Leggo my prego?

Wouldn’t that only be correct about 25% of the time?

Are you using a different type of screen protector than you were used to on your old phone? Tempered glass screen protectors in particular can reduce touch sensitivity since they tend to be thicker.

Huh, I guess I’d never really looked into the chemistry behind the distinction (which is strange because i am a chemist that loves food), but Maillard reactions involve the proteins, while caramelization involves the sugars. Though both are examples of nonenzymatic browning.

The good news is that the wiki page for caramelization says that either acidic or basic conditions speed up the caramelization processes, so i think we’re good to go in either front!

Heating a solution of aqueous bicarbonate will release carbon dioxide, too. But since we have delicious onions and stuff in there too, let’s walk through my thought process: Baking powder is baking soda + weak acid + cornstarch (to prevent premature reaction). Since the speed-up for the Maillard reaction works by deprotonating amino groups to make them more nucleophilic, the acid-base reaction that releases CO₂ when using baking powder will still occur with just baking soda + food (ie: the protiens in the food are acting as the acid). You’re probably right that using baking powder would produce more CO₂, or at least produce it faster, but reducing carcinogenic side products for Maillard reactions via CO₂ is a low-priority concern for me anyway. Just a fun curiousity that occured to me when reading the wiki page!

Sorry if my carbon dioxide subscripts don’t work. I don’t think my client supports all the fancy markdown, but i tried my best.

Oh shit. That is so cool! I knew lye was used in making pretzels, but i didn’t know it was to get the Maillard browning to happen faster. The wiki page says that one way to reduce the formation of acrylamide, a carcinogen, is by adding carbon dioxide, which is actually released when baking soda is dissolved in water will be released during cooking (edit: see reply chain below for discussion on this point)… IDK for sure if it’s enough to really help, but I’m gonna just roll with it and say it is because delicious food is delicious.

That assumes Trump is a good enough judge of character to be able to tell actual loyalists from sycophants, which I strongly doubt he can.

Omg. You just made me realize MY backpack is a quarter of a century old. Just out of curiosity, is it a jansport? I wonder if they still “make 'em like they used to” or if they’ve fallen prey to enshittification like everything else…

Yes, i do think the biggest problem is shoving so many different tricks at them at once that it leads to confusion. There was also a bit of frustration from some of my tutees from having to solve the same problems multiple times. Some found it boring and tedious, and some found it confusing and made them less confident in their skills since not all methods they were taught “clicked”.

When I was tutoring, i had a few elementary-school aged kids. They’d have homework where they had to do the problems three or so different ways, using each of the methods that they were taught (one of which was always the way I was taught when I was their age). I actually feel like I learned a lot from them, as there were some interesting tricks that I didn’t know before helping with the homework. I think that’s a really good way to approach it, because a kid may struggle with some of the methods but generally was able to “get it” with one of them, and which method was “the best” was entirely dependent on the kid. For me, being able to see which methods clicked and which ones didn’t helped me be more effective as a tutor, too, since it showed me a bit more about how their individual little brains were working.

But I agree, if you’re not also at least trying to explain why the different methods get you the same answer, it can lead to problems down the line. Some of them saw the “why” for themselves after enough time working at it, and some needed a bit more external guidance (which, considering they were coming to me for tuturoing, I guess they weren’t getting at school). My argument would be that no one really taught me “why” when I was in school learning The One Way to do math either. I still had to figure out little tricks that worked for me on my own, since my brain is kinda weird. It may not have taken me so long to believe that i’m actually pretty damn good at math if I’d done those kids’ homework when I was their age, as i would have had more tools in the toolbox to draw from.

Yup. There’s also an even older Sumerian myth of very similar content: Enlil (ancient mesopotamian god of air, earth, and storms) thought humans were too noisy and decided to destroy them all with a great flood; I guess he really needed some sleep. Luckily, Enki (god of water, knowledge, and creation) told one guy, probably a priest, Ziusudra, to build a boat big enough for his family and a breeding pair of every animal.

Sounds pretty familar, right? Couple of names changed compared to the one in Gilgamesh. And, other than having two gods in the story instead of one, it’s almost exactly the same as Noah and the Ark (of course, there is some compelling evidence that the old testament god in the bible was originally multiple older gods that over time got “absorbed” into one God, hence why he has so many different personalities depending on which story you are reading).

The peoples telling these stories lived relatively close together geographically, and the timing lines up with a period of glacial retreat, meaning flooding was more common due to ice melt, rising sea levels, and and changing weather patterns. Though it’s hard to say if they’re all talking about the same flood or simply using similar stories and motifs to talk about different floods. I tend to think it was just a flood-happy time in the region, and if an entire village ends up underwater i’d say it sure feels like “the whole world” flooded, especially if other peoples you come into contact with have similar stories of their own.

Makes sense to me, but there’s still the whole microplastics issue… But honestly, at this point, anything we can do to keep fossil fuels in the ground is a win in my book. I’d love to see us go down that path for plastic needs that are both necessary and supremely difficult to replace with other materials (like medical and laboratory applications), and stop using plasitic entirely for everything else.

a lot less. we’re talking ~2 microns (ie: 2 micrometers or 0.002mm). For context, the width of an “average” human hair ranges from 18 to 180 microns (there’s a lot of variability due to age, ethnicity, and lifestyle).

If you want to see for yourself, you can dissolve the aluminum to leave just the lining (scrub any paint off the outside of the can first). You can use a solution with pH either lower than 3 or higher than 12.5. For context, draino is about 12 on the pH scale, and coca-cola is about 2.5, but the closer you are to neutral, the longer it will take (so while you could theoretically use the soda inside the can, that will take quite a while). There are sulfuric acid drain cleaners that get down into the 1 to 2 pH range (though note that pH is a log scale, so that’s on the order of 10 to 100 times more acidic than the cola and will fuck your shit up if you aren’t careful).

For whatever you choose to use, be sure to look up safe handling and disposal recommendations before attempting, or simply watch this youtube video instead!

I miss the fiesta veggie burrito

Did you try calling the clerk’s office? They might have an automated message with info about closures due to the hurricane. And generally if they open to the public at 9, the clerks and other staff will be there earlier, so you can try calling at like 8 or something. When I had jury duty, we were told to show up a full two hours before the court actually “opened” so they could do orientation stuff with us.

Correct. Initially, Newton didn’t have indigo in his list for the visible spectrum, but he wanted seven colors instead of six because it matched up with the number of notes in music (and because he liked the number). So at some point there was discussion of removing indigo entirely because it’s kinda just a shade between blue and violet that the human eye just isn’t as good at distinguishing compared to the other colors. But the neat thing is that what people back in Newton’s time called blue and indigo is more akin to what we today call cyan and blue (they know this by looking at his labeled drawings of the light scattered by prisims). Now the spectral colors are: red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, and violet.

In the books, they all could tell something was up with Frodo and refused to let him go alone. In fact, Sam was actually dropping plenty of eaves, dispite his claims to the contrary in the movies, and they puzzled it all out before Frodo even left Bag End. (Fatty Bolger, another co-conspirator who did not make a movie appearance, decided to stay behind to keep up appearances so that the mission stayed a secret as long as possible. He bought them precious time when the Nazgûl were in pursuit, and later played a role in the resistance against Saruman prior to the Scouring of the Shire.)

I honestly think this.

ok, so yeah. The only time i’ve ever had a sleep paralysis experience was when i went to bed with a nicotine patch on. I “woke up” (but not really) to some random blonde lady creepy-smiling while standing over me in my bed. I tired to scream and push her away, but i was totally frozen and couldn’t do anything. After a couple of seconds, though, I woke up for real and she obviously wasn’t there at all. The strangest part is that when i did wake up, it didn’t really feel like I had. It felt like i was awake the whole time and she just disappeared at exactly the same time i regained motor control. It was absolutely terrifying.

Thanks for expanding on the finer points! With inheritance, they also reset the cost-basis when the owner dies, which means that all the capital gains accumulated over the time that the deceased had ownership is never taxed. Like, if I bought stock for $10, die when it’s worth $100, my sister inherits it, and then sells it for $110 a while later, she only pays capital gains on $10 – not $100.

I don’t think people fully realize how dramatically our tax code rewards capital, at the expense of labor, not just in the broad-strokes (like the tax rate for capital gains vs the rates for income tax brakets) but also in these little details that are easy to overlook. So thanks for the discussion!