Sounds like you should be the one posting about home brewing.
Not sure what I’d post, but here are some random ramblings.
For equipment, I use an old 20-liter Speidel Braumeister. As I said, I’m not into measuring all the various chemical parameters, I just have recipes I’ve found, adapted, and make over and over again. Every couple of years, I’ll work out a new one – right now I’m working on a Belgian ale. My process is very much my own, one that I’ve just sort of evolved over time. One example: I find that crash-cooling the wort is a huge waste. The stuff is sterile – it’s just boiled for hours – so I just put a lid on it and let it cool overnight. By the next morning, it’s cool enough to start the fermentation.
I like beer (and so does my wife), so most of the product is for our own consumption. However, there’s no better way to befriend neighbors, tradespeople, and the like: give them a few bottles now and then. I just handed over a massive 2-liter bottle to a neighbor today, who is celebrating his 70th birthday.
I have a couple of neighbors who want to buy from me, but I don’t ever sell beer – I only give it away. Maybe that’s a weird line to draw, but for me it’s a hobby, not a side hustle. I have to find a way to get those neighbors to just ask, when they want a couple of bottles.
Speaking of which, I need to go bottle the latest batch of porter. Sitting in the Braumeister is the fourth attempt at the Belgian ale, which needs to go into the fermentation tank presently occupied by the porter. What with washing and sterilizing all the bottles, that’s about 2 hours of work, so I’d better get to it…
For those of you longing for the old days of less biased sources, here’s a link from one of OFD’s frequently cited writers, raising a topic which occasionally saw discussion time here. Timely as yet another Pope openly conemplates retirement, further disrupting the succession dogma.
I learned about Annie’s site from OFD posting in this forum and I’ll occasionally keep up the tradition.
OFD was also fond of Kunstler.com, but my qualm with that guy is that, much like the Daily Mail, the author has fear porn books/clicks to sell. YMMV. I still read twice a week … again, many thanks OFD … but I take Kunstler with a grain of salt.
77 F here on the wild side of Fort Bend County. Gonna be a hot one today. Maybe we will get some more rain today like the sprinkles we got yesterday and the half inch we got Friday at both the house and the office.
My cousin bought a Tesla 3 dual motor 130 kwh battery in 2019 for $69K. He has about 30,000 miles on it. Loves it with a serious passion. He replaced a ten year Honda Civic and a 15 year old Mustang GT 5.0 V8 with it. The Telsa goes zero to 60 mph in 3 seconds in sport mode.
As long as no one runs around claiming that they’re saving the planet, I don’t have a problem with grown ups buying a toy. Just as long as they can write the check without counting on a tax credit from my pocket.
I pulled 48 MPG rolling down to home from the Buc-ee’s NE of Dallas last Sunday, running on a tank of ethanol-free gas at ~ 72 MPH the whole way.
BTW right rear passenger door skin replace/paint is $1600 per Geico. Pass along to your son for reference.
We were quoted $3000 on a similar job with the Exploder four years ago and opted for dentless repair, but that is not an option with the Camry in this situation.
My cousin bought a Tesla 3 dual motor 130 kwh battery in 2019 for $69K. He has about 30,000 miles on it. Loves it with a serious passion. He replaced a ten year Honda Civic and a 15 year old Mustang GT 5.0 V8 with it. The Telsa goes zero to 60 mph in 3 seconds in sport mode.
BTW, true confession time. Your son’s 2018 Camry vs. the Tesla. Which has the better build quality and ride? First impressions.
Be honest.
And the $64,000 question in Houston – which has the truly better AC?
Driving to/from Home Depot yesterday I heard the Car Pro for a first time in a while, and I didn’t notice Blue Oval Preferred (name?) Pre-owned ads during the commercial break. Jerry wasn’t shilling Ford as hard as he has been with the first caller out of the break either, actually talking up a new Sequoia as being more appropriate for the caller’s needs than the cheaper Expedition.
Jerry and Ford must have parted ways financially, at least for a while.
I enjoy drinking beer, but have never attempted to make it. Could you perhaps briefly cover what is required in the way of equipment and space?
Sure, I’ll try anyway. First of all, brewing involves cooking the grain at various temperatures, to let different enzymes do their work. For example, 20 minutes at 53C, 30 minutes at 63C, 30 minutes at 73C, and finally 10 minutes at 78C – that would be pretty typical. Some people do this the hard way, with a kettle and a thermometer. No expensive equipment, but you have to constantly hover, stir, and check the temperature.
What most regular home-brewers do, is have a Braumeister. You program the temperatures and times, push a button, and it does the rest. My wife laughs at me – I stir the grain once or twice, push a couple of buttons, toss in the hops at the right time – and that’s it. Here’s a newer model of the one I have. Expensive, but maybe you can pick up a used one.
You need a fermentation tank. Mine is just plastic, something like this. I have two, for complicated reasons having to do with the second fermentation in the bottle.
Bottles. Home brewers don’t have the equipment to put CO2 into our beer, so we rely on fermentation in the bottle. Which means that the beer has to mature in the bottle for at least four weeks – longer is better. For each recipe that you make, you are likely to have one batch maturing, and an older batch that you’re drinking. You’ll get 35-40 bottles per batch. I have seven recipes currently, so I have between 300 and 400 bottles on the shelves at any one time.
Then little things. Sterilization chemicals. A wort chiller, unless you are a heretic like me. Measuring instruments. The best thing is to take a course, and initially follow their suggestions. You’ll then develop your own adaptations.
Alex Berenson continues to publicize the problems with mRNA vaccines.
That there are problems is made evident by governments making inconvenient data disappear:
More disappearing Covid vaccine
Add British Columbia to the governments trying to hide the reality that the mRNA jabbed make up the vast majority of Covid hospitalizations and deaths.
Thanks to all the companies that strive to protect my privacy: [empty set]
A pox on the rest of the liars: [all of them]
I was introduced to Bruce Schneier almost 20 years ago by a friend who was exploring a joint project that never materialized. Expert on cryptography, security and the social implications thereof, I’ve followed him since, and have often recommended his 2003 book “Beyond Fear”.
His 2018 book:
Click Here to Kill Everybody
Security and Survival in a Hyper-connected World
The internet is powerful, but it is not safe. As “smart” devices proliferate the risks will get worse, unless we act now.
should be on everyone’s reading list, as should his Aug 2 blog entry
The coming superstorm — really, a rapid procession of what scientists call atmospheric rivers — will be the ultimate test of the dams, levees and bypasses California has built to impound nature’s might.
But in a state where scarcity of water has long been the central fact of existence, global warming is not only worsening droughts and wildfires. Because warmer air can hold more moisture, atmospheric rivers can carry bigger cargoes of precipitation.
I believe it’s increasing the risk the next big quake too.
“Atmospheric rivers”; Formerly known as “Pineapple Express”, because the wet weather flows in from the general direction of Hawaii.
A few years ago, back when I lived there and still CARED what happened to Cacafornia, the local NPR station broadcast a report that said that the drought was SO BAD that we were ELEVEN TRILLION GALLONS of water below what we needed to refill the ground water and refill all the reservoirs. The next week, the same station reported that an “atmospheric river” was predicted to dump TWELVE TRILLION GALLONS of water, causing massive floods and mudslides. The problem, you see, is that there had been no new dams, reservoirs or water projects built since the Brown administration. Not Jerry; Jerry’s DAD, 50 years previously. They knew that the weather in California was boom and bust; years of drought, followed by a couple of very wet “El Nino” years of flooding. But they hadn’t PLANNED for that, even though they KNEW about it. There are very few reservoirs in the southern coastal maintains (vicinity of Paso Robles) where the Pineapple Express storms typically delivered most of the rain.
And the last forecast I saw said that there was going to be a third La Nina (dry) year, so I’m not sure where the “”atmospheric river” would be coming from.
His assailant pleads not guilty to second-degree murder after stabbing the author 15 times. It’s not difficult to predict that the assassin feels blameless and sees no contradiction with his “religion of peace”.
Meanwhile celebrations of the attack continue in Iran, although doubtless tempered by news of Rushdie’s survival. Biden WH is doubtless preparing excuses to go forward with the next round of payments to the mullahs. No word from Barry Hussein, but it’s also certain that he feels no remorse having shipped cash to the mullahs in such quantities that it required a heavy cargo plane.
Dr. Davo Ross, head of the project, claims that it will be successful in reducing homelessness on the streets of San Francisco, but it does have the potential to temporarily spike the production of soot.
I just discovered that Win11 keeps track of clipboard entries, not just the latest one.
If you Windows+V, you get a list of clipboard entries. You can then select the one you want to paste. Handy when copying/pasting things.
I’d put this up with Ctrl+Shift+T inside browser that restores a tab that you just deleted. Multiple uses of that key combo will restore previously deleted tab. Sort of a ‘closed tab history.
I just discovered that Win11 keeps track of clipboard entries, not just the latest one.
If you Windows+V, you get a list of clipboard entries. You can then select the one you want to paste. Handy when copying/pasting things.
I’d put this up with Ctrl+Shift+T inside browser that restores a tab that you just deleted. Multiple uses of that key combo will restore previously deleted tab. Sort of a ‘closed tab history.
Both useful things to know, I think.
Thanks ! And Windows 10 does that also but you have to turn it on first.
@paul – But just Windows+V, not ctrl-v? Just wondering, I don’t have a Windows key.
The “Windows Logo Key”. Should be on on standard Windows 11 system keyboards. Ctrl+Esc is the substitute for the Windows Logo key, but it doesn’t appear to work with the clipboard history, as Ctrl+Esc is meant to open the Windows Start menu.
That is a very nice brewing setup, Brad. I’ll have to think about letting my wort cool overnight. That would save a lot of labor and cooling water. The biggest drawback is that I put a bunch of time and effort into making my fancy counter-flow chiller, and that would mean I wasted my time!
Brad’s setup is expensive, and might not be the best way to dabble in brewing to see if you like it. The setup I have isn’t either. Here is what I think is a minimalist setup that will work to let you try brewing out without much investment, where you use malt syrup instead of mashing grain, and carbonate the beer in the bottles.
Brewing kettle: You can use a stock pot. You need at least 20% headspace to accommodate foaming during the boil. It is best if it has a lid, even if that is just a pizza pan sitting on top. You can buy reasonable quantities of syrup and hops and and scale your recipe to the size of your brewing kettle. I don’t buy ingredient kits anymore.
Heat source: You can use a kitchen stove, but it is wise to do your brewing outside where boilover will not be a traumatic error. You can use any sort of camp stove or BBQ burner that has a high enough heat output to boil the quantity of wort you are making.
Thermometer: Something that will conveniently read the temperature of water in the range of about 60 to 100 F (~15 to 40 C) will do for brewing ale.
Fermenter: You need something with a reasonably close fitting lid. You need at least 20% headspace to accommodate foaming during fermentation. You can use another stock pot. Using your brewing kettle (i.e. just letting it cool and then adding the yeast to it) may produce lower grade results, as you will retain more hop fragments and malt protein in your wort. You can use a glass or plastic carboy, but I have given these up in favor of a stock pot (a heresy similar to Brad’s wort chilling method). The stock pot is much easier to handle, wash, and sterilize, and doesn’t break when I’m clumsy. I don’t bother with an airlock any more. You can use more than one fermenter if they are smaller than your kettle. When I tried the bread yeast, I used a gallon bottle alongside the rest of the batch in a stockpot.
Secondary fermenter: This isn’t required, but if you have one you can transfer your wort to it after the initial fermentation has subsided, and leave a bunch of dead yeast and other stuff behind. If you are using a couple of stock pots, then your brewing kettle can serve for this.
Mesh bags for hops: You can buy or make these. I use nylon mesh bags that are marketed for making nut milk or something like that. You can make do with one large one, but I use three (hops are usually added at three times – some for bittering, some for flavor, and some for aroma).
Bottling bucket: Even though I like to avoid plastic, I use a food grade plastic bucket for this. The key element is having something that the wort will readily drain out of through a hose to a bottle filler. This is usually a five to seven gallon palstic bucket with a spigot installed in the side at the bottom.
Bottle filler: This is a gadget that is generally less than $10, and makes bottle filling much easier. In theory, you can just run the beer into the bottle through a hose/tubing that fills the bottle from the bottom. If you try this, you will probably make a mess, but using a bottle filler only means you will probably make a mess on fewer of the bottles. Put a folded towel on the floor under the filling station.
Bottles, capper & caps: You can avoid the caps by using swing-top bottles (e.g. Grolsch), but that might not save money. If you use swing-top bottles, you have to have spare gaskets as they will harden and crack with age. I recommend against twist-off bottles. There are special (i.e. more expensive and harder to find) softer caps for those, but my experience was that some of them still didn’t seal. Many commercial non-returnable bottles warn you not to refill them. I have never had a problem with them.
Temperature moderated space for bottle conditioning: Inexperienced brewers would be wise to use something like an ice chest to hold their bottles while they develop carbonation and then age to drinking quality. Some of them may explode.
Just as you can use heretical means to avoid buying/making wort chilling equipment, you can forgo siphoning equipment and pour your wort from brewing kettle to fermenter to secondary fermenter to bottling bucket. That means carrying over more dead yeast and anything else that settled to the bottom. It also exposes your wort to more ambient airborne bacteria, but that is unlikely to be a serious problem. Instead, I use a racking cane in the source vessel, and a few feet of either vinyl or silicone tubing. I made a wooden disk with appropriate holes to cover the target vessel that allows me to transfer wort by applying a vacuum cleaner or shop vac to draw the liquid through the hoses. I have also done it by using an air pump to push the wort from one container to another, but the vacuum technique is easier. You can make your own racking cane from a length of plastic or metal tubing and just buy a tip for it (makes it draw from a half inch or so above the layer of dead yeast at the bottom), which will save a few dollars. That is what I do, as there is no advantage to having a sharp bend in the tube when you use the vacuum or pressure assist. You will need to put some planning into working out the tube and hose sizes that you will need for transfer and bottling.
There are many other gadgets you can buy or build to make the process easier or more technical. A bottle washer is what I would recommend most. You may find it to be useful for other things even if you don’t continue brewing. I installed a portable-dishwasher quick-connect fitting on my kitchen sink so that I can quickly install or remove my bottle washer. An alternative is to use a garden hose adapter fitting, which your laundry sink faucet may already have. A bottle tree for draining and drying bottles is handy. Some structures (e.g. boxes) that let you set up your vessels at convenient heights are useful, too, especially if you use siphoning to transfer. I also built a fermentation cabinet with a heater (which I need in winter) and a rack for bottles of ice (which I needed when I made lager).
The additional space for the equipment depends on how much of it you already have. If you are really clever, you may be able to arrange for most of it to nest together. You need temperature conditioned space (~65 to 75 F, or 18 to 24 C) for the fermenter for a week or two, or longer for some recipes or lower temperatures. If you use an airlock, it will make bubbling noises. I have gotten away with letting it sit in the dining room, but I think my wife is more tolerant than most spouses. Depending on your yeast and fermenting temperature, you may have some messy foaming in the first few days, so you need a place that won’t be ruined by that. If you are set up for an air lock, you can start the initial fermentation with just a hose into a pitcher with some water in the bottom. The pitcher will (probably) contain the mess of a foam blowout. The bottles take up space both in storage and in the refrigerator. If you have cool space in a basement, you can keep the beer there and refrigerate bottles as you drink them, or drink them at British temperatures.
I was introduced to Bruce Schneier almost 20 years ago by a friend…
Yes, he has a lot of good info, I used to read him regularly. I would send links to friends saying “It’s worse than you think…”
Sadly though, he is a lefty who adamantly denied the obvious election irregularities in 2020, and blamed Republican party subversion. I think he even signed a group letter to that effect.
He’s still in my blogroll, just not a regular read.
It looks like it might rain. No thunder, not much wind, just getting cloudy with dark clouds. Some rain would be nice to knock down the dust.
It did smell like water this morning but I don’t see or hear any broken pipes.
I saw on FB yesterday that the bright thing by the Moon in the morning is Jupiter. It’s the wrong color for Mars, Venus is just above the tree line. Just trivia. I look and the dogs are like “why are you standing there I gotta go sniff something over yonder”. Shrug.
I put the little compressor away. Lowered the jack for storage. Pulled the thing out of the tire. Looks like a rain gutter screw. I have five inches of smooth shaft and two turns of thread.
I’m not holding my breath for rain.
Last night’s pot o’ gruel turned out well. A bit salty. I didn’t add salt. It happens. I still had gravy, good. I’m still figuring this out.
One pack of Pioneer brown gravy. Mixed with a cup of water. Two and a half cups of water in the pan, to a fast simmer, whisk in the gravy mix. Let it start to thicken, add 18 HEB frozen homestyle meatballs. They’re a half ounce each. A little bit more than half of the scoop for my rice cooker. Lid on and heat down to the high side of LO. Stir once in a while. The rice cooks eventually.
“Invest 98L, the tropical disturbance we’ve been watching over the Gulf the last couple days, is now ashore in South Texas, ending any potential development concerns. And it’s probably a good thing, as the disturbance finally starting organizing more rapidly overnight and this morning.”
“Another 12 to 24 hours over water probably would have led to a formidable named storm. Thankfully, that isn’t the case, and the steady march westward of 98L will continue through the day. For our neighbors to the south, this is about as good an outcome as you could ever ask for: Widespread drought-easing tropical rains without the damaging impacts of a strong tropical storm or hurricane.”
We got a nice little rain at the house right before I drove to church.
There is also a faint comet near the head of Scorpio. I was out with the binoculars and the small portable telescope last night for a couple hours, until midnight, but the moon and some high haze made stargazing for faint fuzzies difficult. I never saw the comet, but the moon and Saturn were quite pretty.
Moved our son into his dorm today. I swear he was just starting first grade last year… He has all the tools to succeed. We’ve done all we can, now it’s up to him.
Recall driving our youngest to college (from CA to ID). Wife’s eyes were leaking all the way home.
But it all turned out really well. Graduated with an RN, current job is Pediatric ICU with Kaiser in Sacramento. Great pay scale. Married with 5 very cute grandkids (the last were twin boys).
A couple of additions/suggestions in addition to standard supplies and e quipment:
A digital scale with a platform big enough to accommodate a 5-gal carboy or bucket.
A pistol-style non-contact IR thermometer.
An unbacked 18-inch stainless steel ruler, (i.e., no cork or foam on the back side.)
Box of coffee filters.
Some yogurt filters.
Take tare weights on everything that will contain liquid and make a list. If the outside will not contact the brew, use a Sharpie Industrial or Milwaukee marker and write it directly.
Put a piece of masking tape on the side of a 5-gallon pail, starting at the bottom and aligning vertically. Add water in ½ gallon increments and mark the tape on the left-hand side with each addition until the bucket is nearly full. Recycle the water (flowers, flush a toilet, up to you). Strip the tape off and transfer it to the stainless steel ruler. The end corresponding to the bottom of the bucket should be at zero and the left-hand edge of the tape with marks should run down the middle of the ruler. Transfer the marks to the ruler, then scribe the marks with an engraver or use a paint marker. You now have a story stick to measure partial volumes in a 5-gallon pail. (Yes, the outside of the pail is tapered, introducing a small error. You can write an Excel program to make corrections or use a drafting table to make the corrections without calculating when you transfer from the tape.)
Use the same method to make a story stick for any kettles that don’t have a scale molded in the side, and your carboys.
Coffee filters can be flattened, folded twice, and opened into a cone that will adhere to the inside of a standard 60-degree funnel with a little water. Yogurt filters are easier to grab quickly.
@paul, ever notice that pointy objects almost always puncture rear tires? The reason is that a nail or screw lies flat, so a front tire rolls over harmlessly, but it can throw it up enough that it might get trapped by the rear tire and puncture it.
There is an old trick to prevent most of this, and it is supposed to have originated with British motorcyclists. Simply hang a flexible “mud flap” just ahead of the rear tire. This will deflect the nail or screw. I have not tried it, but know some biker friends who swear by it. Should work just as well on a car. Give it a try, and use your improvising skills to select and attach something. Probably should have a half inch gap to the pavement.
This is one of those logical things that can only be demonstrated, not proven.
As a teacher in Oakland, Calif., Kareem Weaver helped struggling fourth- and fifth-grade kids learn to read by using a very structured, phonics-based reading curriculum called Open Court. It worked for the students, but not so much for the teachers. “For seven years in a row, Oakland was the fastest-gaining urban district in California for reading,” recalls Weaver. “And we hated it.”
The teachers felt like curriculum robots—and pushed back. “This seems dehumanizing, this is colonizing, this is the man telling us what to do,” says Weaver, describing their response to the approach. “So we fought tooth and nail as a teacher group to throw that out.” It was replaced in 2015 by a curriculum that emphasized rich literary experiences. “Those who wanted to fight for social justice, they figured that this new progressive way of teaching reading was the way,” he says.
Now Weaver is heading up a campaign to get his old school district to reinstate many of the methods that teachers resisted so strongly: specifically, systematic and consistent instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics. “In Oakland, when you have 19% of Black kids reading—that can’t be maintained in the society,” says Weaver, who received an early and vivid lesson in the value of literacy in 1984 after his cousin got out of prison and told him the other inmates stopped harassing him when they realized he could read their mail to them. “It has been an unmitigated disaster.” In January 2021, the local branch of the NAACP filed an administrative petition with the Oakland unified school district (OUSD) to ask it to include “explicit instruction for phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension” in its curriculum.
After years of adopting every p.o.s. libtard program that was worse at teaching reading than the last one.
After years of teachers unions resisting phonics and being held unaccountable for continually declining test scores.
How many black students know that slaves were forbidden by law to learn how to read, yet many risked death to do just that?
How many have seen photos of the reading rooms in the early twentieth century where workers would spend hours after a 10 or 12-hour shift trying to improve themselves?
If you can’t read or do math you are a victim waiting to get screwed by the man or any slicky-boy that can fleece you.
Astronomy; the best personal program I’ve ever used is Stellarium, free and open-source from stellarium.org. The news rag was talking about being able to see EVERY VISIBLE PLANET a couple of months ago, so I fired up Stellarium to see when the best time would be. Turns out that my quasi-rural location has too many trees for good astronomy.
We did have, here in Far West San Antonio, a little rain this morning. Quite impressive shower, but only delivered one tenth of an inch. Barely enough to dampen the ground.
“One of the big reasons why I have been saying that we want to avoid a war in this country is the quote that is the headline for this post. It’s from a movie: Rules of Engagement. It stars Samuel L Jackson, a Marine commander who gets hammered for having his Marines fire into an armed crowd. One of the lines in the move sees Jackson say: “Did innocent people die? Innocent people always die.””
“The civil war that both sides seem intent on having will be ugly. War isn’t a game where two sides engage in some football game where the players, rules, and boundaries are clearly defined. Americans think that war is some sort of game, a crucible where masculinity is defined. It isn’t. It’s messy. It won’t just be players getting targeted. The combatants will be targets. So will the people who deliver food. So will their families. Women. Children. The side who refuses to participate in that will lose.”
So the U.S will continue to invest billions in this research every year with no discernable benefit for another half-century?
We spend about 450 million per year on fusion research. About 25% goes to the ITER project that we are a partner for. I read an interesting roundup on fusion research funding that essentially says that a lot of the delay is due to smoothing out the year-to-year funding. Instead of funding staying level during design, ramping up for construction, then sloping down for operations, Congress tends to do flat funding, which means it takes more time and the total cost goes up. I’ve seen that with NASA funding for Orion when I worked on it.
We’ve been chasing fusion for more than 50 years already, and as JEP used to say, it always seems to be thirty years away. At least until now, when it’s 50 years away.
Instead of funding staying level during design, ramping up for construction, then sloping down for operations, Congress tends to do flat funding, which means it takes more time and the total cost goes up.
Begs the question what is the claim for funding required, from this point, for minimum time to reach the goal?
With a reasonable goal such as having the standard design frozen, the first one built, and the building program on track to complete one every six months, with the fuel to run them, and the cost significantly below that of pebble reactors.
It is merely an exercise on paper as far as I’m concerned. The U.S. government is not capable of doing projects with a 50-year horizon. It is wasted money for at least three reasons, the first of which is that the probability of such a project being choked off at some point approaches zero.
We could kill and eat all the greenies now, and their successors in two generations would have time to spawn and come up with some nonsensical bullshit as to why they must save the planet by outlawing fusion, were it not for the fact that long before then the ChiComs investment in the greenies will come to fruition and we will be their serfs.
I’m also reminded of the prescription for interstellar exploration: do nothing for a century.
ADDED:
I said billions (minimum 2) and the correct figure is 0.45? No bad–within a close order of magnitude.
“The American public has been sold out in energy and climate just when the opposite seemed to be at hand. This bill is about bigger government, more spending, greater deficits, and more monetary inflation (federal counterfeiting) to make it all work (see Concerned Economists letter).”
“Hidden in the Bill are innumerable special-interest government interventions, one of which is very anti-consumer that no one is talking about. That provision would eliminate competition to electricity in the residential sector under the guise of reducing carbon. Specifically, the provision is Sec. 50122 titled “HIGH-EFFICIENCY ELECTRIC HOME REBATE PROGRAM.””
I wonder what they would give me to convert my natural gas generator to total electric.
I started out this morning to answer a simple question (should have been a clue right there) earlier today and after eight+ total hours of jousting with product specs, standards testing, and a segue down the patent rathole, I think I have a better mousetrap. Unfortunately the economic evaluation is that the application is too niche and the market too small. So record it with the conclusion not to pursue due to economics, and get back to real work.
>> Hidden in the Bill are innumerable special-interest government interventions, one of which is very anti-consumer that no one is talking about.
“Hidden?” Maybe to those whose main source of “news” is Facebook. I’d fall off my chair if any bill emerging from the DC swamp wasn’t loaded with pork. Things should be slightly better come January when Nancy moves to the basement.
Things should be slightly better come January when Nancy moves to the basement.
I would not hold my breath. The repuglicans are just as bad about pork. Remember, the two sides of the War Party according to OFD and I never saw fit to disagree with him.
Great day. Church, good service, good visiting after. Pleasure of sharing saltvwater taffy I brought back from Bodega Bay, and Gravenstein apples from Sonoma County. Two hens off to new horizons, and child is $30 richer. Some for savings, some for church, some for fun, some for chicken feed. Good kid. Picked up school supplies. Had her pull out what she already had. Had her make best guess on what the individual things would cost and what the total cost would be. Then we all went to the store. Turned her loose with the list and some budgeting hints. She did well. Her guesses overall were within 15% of actual cost. Not bad.
Rabbit and vegetables in crock, because there was an amazing (store bought) pie in the oven. Family and my husbands co worker joined us for dinner. Coworker and I geeked out on dog training, Pavlov and Skinner, and harvesting own animals. Coworker is a neurologist and spent several years doing behavior analysis. I knew some papers and authors he hadn’t read, vice versa. Cool guy. Enjoyed his company and conversation.
Animals fed, child in bed, husband at my side, laundry tumbling, dishwasher running, guitar practiced. Everything put away and tidy. G&T at hand and bed calling. Good day and one to treasure up in my heart.
JimM, drwilliams, thanks so much for even more home-brewing information!
Alas, it sounds like the basic equipment to have a go is more of a hurdle than I can manage at the moment. My list of other projects to be done first is not getting any shorter…
Fortunately, local commercial beer is good and reasonably priced. Cristal pils http://www.cristal.be was recommended to me recently, and it is very good. The Alken-Maes brewery https://www.alken-maes.be/ is now part of the Heineken conglomerate, but they seem to have retained the quality that got their beer the warrant as purveyor to the Belgian royal court.
On the other hand, last week’s mead recipe sounds feasible without much gearing-up, and I have an idea for getting honey straight from the beekeeper, so maybe mead is the slippery slope towards home-brew…
>> Alas, it sounds like the basic equipment to have a go is more of a hurdle than I can manage at the moment.
@Denis, how about wine.? Requires less equipment as long as you have access to wine grapes. My grandfather (first generation Italian} used to make his own in our backyard.
Take a stab at mead or wine. Lower threshold for starting. I used a latex balloon for a stopcock my first batch of mead. There are other workarounds to avoid buying equipment before you know if you’ll enjoy the endeavor. My first mead – It wasn’t particularly good mead but it was drinkable and alcoholic. Enough to keep me trying.
As Nick is fond of saying, these -are- the “good old days”
And where has SteveF gone? It’s been 4-6 weeks since I heard his dulcet tones and bright wit. Miss him!
Not sure what I’d post, but here are some random ramblings.
For equipment, I use an old 20-liter Speidel Braumeister. As I said, I’m not into measuring all the various chemical parameters, I just have recipes I’ve found, adapted, and make over and over again. Every couple of years, I’ll work out a new one – right now I’m working on a Belgian ale. My process is very much my own, one that I’ve just sort of evolved over time. One example: I find that crash-cooling the wort is a huge waste. The stuff is sterile – it’s just boiled for hours – so I just put a lid on it and let it cool overnight. By the next morning, it’s cool enough to start the fermentation.
I like beer (and so does my wife), so most of the product is for our own consumption. However, there’s no better way to befriend neighbors, tradespeople, and the like: give them a few bottles now and then. I just handed over a massive 2-liter bottle to a neighbor today, who is celebrating his 70th birthday.
I have a couple of neighbors who want to buy from me, but I don’t ever sell beer – I only give it away. Maybe that’s a weird line to draw, but for me it’s a hobby, not a side hustle. I have to find a way to get those neighbors to just ask, when they want a couple of bottles.
Speaking of which, I need to go bottle the latest batch of porter. Sitting in the Braumeister is the fourth attempt at the Belgian ale, which needs to go into the fermentation tank presently occupied by the porter. What with washing and sterilizing all the bottles, that’s about 2 hours of work, so I’d better get to it…
Brad, I enjoy drinking beer, but have never attempted to make it. Could you perhaps briefly cover what is required in the way of equipment and space?
For those of you longing for the old days of less biased sources, here’s a link from one of OFD’s frequently cited writers, raising a topic which occasionally saw discussion time here. Timely as yet another Pope openly conemplates retirement, further disrupting the succession dogma.
I learned about Annie’s site from OFD posting in this forum and I’ll occasionally keep up the tradition.
RIP.
https://www.barnhardt.biz/2022/08/10/huge-frontpage-mag-is-onboard-with-reality-pope-benedict-never-validly-resigned/
OFD was also fond of Kunstler.com, but my qualm with that guy is that, much like the Daily Mail, the author has fear porn books/clicks to sell. YMMV. I still read twice a week … again, many thanks OFD … but I take Kunstler with a grain of salt.
77 F here on the wild side of Fort Bend County. Gonna be a hot one today. Maybe we will get some more rain today like the sprinkles we got yesterday and the half inch we got Friday at both the house and the office.
As long as no one runs around claiming that they’re saving the planet, I don’t have a problem with grown ups buying a toy. Just as long as they can write the check without counting on a tax credit from my pocket.
I pulled 48 MPG rolling down to home from the Buc-ee’s NE of Dallas last Sunday, running on a tank of ethanol-free gas at ~ 72 MPH the whole way.
BTW right rear passenger door skin replace/paint is $1600 per Geico. Pass along to your son for reference.
We were quoted $3000 on a similar job with the Exploder four years ago and opted for dentless repair, but that is not an option with the Camry in this situation.
BTW, true confession time. Your son’s 2018 Camry vs. the Tesla. Which has the better build quality and ride? First impressions.
Be honest.
And the $64,000 question in Houston – which has the truly better AC?
Driving to/from Home Depot yesterday I heard the Car Pro for a first time in a while, and I didn’t notice Blue Oval Preferred (name?) Pre-owned ads during the commercial break. Jerry wasn’t shilling Ford as hard as he has been with the first caller out of the break either, actually talking up a new Sequoia as being more appropriate for the caller’s needs than the cheaper Expedition.
Jerry and Ford must have parted ways financially, at least for a while.
Sure, I’ll try anyway. First of all, brewing involves cooking the grain at various temperatures, to let different enzymes do their work. For example, 20 minutes at 53C, 30 minutes at 63C, 30 minutes at 73C, and finally 10 minutes at 78C – that would be pretty typical. Some people do this the hard way, with a kettle and a thermometer. No expensive equipment, but you have to constantly hover, stir, and check the temperature.
What most regular home-brewers do, is have a Braumeister. You program the temperatures and times, push a button, and it does the rest. My wife laughs at me – I stir the grain once or twice, push a couple of buttons, toss in the hops at the right time – and that’s it. Here’s a newer model of the one I have. Expensive, but maybe you can pick up a used one.
You need a fermentation tank. Mine is just plastic, something like this. I have two, for complicated reasons having to do with the second fermentation in the bottle.
Bottles. Home brewers don’t have the equipment to put CO2 into our beer, so we rely on fermentation in the bottle. Which means that the beer has to mature in the bottle for at least four weeks – longer is better. For each recipe that you make, you are likely to have one batch maturing, and an older batch that you’re drinking. You’ll get 35-40 bottles per batch. I have seven recipes currently, so I have between 300 and 400 bottles on the shelves at any one time.
Then little things. Sterilization chemicals. A wort chiller, unless you are a heretic like me. Measuring instruments. The best thing is to take a course, and initially follow their suggestions. You’ll then develop your own adaptations.
Alex Berenson continues to publicize the problems with mRNA vaccines.
That there are problems is made evident by governments making inconvenient data disappear:
More disappearing Covid vaccine
Add British Columbia to the governments trying to hide the reality that the mRNA jabbed make up the vast majority of Covid hospitalizations and deaths.
https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/more-disappearing-covid-vaccine-data?utm_source=%2Fprofile%2F12729762-alex-berenson&utm_medium=reader2
Note in particular that a simple evolution of the way the data is presented would not result in the past data being scrubbed from the Wayback Machine.
Thanks for the brewing information, Brad!
Thanks to all the companies that strive to protect my privacy: [empty set]
A pox on the rest of the liars: [all of them]
I was introduced to Bruce Schneier almost 20 years ago by a friend who was exploring a joint project that never materialized. Expert on cryptography, security and the social implications thereof, I’ve followed him since, and have often recommended his 2003 book “Beyond Fear”.
His 2018 book:
Click Here to Kill Everybody
Security and Survival in a Hyper-connected World
The internet is powerful, but it is not safe. As “smart” devices proliferate the risks will get worse, unless we act now.
should be on everyone’s reading list, as should his Aug 2 blog entry
Surveillance of Your Car
TheMarkup has an extensive analysis of connected vehicle data and the companies that are collecting it.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/08/surveillance-of-your-car.html
The Climate Emergency – Is there anything it can’t do,
https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/the-coming-california-megastorm/article_65b0470d-6c6b-5ecc-a4b2-98ab689d6434.html
I believe it’s increasing the risk the next big quake too.
You laugh, but they believe things like that and vote accordingly on the West Coast.
Church Ladies Without Churches. They substitute all kinds of faiths to fill that void.
“Atmospheric rivers”; Formerly known as “Pineapple Express”, because the wet weather flows in from the general direction of Hawaii.
A few years ago, back when I lived there and still CARED what happened to Cacafornia, the local NPR station broadcast a report that said that the drought was SO BAD that we were ELEVEN TRILLION GALLONS of water below what we needed to refill the ground water and refill all the reservoirs. The next week, the same station reported that an “atmospheric river” was predicted to dump TWELVE TRILLION GALLONS of water, causing massive floods and mudslides. The problem, you see, is that there had been no new dams, reservoirs or water projects built since the Brown administration. Not Jerry; Jerry’s DAD, 50 years previously. They knew that the weather in California was boom and bust; years of drought, followed by a couple of very wet “El Nino” years of flooding. But they hadn’t PLANNED for that, even though they KNEW about it. There are very few reservoirs in the southern coastal maintains (vicinity of Paso Robles) where the Pineapple Express storms typically delivered most of the rain.
And the last forecast I saw said that there was going to be a third La Nina (dry) year, so I’m not sure where the “”atmospheric river” would be coming from.
Salmon Rushdie is off the ventilator.
His assailant pleads not guilty to second-degree murder after stabbing the author 15 times. It’s not difficult to predict that the assassin feels blameless and sees no contradiction with his “religion of peace”.
Meanwhile celebrations of the attack continue in Iran, although doubtless tempered by news of Rushdie’s survival. Biden WH is doubtless preparing excuses to go forward with the next round of payments to the mullahs. No word from Barry Hussein, but it’s also certain that he feels no remorse having shipped cash to the mullahs in such quantities that it required a heavy cargo plane.
Prop company has suckered City of San Francisco into paying for prototype of the new Dalek Mark VI:
https://apnews.com/article/california-san-francisco-climate-and-environment-cab7011953482c7eabc5ad41c6582773
Dr. Davo Ross, head of the project, claims that it will be successful in reducing homelessness on the streets of San Francisco, but it does have the potential to temporarily spike the production of soot.
zzzzttt!
>> You laugh, but they believe things like that and vote accordingly on the West Coast.
And then my Nevada “waterfront” property gets me a ten-bagger 🙂
I live on the eastern side of CA. When the BIG ONE comes, I expect to have waterfront property… on the Atlantic. 🙂
Does “front” include “over”?
Jury Finds Democrat Super PAC Defamed Roy Moore and Awards Him $8.2 Million in Damages
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/08/13/jury-finds-democrat-super-pac-defamed-roy-moore-awards-him-8-2-million-damages/
Only a matter of time.
Only a matter of time.
Only a matter of time for what ?
Crankshaft: Book Display
https://comicskingdom.com/crankshaft/2022-08-14
Yup, I can imagine.
I just discovered that Win11 keeps track of clipboard entries, not just the latest one.
If you Windows+V, you get a list of clipboard entries. You can then select the one you want to paste. Handy when copying/pasting things.
I’d put this up with Ctrl+Shift+T inside browser that restores a tab that you just deleted. Multiple uses of that key combo will restore previously deleted tab. Sort of a ‘closed tab history.
Both useful things to know, I think.
But just Windows+V, not ctrl-v? Just wondering, I don’t have a Windows key.
I just discovered that Win11 keeps track of clipboard entries, not just the latest one.
If you Windows+V, you get a list of clipboard entries. You can then select the one you want to paste. Handy when copying/pasting things.
I’d put this up with Ctrl+Shift+T inside browser that restores a tab that you just deleted. Multiple uses of that key combo will restore previously deleted tab. Sort of a ‘closed tab history.
Both useful things to know, I think.
Thanks ! And Windows 10 does that also but you have to turn it on first.
Pearls Before Swine: Profitability
https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2022/08/14
Say it’s not true !
The “Windows Logo Key”. Should be on on standard Windows 11 system keyboards. Ctrl+Esc is the substitute for the Windows Logo key, but it doesn’t appear to work with the clipboard history, as Ctrl+Esc is meant to open the Windows Start menu.
Which reminds me of one of my favorite villains lines:
“It‘s not that I don’t trust you Otis…actually…I don’t trust you.”
That is a very nice brewing setup, Brad. I’ll have to think about letting my wort cool overnight. That would save a lot of labor and cooling water. The biggest drawback is that I put a bunch of time and effort into making my fancy counter-flow chiller, and that would mean I wasted my time!
Brad’s setup is expensive, and might not be the best way to dabble in brewing to see if you like it. The setup I have isn’t either. Here is what I think is a minimalist setup that will work to let you try brewing out without much investment, where you use malt syrup instead of mashing grain, and carbonate the beer in the bottles.
Brewing kettle: You can use a stock pot. You need at least 20% headspace to accommodate foaming during the boil. It is best if it has a lid, even if that is just a pizza pan sitting on top. You can buy reasonable quantities of syrup and hops and and scale your recipe to the size of your brewing kettle. I don’t buy ingredient kits anymore.
Heat source: You can use a kitchen stove, but it is wise to do your brewing outside where boilover will not be a traumatic error. You can use any sort of camp stove or BBQ burner that has a high enough heat output to boil the quantity of wort you are making.
Thermometer: Something that will conveniently read the temperature of water in the range of about 60 to 100 F (~15 to 40 C) will do for brewing ale.
Fermenter: You need something with a reasonably close fitting lid. You need at least 20% headspace to accommodate foaming during fermentation. You can use another stock pot. Using your brewing kettle (i.e. just letting it cool and then adding the yeast to it) may produce lower grade results, as you will retain more hop fragments and malt protein in your wort. You can use a glass or plastic carboy, but I have given these up in favor of a stock pot (a heresy similar to Brad’s wort chilling method). The stock pot is much easier to handle, wash, and sterilize, and doesn’t break when I’m clumsy. I don’t bother with an airlock any more. You can use more than one fermenter if they are smaller than your kettle. When I tried the bread yeast, I used a gallon bottle alongside the rest of the batch in a stockpot.
Secondary fermenter: This isn’t required, but if you have one you can transfer your wort to it after the initial fermentation has subsided, and leave a bunch of dead yeast and other stuff behind. If you are using a couple of stock pots, then your brewing kettle can serve for this.
Mesh bags for hops: You can buy or make these. I use nylon mesh bags that are marketed for making nut milk or something like that. You can make do with one large one, but I use three (hops are usually added at three times – some for bittering, some for flavor, and some for aroma).
Bottling bucket: Even though I like to avoid plastic, I use a food grade plastic bucket for this. The key element is having something that the wort will readily drain out of through a hose to a bottle filler. This is usually a five to seven gallon palstic bucket with a spigot installed in the side at the bottom.
Bottle filler: This is a gadget that is generally less than $10, and makes bottle filling much easier. In theory, you can just run the beer into the bottle through a hose/tubing that fills the bottle from the bottom. If you try this, you will probably make a mess, but using a bottle filler only means you will probably make a mess on fewer of the bottles. Put a folded towel on the floor under the filling station.
Bottles, capper & caps: You can avoid the caps by using swing-top bottles (e.g. Grolsch), but that might not save money. If you use swing-top bottles, you have to have spare gaskets as they will harden and crack with age. I recommend against twist-off bottles. There are special (i.e. more expensive and harder to find) softer caps for those, but my experience was that some of them still didn’t seal. Many commercial non-returnable bottles warn you not to refill them. I have never had a problem with them.
Temperature moderated space for bottle conditioning: Inexperienced brewers would be wise to use something like an ice chest to hold their bottles while they develop carbonation and then age to drinking quality. Some of them may explode.
Just as you can use heretical means to avoid buying/making wort chilling equipment, you can forgo siphoning equipment and pour your wort from brewing kettle to fermenter to secondary fermenter to bottling bucket. That means carrying over more dead yeast and anything else that settled to the bottom. It also exposes your wort to more ambient airborne bacteria, but that is unlikely to be a serious problem. Instead, I use a racking cane in the source vessel, and a few feet of either vinyl or silicone tubing. I made a wooden disk with appropriate holes to cover the target vessel that allows me to transfer wort by applying a vacuum cleaner or shop vac to draw the liquid through the hoses. I have also done it by using an air pump to push the wort from one container to another, but the vacuum technique is easier. You can make your own racking cane from a length of plastic or metal tubing and just buy a tip for it (makes it draw from a half inch or so above the layer of dead yeast at the bottom), which will save a few dollars. That is what I do, as there is no advantage to having a sharp bend in the tube when you use the vacuum or pressure assist. You will need to put some planning into working out the tube and hose sizes that you will need for transfer and bottling.
There are many other gadgets you can buy or build to make the process easier or more technical. A bottle washer is what I would recommend most. You may find it to be useful for other things even if you don’t continue brewing. I installed a portable-dishwasher quick-connect fitting on my kitchen sink so that I can quickly install or remove my bottle washer. An alternative is to use a garden hose adapter fitting, which your laundry sink faucet may already have. A bottle tree for draining and drying bottles is handy. Some structures (e.g. boxes) that let you set up your vessels at convenient heights are useful, too, especially if you use siphoning to transfer. I also built a fermentation cabinet with a heater (which I need in winter) and a rack for bottles of ice (which I needed when I made lager).
The additional space for the equipment depends on how much of it you already have. If you are really clever, you may be able to arrange for most of it to nest together. You need temperature conditioned space (~65 to 75 F, or 18 to 24 C) for the fermenter for a week or two, or longer for some recipes or lower temperatures. If you use an airlock, it will make bubbling noises. I have gotten away with letting it sit in the dining room, but I think my wife is more tolerant than most spouses. Depending on your yeast and fermenting temperature, you may have some messy foaming in the first few days, so you need a place that won’t be ruined by that. If you are set up for an air lock, you can start the initial fermentation with just a hose into a pitcher with some water in the bottom. The pitcher will (probably) contain the mess of a foam blowout. The bottles take up space both in storage and in the refrigerator. If you have cool space in a basement, you can keep the beer there and refrigerate bottles as you drink them, or drink them at British temperatures.
@Greg
Timely as yet another Pope openly conemplates retirement, further disrupting the succession dogma.
No peronist leaves the power voluntarily, so, forget it
Yes, he has a lot of good info, I used to read him regularly. I would send links to friends saying “It’s worse than you think…”
Sadly though, he is a lefty who adamantly denied the obvious election irregularities in 2020, and blamed Republican party subversion. I think he even signed a group letter to that effect.
He’s still in my blogroll, just not a regular read.
It looks like it might rain. No thunder, not much wind, just getting cloudy with dark clouds. Some rain would be nice to knock down the dust.
It did smell like water this morning but I don’t see or hear any broken pipes.
I saw on FB yesterday that the bright thing by the Moon in the morning is Jupiter. It’s the wrong color for Mars, Venus is just above the tree line. Just trivia. I look and the dogs are like “why are you standing there I gotta go sniff something over yonder”. Shrug.
I put the little compressor away. Lowered the jack for storage. Pulled the thing out of the tire. Looks like a rain gutter screw. I have five inches of smooth shaft and two turns of thread.
I’m not holding my breath for rain.
Last night’s pot o’ gruel turned out well. A bit salty. I didn’t add salt. It happens. I still had gravy, good. I’m still figuring this out.
One pack of Pioneer brown gravy. Mixed with a cup of water. Two and a half cups of water in the pan, to a fast simmer, whisk in the gravy mix. Let it start to thicken, add 18 HEB frozen homestyle meatballs. They’re a half ounce each. A little bit more than half of the scoop for my rice cooker. Lid on and heat down to the high side of LO. Stir once in a while. The rice cooks eventually.
Exciting stuff.
I know about the Win Logo key. But hey, this keyboard came with a 486/66. Might have been a 486/66 DX2. I forget.
“Tropical disturbance comes ashore near Corpus Christi bringing beneficial rain to South Texas”
https://spacecityweather.com/tropical-disturbance-comes-ashore-near-corpus-christi-bringing-beneficial-rain-to-south-texas/
“Invest 98L, the tropical disturbance we’ve been watching over the Gulf the last couple days, is now ashore in South Texas, ending any potential development concerns. And it’s probably a good thing, as the disturbance finally starting organizing more rapidly overnight and this morning.”
“Another 12 to 24 hours over water probably would have led to a formidable named storm. Thankfully, that isn’t the case, and the steady march westward of 98L will continue through the day. For our neighbors to the south, this is about as good an outcome as you could ever ask for: Widespread drought-easing tropical rains without the damaging impacts of a strong tropical storm or hurricane.”
We got a nice little rain at the house right before I drove to church.
All the planets are in the sky right now, except Mercury.
A description of where and when the Moon passes a planet can be found here:
https://www.cloudynights.com/articles/cat/column/this-months-skies/the-skies-of-august-2022-r3353
There is also a faint comet near the head of Scorpio. I was out with the binoculars and the small portable telescope last night for a couple hours, until midnight, but the moon and some high haze made stargazing for faint fuzzies difficult. I never saw the comet, but the moon and Saturn were quite pretty.
Moved our son into his dorm today. I swear he was just starting first grade last year… He has all the tools to succeed. We’ve done all we can, now it’s up to him.
@ITGuy 1998
Mothers miss their sons.
Tell him he needs to call his mom every Sunday evening, and he can talk to you, too, if he wants.
Recall driving our youngest to college (from CA to ID). Wife’s eyes were leaking all the way home.
But it all turned out really well. Graduated with an RN, current job is Pediatric ICU with Kaiser in Sacramento. Great pay scale. Married with 5 very cute grandkids (the last were twin boys).
Hat trick weather here, 104F, 17Mph, 8%Rh.
Swamp cooler is working like a charm, on low.
@JimM
Very nice description.
A couple of additions/suggestions in addition to standard supplies and e quipment:
A digital scale with a platform big enough to accommodate a 5-gal carboy or bucket.
A pistol-style non-contact IR thermometer.
An unbacked 18-inch stainless steel ruler, (i.e., no cork or foam on the back side.)
Box of coffee filters.
Some yogurt filters.
Take tare weights on everything that will contain liquid and make a list. If the outside will not contact the brew, use a Sharpie Industrial or Milwaukee marker and write it directly.
Put a piece of masking tape on the side of a 5-gallon pail, starting at the bottom and aligning vertically. Add water in ½ gallon increments and mark the tape on the left-hand side with each addition until the bucket is nearly full. Recycle the water (flowers, flush a toilet, up to you). Strip the tape off and transfer it to the stainless steel ruler. The end corresponding to the bottom of the bucket should be at zero and the left-hand edge of the tape with marks should run down the middle of the ruler. Transfer the marks to the ruler, then scribe the marks with an engraver or use a paint marker. You now have a story stick to measure partial volumes in a 5-gallon pail. (Yes, the outside of the pail is tapered, introducing a small error. You can write an Excel program to make corrections or use a drafting table to make the corrections without calculating when you transfer from the tape.)
Use the same method to make a story stick for any kettles that don’t have a scale molded in the side, and your carboys.
Coffee filters can be flattened, folded twice, and opened into a cone that will adhere to the inside of a standard 60-degree funnel with a little water. Yogurt filters are easier to grab quickly.
@EdH
Yeah. Unfortunate. If you look at his latest photos you’d never guess…
@paul, ever notice that pointy objects almost always puncture rear tires? The reason is that a nail or screw lies flat, so a front tire rolls over harmlessly, but it can throw it up enough that it might get trapped by the rear tire and puncture it.
There is an old trick to prevent most of this, and it is supposed to have originated with British motorcyclists. Simply hang a flexible “mud flap” just ahead of the rear tire. This will deflect the nail or screw. I have not tried it, but know some biker friends who swear by it. Should work just as well on a car. Give it a try, and use your improvising skills to select and attach something. Probably should have a half inch gap to the pavement.
This is one of those logical things that can only be demonstrated, not proven.
https://time.com/6205084/phonics-science-of-reading-teachers/
After years of adopting every p.o.s. libtard program that was worse at teaching reading than the last one.
After years of teachers unions resisting phonics and being held unaccountable for continually declining test scores.
How many black students know that slaves were forbidden by law to learn how to read, yet many risked death to do just that?
How many have seen photos of the reading rooms in the early twentieth century where workers would spend hours after a 10 or 12-hour shift trying to improve themselves?
If you can’t read or do math you are a victim waiting to get screwed by the man or any slicky-boy that can fleece you.
@JimB
How much grant money could I get?
>> A couple of additions/suggestions in addition to standard supplies and e quipment:
Whew, good thing I don’t like beer… brb, thirsty all of a sudden, time to head over to the 7-Eleven for a Slurpee.
But then again, most hobbies require a decent bit of equipment.
Quoted for truth.
Especially sex.
Respected snake researcher dies from rattlesnake bite
I shouldn’t laugh… but I can’t help it!
Astronomy; the best personal program I’ve ever used is Stellarium, free and open-source from stellarium.org. The news rag was talking about being able to see EVERY VISIBLE PLANET a couple of months ago, so I fired up Stellarium to see when the best time would be. Turns out that my quasi-rural location has too many trees for good astronomy.
We did have, here in Far West San Antonio, a little rain this morning. Quite impressive shower, but only delivered one tenth of an inch. Barely enough to dampen the ground.
“Innocent People Always Die” By Divemedic
https://areaocho.com/innocent-people-always-die/
“One of the big reasons why I have been saying that we want to avoid a war in this country is the quote that is the headline for this post. It’s from a movie: Rules of Engagement. It stars Samuel L Jackson, a Marine commander who gets hammered for having his Marines fire into an armed crowd. One of the lines in the move sees Jackson say: “Did innocent people die? Innocent people always die.””
“The civil war that both sides seem intent on having will be ugly. War isn’t a game where two sides engage in some football game where the players, rules, and boundaries are clearly defined. Americans think that war is some sort of game, a crucible where masculinity is defined. It isn’t. It’s messy. It won’t just be players getting targeted. The combatants will be targets. So will the people who deliver food. So will their families. Women. Children. The side who refuses to participate in that will lose.”
We spend about 450 million per year on fusion research. About 25% goes to the ITER project that we are a partner for. I read an interesting roundup on fusion research funding that essentially says that a lot of the delay is due to smoothing out the year-to-year funding. Instead of funding staying level during design, ramping up for construction, then sloping down for operations, Congress tends to do flat funding, which means it takes more time and the total cost goes up. I’ve seen that with NASA funding for Orion when I worked on it.
@ech
We’ve been chasing fusion for more than 50 years already, and as JEP used to say, it always seems to be thirty years away. At least until now, when it’s 50 years away.
Begs the question what is the claim for funding required, from this point, for minimum time to reach the goal?
With a reasonable goal such as having the standard design frozen, the first one built, and the building program on track to complete one every six months, with the fuel to run them, and the cost significantly below that of pebble reactors.
It is merely an exercise on paper as far as I’m concerned. The U.S. government is not capable of doing projects with a 50-year horizon. It is wasted money for at least three reasons, the first of which is that the probability of such a project being choked off at some point approaches zero.
We could kill and eat all the greenies now, and their successors in two generations would have time to spawn and come up with some nonsensical bullshit as to why they must save the planet by outlawing fusion, were it not for the fact that long before then the ChiComs investment in the greenies will come to fruition and we will be their serfs.
I’m also reminded of the prescription for interstellar exploration: do nothing for a century.
ADDED:
I said billions (minimum 2) and the correct figure is 0.45? No bad–within a close order of magnitude.
“All-Electric Forcing in the “Inflation Reduction Act” (up to $14,000 per home)”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/08/14/all-electric-forcing-in-the-inflation-reduction-act-up-to-14000-per-home/
“The American public has been sold out in energy and climate just when the opposite seemed to be at hand. This bill is about bigger government, more spending, greater deficits, and more monetary inflation (federal counterfeiting) to make it all work (see Concerned Economists letter).”
“Hidden in the Bill are innumerable special-interest government interventions, one of which is very anti-consumer that no one is talking about. That provision would eliminate competition to electricity in the residential sector under the guise of reducing carbon. Specifically, the provision is Sec. 50122 titled “HIGH-EFFICIENCY ELECTRIC HOME REBATE PROGRAM.””
I wonder what they would give me to convert my natural gas generator to total electric.
Looks like I am going to be working on my python hot skillz.
https://cci.lbl.gov/fable/sources/fable/cout.py
This Fortran to C++ converter explained at:
https://cci.lbl.gov/fable/
I need to convert arrays to arrays (just subtract one from the index) and get rid of the stupid fem library (most of it).
@Lynn
Better thee than me.
I started out this morning to answer a simple question (should have been a clue right there) earlier today and after eight+ total hours of jousting with product specs, standards testing, and a segue down the patent rathole, I think I have a better mousetrap. Unfortunately the economic evaluation is that the application is too niche and the market too small. So record it with the conclusion not to pursue due to economics, and get back to real work.
Still, more fun than reading other folk’s code.
>> Hidden in the Bill are innumerable special-interest government interventions, one of which is very anti-consumer that no one is talking about.
“Hidden?” Maybe to those whose main source of “news” is Facebook. I’d fall off my chair if any bill emerging from the DC swamp wasn’t loaded with pork. Things should be slightly better come January when Nancy moves to the basement.
Things should be slightly better come January when Nancy moves to the basement.
I would not hold my breath. The repuglicans are just as bad about pork. Remember, the two sides of the War Party according to OFD and I never saw fit to disagree with him.
Great day. Church, good service, good visiting after. Pleasure of sharing saltvwater taffy I brought back from Bodega Bay, and Gravenstein apples from Sonoma County.
Two hens off to new horizons, and child is $30 richer. Some for savings, some for church, some for fun, some for chicken feed. Good kid.
Picked up school supplies. Had her pull out what she already had. Had her make best guess on what the individual things would cost and what the total cost would be. Then we all went to the store. Turned her loose with the list and some budgeting hints. She did well. Her guesses overall were within 15% of actual cost. Not bad.
Rabbit and vegetables in crock, because there was an amazing (store bought) pie in the oven. Family and my husbands co worker joined us for dinner. Coworker and I geeked out on dog training, Pavlov and Skinner, and harvesting own animals. Coworker is a neurologist and spent several years doing behavior analysis. I knew some papers and authors he hadn’t read, vice versa. Cool guy. Enjoyed his company and conversation.
Animals fed, child in bed, husband at my side, laundry tumbling, dishwasher running, guitar practiced. Everything put away and tidy. G&T at hand and bed calling.
Good day and one to treasure up in my heart.
JimM, drwilliams, thanks so much for even more home-brewing information!
Alas, it sounds like the basic equipment to have a go is more of a hurdle than I can manage at the moment. My list of other projects to be done first is not getting any shorter…
Fortunately, local commercial beer is good and reasonably priced. Cristal pils http://www.cristal.be was recommended to me recently, and it is very good. The Alken-Maes brewery https://www.alken-maes.be/ is now part of the Heineken conglomerate, but they seem to have retained the quality that got their beer the warrant as purveyor to the Belgian royal court.
On the other hand, last week’s mead recipe sounds feasible without much gearing-up, and I have an idea for getting honey straight from the beekeeper, so maybe mead is the slippery slope towards home-brew…
Thank you, Jenny, for sharing the happiness, and for the reminder of what to do with good days!
>> I would not hold my breath. The repuglicans are just as bad about pork.
Okay, okay, very, very slightly.
>> Alas, it sounds like the basic equipment to have a go is more of a hurdle than I can manage at the moment.
@Denis, how about wine.? Requires less equipment as long as you have access to wine grapes. My grandfather (first generation Italian} used to make his own in our backyard.
None, because it could lead to practical applications.
@Denis
Take a stab at mead or wine. Lower threshold for starting.
I used a latex balloon for a stopcock my first batch of mead. There are other workarounds to avoid buying equipment before you know if you’ll enjoy the endeavor.
My first mead – It wasn’t particularly good mead but it was drinkable and alcoholic. Enough to keep me trying.
As Nick is fond of saying, these -are- the “good old days”
And where has SteveF gone? It’s been 4-6 weeks since I heard his dulcet tones and bright wit. Miss him!