’t just go to class, get all A’s and step into a job. You need to be connected throughout the process. Also keep in mind what type of job you want to do, and where it is geographically. You might have good job prospects with a geology degree and fossil fuel expertise, but the jobs might be in undesirable locations.


  • The first step, in my opinion, is to find any existing local-ish datasets. I reckon that around you, there could be trees that go back well over 1000 years to use as a reference. You could then try to find the oldest ring of the wood in your house. It’s probably pretty hard to count back before that, but you could try to make estimates based on the circular ark of the grain pattern to determine a trunk diameter.