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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • I’d highly recommend the “well there’s your problem” podcast (which is a YouTube-based podcast with slides) that jason (not just bikes guy) was a guest on.

    I think in the beginning, guys like him were responding to what they thought was a real threat to their sport. If municipalities all started making Dutch-style good bike commuting infrastructure in cities, and kicked bikes off roads entirely, it would effectively kill the sport of road biking. You aren’t intended to do high speed lycra-biking on those types of bike routes.

    The problem is that he, and guys like him, rather than forming a coalition with other vulnerable road users to advocate for good bikes infrastructure and the right for cyclists to use roads, chose to sell out all other users to secure their own continued access to roads.

    Obviously, as Jason points out this video, good Dutch bike infrastructure does not actually kill hobby biking, cause you can ride all you want on country roads and country bikepaths.



  • If you like the style of running shoes, but for just walking, and you want something wide, I’d go for altra LP alpine. I mainly like altra cause they don’t squeeze my feet like hokas (and practically every other brand) do.

    Lone peak is altra’s top selling trail running/hiking shoe, but they made a hemp/suede casual version that should be pretty durable.

    Altra also has the a version of the Torin (a road running shoe) for casual wear that’s all leather, so it’s probably pretty durable, but it’s a little narrower, and i don’t like the styling as much.

    Ive never been a “running shoe for casual wear”-person, though, so i haven’t worn either of those.

    For slightly nicer looking (or cold weather) casual wear, I have Jim Green boots. They are very comfortable and basically the only boot company that actually makes something that doesn’t squeeze your toes. If you don’t like what they have, look for other boots/shoes made with stitchdown construction. Most nicer boots/shoes use a Goodyear (or similar) welt, which wraps the upper under your foot, making it more narrow. Stitchdown has the upper flip outwards at the midsole, making it wider.

    For more casual wear, I have Bedrock clogs. Also super durable/resolable and nice and wide. It doesn’t have any foam underfoot, which i like, but isnt for everyone.





  • It’s really the fundamental mistake of thinking “I am a smart person, educated and trained in a specific discipline, and if I apply myself to a field where I’m an outsider, I’ll have a unique perspective that could disrupt the industry”.

    There are obviously people who are multidisciplinary, and there are obviously multidisciplinary teams, but you can’t just step into a different discipline as an outside observer and come up with something that isn’t completely full of holes.

    People who are good at multidisciplinary collaborations are really good at letting their inexperience show, but that requires a lot of humility. If you drop an MD or a college professor onto a construction site, and have them come up with a list of ways they would improve the process, 19/20 of their suggestions will be obvious garbage to even a new construction worker. The key is to actually bounce those ideas off the people doing the work, and then you get useful stuff. Again, though, that takes humility that is particularly hard to find in academia.


  • Imagine slamming on the gas in your car. The car lurches forward, pushing your seat into you, and you start to accelerate forward.

    As the driver, though, you feel like you are being pushed back into your seat, though it’s pretty obvious that there is no force pushing you back, it’s just the inertia of your body trying to stay put.

    The only force in that system is the force of the car accelerating you forward, and the feeling of being pushed backwards is a fictitious force.

    It’s the exact same with rotational motion, just trickier to wrap your head around. If you have acceleration, you know there are unbalanced forces, and an object in orbit is constantly accelerating.




  • I’ve only really seen commercially available thermal batteries for heating, but i think it’s absolutely a solvable problem for cooling.

    The idea is that you heat (or cool) a large thermal mass when energy is cheap, and then you distribute that heat (or coolness?) later. Water is the obviously easy thermal mass. The math (and usage) is pretty easy for heating since the amount of energy stored is just massspecific heatdelta_T.

    For cooling, you can take advantage of the huge amount of energy it takes to freeze water. For example, it takes about the same amount of energy to go from ice-liquid water at 0°C as it does to then heat that water to 80°C. The trouble is that you can’t just pump ice around like you can hot water, so the system has tools be more complicated.






  • Pressure compensating drippers seem to only work for me for a season. I’m not sure if they are getting clogged with debris, or just getting damaged from being out in the elements. I recently got drippers that are essentially like little spigots that you can dial up or down, and i end up just tweaking each one until the flow rate is good for all of them (also nice to tailor to each plant). The other benefit of those is that you can just open it all the way to blow out any sediment.




  • From what i understand “cottage cheese” is a cheese made from milk treated with rennet, lightly strained, and mixed with a little bit of cream. I’m sure there’s regional variation in the terminology and process.

    From like 2 minutes of searching online, I seems like what people call “dry cottage cheese” is basically just what I described. Heat milk, acidify it, and strain. Typically what I do is strain it with a cloth until it’s fairly dry, then I’ll mix back in some of the whey until I get the texture I like.

    The fancier version involves fermentation with bacterial cultures to create the necessary acid, but that’s not something you are going to do with a half jug of milk you want to just use up before it goes bad.