Devil's Workshop

Sundry Chitchat
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I did my taxes, finally. I procrastinated as usual. In the end, it didn’t take long at all and the anxiety I put myself through was pointless. Though not entirely, because I organized my apartment. I mean, it looks the same, but now I know where most things are.

I also finished hooking up my 20 yo stereo. I must have donated or tossed the remote. It was $40 for a used replacement. Giant brain didn’t want to spend that for a system that’s worth ~$100 so instead I got a used Harmony hub for $60. It works with my smartphone and will operate the TV as well as the stereo. As a bonus, now I can use the subwoofer with my computer speakers.

In an effort to spare myself some pain in the long run, I’ve typed this post out using the gVim text editor as recommended by microbet. Also got a new vertical ergonomic mouse, which I have a tendency to knock over when I reach for it. So clearly it’s been a productive month.

slcwalk
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LoL’Hopital

https://twitter.com/skolemizer/status/1394268893217267716?s=19

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SeeEditor

babyIKnow

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ed (1) is the standard text editor

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Ha, that’s pretty obscure.

SEE came with the DeSmet C compiler, which my boss used. I adopted the editor for programming for its portability because I didn’t have a compiler available at work (our IT was protective of their turf) and I used Microsoft’s QuickC compiler at home. Boss didn’t ask/tell because even if it was against the rules, we had a legitimate need.

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Cold Fusion

It’s funny that Carl Page is low-key tweeting cold fusion and other oddball stuff. Though there be doubters that this is him, I’m nevertheless confident this is him tweeting a video in which he himself appears. It’s a clip from RT, to throw in a little extra weird.

https://twitter.com/carlptweet/status/1399777867823685634?s=20

The video isn’t new, though this is the first time I’ve seen it.

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The storage medium was paper tape. Pretty sure I win.

https://twitter.com/JohnAllenPaulos/status/1401233477383634954?s=20

We had one of these Compaqs (came out early '80s) when I was a test engineer. It was already way old and unreliable by then. I occasionally used it to record data remotely. I remember sweating through one high-stakes test where it had crashed a couple of times in dry runs. We had tape backup but I’d promised quick delivery of the results. I can’t believe the shit I got away with.

You can still get one on ebay. Prices range from ~$300 to $5K, lol.

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I had one of those at one point, but when it was already old.

Am I remembering this right? Had to load DOS from a floppy at start-up back in the day?

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The Compaq Plus model we had came with a 10 megabyte hard drive with DOS on it. Wiki says the HD was an option, so you might have had the floppy-only model.

Ours was treated pretty roughly. I remember cleaning it up and reseating the boards. Fortunately the mouse droppings and pee didn’t make it inside but it was always flakey when I used it.

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Your Milks

I slapped this together. If there’s any questionable information let me know.

I made some edits. I’m not sure if there are regulations about what can be called milk but some of Costco’s products are called “beverages,” not milk. In any case, a manufacturer can choose to add more or less water, flavoring, sweetener, etc. so ymmv (your milks may vary) when it comes to costs and nutritional value. Hopefully the comparison among strictly Costco products is still useful.

Cow’s milk is bad for the planet due to the quantities of carbon emitted into the atmosphere to produce it, the amounts of water and land required, and because cleaning up after dairy cows ends up contaminating water sources.

Coconut milk has been alleged to be produced using captive monkey labor [1]. It’s the most expensive commonly available option. It has tons of fat. (This is true if it’s undiluted, not necessarily for coconut “beverage”.)

Soy milk is problematic due to the sheer volume and location of soybean production. It accounts for a significant amount of deforestation (demand for beef is the biggest factor and this in turn also drives soy demand) [2]. It contains compounds similar to human hormones, though this issue may be exaggerated [3].

Almond milk adversely affects bees because so many of them are required for almond tree pollination. They are dying in large numbers for a variety of reasons including pesticides, disease, and disruption of their hibernation cycle [4]. Almond milk also requires large amounts of water, though significantly less than dairy milk. It has less protein than milk from dairy. Of alternatives to dairy, it’s currently the least expensive. It costs about 50% more than dairy milk.

Oat milk seems to be relatively benign but it contains much less protein than milk from dairy. It’s expensive, but you can make your own [5]. I guesstimate about a 2 cup yield of unflavored milk from 1/2 cup (~40 g) of bulk rolled oats ($0.054 at SLC WinCo). The end result is oat milk at about 1/5 the price of dairy. The oats can also be re-used (to make cookies or whatnot).

The table summarizes cost (Costco prices in SLC, June '21) and selected nutrition information for various milk sources. Updated table.

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The graph below compares the impact of milk products [6]. Emissions are kg of CO2.

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[1]Costco dropping Chaokoh coconut milk over monkey claims, PETA says
[2]Soybean - Wikipedia
[3]What Does Soy Actually Do To Your Hormones? | Discover Magazine
[4]'Like sending bees to war': the deadly truth behind your almond milk obsession | Bees | The Guardian
[5]How to Make Oat Milk Recipe - Love and Lemons
[6]Climate change: Which vegan milk is best? - BBC News

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Nice work. I try almond or oat for periods, but it’s hard. I like real milk a lot more and it costs less.

The bees and almonds story is nuts (yes pun). I saw a doc on it. A ridiculous percentage of commercial hives from all over the country come to CA to work the almond orchards every year.

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My wife’s all oat all the time (she’s a better person) and this thread inspired me. I ran out of actual milk earlier but instead of getting some more I just made a cup of tea with her stash.

I mean, it tastes weird and feels utterly unsustainable, but all journeys, single step etc.

(Took me years to get used to French milk, so I have precedence at toughing it out.)

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It doesn’t always substitute well for dairy. Thumbs up with cereal but I tried to make rice pudding with oat milk and that was a fail. I’ve only actually tried oat and soy. I didn’t think I’d like either but they’re both good imo

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Hmmm, seems I did the wrong thing by first reducing my milk consumption down to just putting it in tea!

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Switching to a single coffee every day, black or green tea, and cereal only twice a week has reduced our milk consumption to something I feel (though don’t know) might be reasonable.

Tried oat milk for coffee and it was just…weird, though it was gluten-free.

Isn’t the underlying problem just that there are way too many humans?

Global smartphone sales in 2020 were over a billion. I wonder how many of those were unnecessary upgrades to perfectly good phones.

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Wow, great summaries. I think the real trick is just drinking less milk because substitutes only work for certain things. I like oat milk on cereal and oats (duh) and my wife likes it in coffee, but there’s no sub for just drinking a glass of milk as far as I can tell. My hack is to just not drink glasses of milk. :/

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Yeah, that doesn’t work for me either.

As I listen to the steady stream of cars on the street outside and think about getting ear plugs for sleeping, I’m thinking yeah there are too many of us.

I got a new phone in 2020 and it’s great. The old one had started to get flakey and painfully slow and the battery was starting to die. I had already replaced the battery once. I tried to use it as a smart speaker but it wasn’t reliable for that. Thought of sending it to a friend for her kid. As-is, it wouldn’t be good so I messed around with it by rooting it and flashing firmware. Voila, the 6 yo phone works almost as well as the new one.

Btw, thanks again for the computer mouse rec. It took a little getting used to but it’s working out well. My wrist is grateful.

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Man, it’s dusty in here.

Cold Fusion News: Not much happening in the open over the last few months. However, there is an ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy) workshop starting tomorrow.

Despite a large body of empirical evidence for LENR that has been reported internationally over the past 30+ years in both published and unpublished materials, as well as multiple books, there still does not exist a widely accepted, on-demand, repeatable LENR experiment nor a sound theoretical basis. This has led to a stalemate where adequate funding is not accessible to establish irrefutable evidence and understanding of LENR, and lack of the latter precludes the field from accessing adequate funding.

The purpose of the workshop is to field proposals for the missing experiment. There have, btw, been plenty of such proposals over the years. (There is in fact, a particularly simple experiment that people have been playing with for several months and haven’t been able to explain. When I looked at it it seemed too basic to be both real and have been overlooked up to now but electrochemistry is hard and weird so I might post more about it at some point.)

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the bee crisis is serious for the farmer, but a bit overblown for wildlife. the honeybee is not a native species, it’s basically farmed right now down to selection of specific genetics. the colonies are also renewable every year, it’s the practice of every beekeeper to split them every year. it’s very high variance, entire bee yards can die, but they will get recolonized following year, with human help or not.

the pests are annoying, but in my understanding the bee population will adjust to the threats if left alone. varroa was supposed to kill all bees, but the bees got a bit more tolerant through selection, beeks found a few treatments, and we started paying more attention to overwintering better. murder hornet might sweep and kill a bunch of colonies, so what will happen is beekeepers will bring a bunch of genetics from japan and the strongest will survive.

the longterm plan for farmers who need pollination should be to keep local feral populations and promoting solitary bees. that does mean less pesticides and more uncultivated land surrounding the orchards which cuts into harvests and margins. that’s the other problem, we overproduce so much food that never makes it to a plate or mouth. and it’s absolutely squeezing farmers much faster than whatever that 12 gallons of milk lady is feeling.

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