Do you use one that is actual chain, or braided wire? I’ve used the braided wire saws, and I like how tiny/light they are, but I’ve never used one of the chain style saws to see if the weight/volume increase is worth it.

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.

It’s a real baader-meinhoff phenomenon: once you notice them, you notice that every gym has them.

They keep coming out with fancier models, but the 5200 still reigns supreme. Who needs programs on a blender?

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.

And they don’t seem to wear sunscreen

You aren’t wrong, but you are being a little unfair to Amtrak. You always see people saying the same thing about amtrak and other forms of public transit as well as services like the post office. Yes, amtrak receives subsidies, but prior to covid, they had a 99% farebox recovery ratio, i.e., 99% of the cost of a ride is covered by the fare, and the remaining 1% by subsidy. Covid dropped travel numbers across the board, but they are still forecasting 86% for this year

Compared to the interstate highway system, which is covered 0% by fares, Amtrak is performing incredibly efficiently. By mentioning that amtrak is subsidized, you are insinuating that driving is not.

Amtrak actually legally has right of way over freight, it’s just that the freight companies break the law, and no one does anything about it. https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/public/documents/corporate/HostRailroadReports/mythbusters-enforcing-amtraks-legal-right-to-preference.pdf

In case people think you are joking, I want to clarify that you are not joking. Amish, and similar groups like some Mennonites, absolutely vacation by train

Do yourself a favor and find a local small farmer to buy eggs directly from. They are much better than supermarket eggs. It’s not necessarily a matter of keeping eggs from going bad, it’s more about preserving them at that peak flavor/texture. I have no clue where this picture is from, so I don’t know if the data are sound, but you get the idea. https://digitaleggtester.com/wordpress/wp-content/themes/nabel/files/images/egg/img_yi02.png

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.

Eggs survive in the wild at ambient temp because when they are laid, a coating basically seals off the egg. Unfortunately, chickens have one hole, and they are messy animals, so there’s often some poop, too. In many countries, this coating is left intact, and technically, you should wash eggs before using them so nothing from the shell ends up inside when you crack it. As Americans, we have bigger houses and bigger fridges, and we love convenience, so we wash our eggs prior to packaging. This means they have to be refrigerated.

Either approach works, but the important thing is not to leave washed eggs unrefrigerated.

What do you want the butter for? Obviously it’s used in a bunch of ways, and the “best” substitute likely depends on what you need it for.

If it’s just lubricating a pan for a stir fry, you can just use any oil well suited to the heat (also dependent on whether you want it to be neutral tasting).

If it’s for spreading on toast, it really doesn’t matter.

If it’s for baking, butter has 3 components that are potentially important; fat, water, and emulsifier.

You need the right % of fat (really nerdy bakers point out the difference between “american style” butter at 80% fat and “European style” at 82%). The type of fat is also important. Saturated fats are usually hard at room temperature, while unsaturated fats are liquid. That will have an effect on things like the spread of a cookie as it bakes. Obviously, the flavor of the fat makes a difference, too. You can get coconut oil that’s been refined so it doesn’t taste like anything, which may be what you want for some recipes. Some people try to use margarine as a stand in for butter in bakes, but usually, the fat percentage is too low. If you want to nail the right fat percentage, you might want to do a split between margarine and vegetable shortening. 3 parts shortening to 1 part margarine seems like it hits the right %.

The butter is either going to be “sweetcream”, i.e., made from refrigerated milk so the lactose stays intact, or “cultured” where it’s been fermented to convert lactose to lactic acid. That acid gives a “tang” that you might want depending on the use case, so you might choose a product with some acid in it.

Lastly, butter has proteins in it that emulsify the fat and water. This is usually replaced with soy lecithin. This is going to be important depending on what you are making. Cooking techniques like “mounting” a sauce really depend on it, so make sure if you are making a pan sauce that there’s lecithin in the butter.

TL;DR, food scientists know all this stuff, so if you see a product marketed as “plant based butter” for use in baking, it should work just fine. If those products are weirdly expensive, or you don’t like the taste in other applications, read what I wrote.

This is the lab behind the poop knife. They are absolutely experts in this kind of thing.

I need to read the whole paper, but I suspect the weight/wind resistance ratio of the javelin is better, and that the motion of launching an atlatl dart is affected by the downward angle. The railing on the scissor lift likely has an effect, too.

Do you primarily use hand tools or power tools? Also, are you looking for a primary work bench, or an assembly bench?

Hand tool benches, you want them to be really heavy and sturdy since they get loaded in shear a lot by things like planing and sawing. For a hand tool bench, you basically need to decide what you have to work with, and what your work style is like. I like go be able to just clamp stuff to my bench top, so a Nicholson bench is a little annoying for me. Also, think about the space you have available, and whether you are right or left handed. For handtool work, I would prefer a face vice and a tail vice, with plenty of dog holes.

For power tools, the name of the game is modularity and mobility. Everything should be the same height and on wheels so you can move stuff around to act as infeed/outfeed tables. They don’t need to be as heavy or sturdy, so you can use some space under the bench for more efficient storage. It’s also nice to have a few ways to clamp other tools down.

For anyone who’s confused as to how this sorcery could work, it’s due to the chemistry/physics of the battery. As batteries discharge, there is more crystal growth of the electrolyte. Crystals can store mechanical energy like a spring, while the electrolyte in solution absorbs energy. It’s like dropping a water balloon vs dropping a solid rubber ball.

I think body hair holds onto a considerable amount of water, so people without much body hair don’t carry as much water with them when they step out.

They want to merge with Albertsons, who owns the other half of grocery stores: Acme, Safeway, jewel osco, and a bunch more.

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”.