Official Random Fact/Random Thought Thread!

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We get these bastards in early fall...

220px-Micrathena_gracilis_fem.jpg


Not every woods has them, but the ones that do seem like every two trees had web strung between them. Annoying. I hate webs in my face, and you're always wondering "Where's the spider?"...
 
Just finished a jar of salsa with chips. I didn't want to dirty a bowl, so I just ate out of the sorta widemouth jar. Problem is the jar still isn't wide enough, and I got salsa all over my hand trying to get to the bottom. It would be nice if they put common dippables in ultra widemouth jars so you can just put the thing on the table and be done with it. No extra bowls or anything else. Bonus for doing it old school, and making nice painted jars you can reuse if you choose to. Minimal extra cost, and it leaves persistent advertising in people's houses.
 
lxskllr said:
Just finished a jar of salsa with chips. I didn't want to dirty a bowl, so I just ate out of the sorta widemouth jar. Problem is the jar still isn't wide enough, and I got salsa all over my hand trying to get to the bottom. It would be nice if they put common dippables in ultra widemouth jars so you can just put the thing on the table and be done with it. No extra bowls or anything else. Bonus for doing it old school, and making nice painted jars you can reuse if you choose to. Minimal extra cost, and it leaves persistent advertising in people's houses.
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I officially really want this to be a thing. I want "them" to make bowls with lids. Do it stylish, put the ingredients and nutrition facts on a sticker so you're left with just logo/motif/branding. Make collections, or make different shapes that are better suited to different uses after they've been washed. It'll be kinda like gunny sacks back in the day, when companies tried to use the most attractive and stylish patterns so that frontier housewives would reuse them as clothing materials. It made the quality of the contents less relevant than the purpose the container could serve after it was emptied.

It'll help reduce the ammount of trash in landfills, water wasted on dishes and extra hand washings, and the level of guilt I feel when I chow an entire jar of salsa and associated chips for "lunch".
 
I get the sentiment, but the idea of persistent advertising on my table is off-putting.

My rather formal mother, gone 10 years now, would roll in her grave at the idea of putting a jar with a label on it on her table :).
 
Not all labels are the same. Doesn't necessarily need branding at all. The people that bought the product will remember where it came from, and keep the brand in mind. It isn't a new concept, I'm sure you're aware. Jelly and mustard come immediately to mind. I'm sure there's been other things. It's hardly done anymore cause everybody throws everything out. Why not when you can buy more crap from China, somehow for about what it costs to produce.
 
I'd like to watch a professional pecan picker get nuts out of the shell. I want to see how they reliably get nice unbroken hemispheres. Pecans stress me out. You crack the shell, pull a big chunk out of the way, and the meat's *right there*. You think "Alright, I'll have some nice pieces this time!", then reality kicks you in ass, and you're extracting slivers from the shell. Whatever the trick is, I don't know it.
 
Every so often the stars align(maybe 1 out of 20 times), I get a whole nut out, but it's almost always pieces.
 
How are you cracking the shells, John?

The old Southern method is holding two pecans in your fist and gently squeeze then against each other until you get a cracking sound, then rotate them a bit and squeeze to cracking again...rinse and repeat until the shell (usually only one of the shells is breaking, but not always) is well broken all about. Then dissect.

You have to exercise control...you don't want the shells to be smashed, just cracked.
 
I use a nutcracker, and squeeze lengthwise on the nut. Minimal pressure to crack the shell. That usually frees up a sizeable chunk of shell you can pull off, and the meat's right there taunting me. Looks like it'll come right out. Everything goes to hell getting the rest of the shell off, and the meat out. I'll try two nuts together, and see how that works out.
 
Back in early days of powered flight, they put concrete arrows on the ground and lighted towers to mark the way for airmail deliveries. I'd like to find one of those arrows.

www.atlasobscura.com

Quail Creek Airmail Arrow

A surviving concrete arrow from an early-20th-century airmail-navigation network overlooks a reservoir.
www.atlasobscura.com www.atlasobscura.com
 
My bedroom's probably about 45°(I need to get a thermometer in there to check), but I feel colder when I first take my clothes off for a shower than I do exiting the shower after having hot water poured on me til the heater's empty. I get out of the shower, only half ass dry myself off, then go brush my teeth in the other bathroom, which is probably even a couple degrees colder than the bedroom. Finish that, then get dressed for bed. At no point am I thinking "ZOMG, I'm so cold!".

That contradicts everything I know subjective temperature experience, and is pretty much the sole outlier. I find that interesting.
 
I'm scrolling through lemmy, and see that. I think "Oh, that's interesting". The gears engage, and I'm like "Oh... You guys..." :^D

Got me thinking about what the most complicated solar system could be. I wonder if anything greater than a binary system is plausible assuming planets with a stable orbit?
 
I wonder what a nice indoor temperature was back in the day? Say 400 years ago, maybe northern Germany. My place is currently 49° at the thermostat, warmer by the stove, cooler in my bedroom. It's not so bad. I wouldn't call it luxurious, but it isn't misery, and it has some benefits. I kind of like shivering under the blanket til my body raises the temperature, and the cool air is nice on my face.

I'd guess peasants probably had warmer accommodations due to the small size of their houses. A big manor house or castle would be a real bastard to heat well when the temps are down, and it's all open hearth, so your heat is going up the chimney.

So, all the guests arrive at the castle for the yule celebration. What does it feel like when you go inside? Pretty nice, or you can barely hold the silverware cause your hands are so cold?

I go into someone's house now, it's like opening an oven door. Probably what working a blast furnace at the steelmill was like :^D I used to hate that when malls were a thing. My hands would feel like they were swollen from walking around in the heat. Everybody's got their winter crap on, so lets jack up the temps so it's miserable inside, and you have a choice of leaving your stuff on for extra misery, or carry it for extra hassle. And hey! Maybe they'll lose their jacket somewhere and have to buy a new one! That'll certainly pay for the energy expense.
 
You keep your house about the temps that a nice cave was in winter, in what is now northern France, or England. That is cold, John :). I do not like shivering.

People used to live not much different from animals, as far as protection from the elements goes, 1000 years ago. Lousy buildings, lousy heating or cooling, lousy clothing.

Mine was 60 degrees at 6:30 this morning. It was 22 outside. No furnace or other heat going, just the woodstove, which I didn't add wood to before bed so was burned out, no live coals. Woodstove alone had it up to 65 by the time coffee was done, 70 right now.
 
60° is pretty nice. Just about ideal unless there's active inside work to do. I have a weird temp sensor. A couple days ago I took a wheelbarrow of wood around to the porch, and that warmed me up enough that I didn't want to start a fire in a 50° house. I waited a couple hours til I cooled off. OTOH, sometimes I'm shivering at 57°, usually when it's rainy out. If that 57° were today, I wouldn't even bother with a fire.
 
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