I actually just bought a pair of porta pros three days ago—any chance you recall what pads you upgraded to? I’ve mostly seen recommendations for Yaxi

That is incorrect, like incorrectly referring to the agricultural practices only in the past tense, or incorrectly lumping all peoples who lived in the Americas prior to European colonization into one generic group. The fact that both viewpoints are not equally correct is what makes it a correction.

Changing the past tense to present tense (these people and practices are still very real, they are not just part of “the past”) is a correction.

The market for small phones that last a long time is quite sizable. Which doesn’t matter because they don’t want to buy a lot of phones. It’s like Google. Years before Gemini, they made their search engine worse on purpose because it makes more money. Search twice, get served twice the ads. Nobody outside of the company has ever wanted Search But Worse. There is zero desire for Worse. But as long as Google is free to make purely economic decisions, there is no reason for them to revert to Search But We Make Less Money.

It’s probably just for the people who want it. I have thought about how much nicer two pages would be in the past for this reason and for displaying sheet music.

I think Chomsky is still nonverbal from his 2023 stroke.

Every time I search for a simple answer Google suggests I use Gemini instead, or they show me a “switch to AI mode” pop up that covers the lower third of my screen. I’ve just started receiving emails about using it on my old Gmail account apropos of nothing. These companies are begging people to waste that energy.

It’s a band-aid measure that makes cars behave more like buses, trains, or any other form of transit that takes the mental strain off of the individual. Yet it still uses cars, so we all still get those sweet sweet carbon emissions and ridiculously outsized infrastructure degradation. It’s a step in the right direction but we’re still on the wrong path.

It’s Bezos sponsored, so take the good PR work with a grain of salt given the state of everything he and Amazon have touched

I appreciate the operation you’re running here

Oh, right. I barely clock exaggerations of that sort anymore. People reach straight for the top shelf with their words. Especially in this case I think it works in environmentalists’ favor. Maybe I’m wrong and we should be more concerned about pushback when people overstate the case, but even within the left I’ve encountered few people who seem to profess that much interest in biodiversity or wild plant/animal/fungal rights to existence, so misunderstanding the issue in exaggerated terms at least evokes concern rather than apathy. It’s not like the conservative’s real issue with climate change is that akshually “life” in the broadest sense will find a way to adapt.

Also due to reduced water vapor and ice cover lol. It’s a conclusion that can be drawn without much reliance on the article, which focuses a lot on specific climate model improvements and not the obvious concern: given our desire for the earth to reflect more of the sun’s rays and cool off, reflecting fewer and warming up is not good

AI gets subs wrong, and thinking that doesn’t matter is both ableist and just a terrible lazy product, but that’s not the pressing matter.

It’s Israel. Because giving money to another party is not a value neutral action. Using a site that pays money to Israel—and you either know what that means or are purposefully avoiding the subject—means you are supporting Israel. Your consumption does not occur in a vacuum.

It will impact weather patterns and severity. I’ve certainly not done the work on how much, nor do I really have a grasp on the scales involved, so that’s mostly a meaningless statement, but I can say with confidence the impact will be real. Just like dams affecting rivers, icecap mass affecting heat reflection, and solar panels increasing local temperatures.

Given that one of the impacts of global climate change has been increased weather severity and chaos, I am not afraid of positing that reducing the severity and chaos of the jet streams could be a good thing.

Similarly, there are some interesting projects going on surrounding the use of aerogel and other materials that could help focus sunlight at the top of the oceans, where evaporation can actually occur, that are focused on creating clean drinking water—and while I think this is a good end unto itself, a nice side benefit would be less solar energy reaching the ocean and raising the body temperature.

For once, it’s cool to hear about proposed industrial projects and their side effects and they’re maybe positive, instead of “well that sounds like it’s going to leech heavy metals into the surrounding community”

Of course, aerogel is horrible to work with and clogs if it doesn’t break, and nobody else has solved the problem of scaling up and dealing with the steam getting in the way. On the lightweight flying jet stream turbine front, well, I’ve been following development for 8 years and nobody has even solved the ‘limited supply of helium leaking away into space’ problem for starters. And it’s hard making an efficient generator so lightweight that it can fly. So we don’t have to worry about them potentially improving global weather severity just yet. Or potentially devastating our remaining populations of migratory birds!

Not only does closing the lid do just that, it works the exact way you’d think it would. The lid is not effective at preventing viral spread. Not the only cause for concern when it comes to things exiting the toilet bowl.

United States Postal Service, 440 hours (55 days) max accumulation of annual, temporarily increased to 520 hours/65 days since the pandemic, and unlimited sick leave rollover. Accumulated at a rate of 13 annual days and 13 sick days per year once you’re a career employee, and 20/13 after 3 years.

I’d frame going to CBT as “making your trips outdoors more enjoyable” rather than “compromising your stance on worms.” It could radically improve your average day.

Also a neat site. It seems like the ratio of usable protein would be a good addition to, but a lacking substitute for, the raw quantities. Especially given how incomplete the PCDAAS and DIAAS datasets are.

That’s a neat site, and I was hoping your answer was in there, but they don’t have data on cooked mushrooms. We’ll have to do a bit of math.

So you’re taking the nutritional data provided and then shunting the fiber and water out of the way. Why? You can’t just eat the nutritional parts of food; you have to eat the whole thing, and that limits the amount of food, and thus nutrition, you can ingest in a day.

Were you thinking about food prep? Some water weight is lost there, certainly, but it’s not everything.

Let’s add a raw steak into the mix, and then we can instead look at how much water weight is actually lost when you prep these things to eat, by estimating it from data elsewhere.

The beans are ready to eat. They’re drained and rinsed. You don’t remove that water weight. So that’s 7 grams of protein per 100 gram serving.

The steak will lose about 25% of its weight when cooked, per multiple sources I found during a search. That means we need about 133 grams of raw beef to achieve 100 grams of cooked beef. So we can multiply its 21 grams of protein by 1.33, and we get about 29 grams of protein in a 100 gram serving. Their grilled steak averages around the same amount, so we’re on track so far.

Why is that discrepancy so great? I thought beans were supposed to be a great replacement for meat?

That comparison was done between beef and dry beans (note the 24 grams of protein, about the same as the beef). 100 grams of dry beans becomes about 370 grams of prepared beans. So in a 100 gram serving of beans you can actually eat, you get just over a quarter of that 24 grams protein: our ~7 grams from earlier. You also lose some water soluble protein when you rinse and drain them. They’re not the magic protein replacement people think they are.

Mushrooms are even worse. Per America’s Test Kitchen (and we’re gonna have to take these numbers at face value because I can’t find anything else), shiitake mushrooms lose about 14% of their weight in water when cooked, and cremini (think portobello, they’re just different stages of development) mushrooms lose about 60%. Thankfully the USDA’s site also has nutritional data listed for these two types of mushrooms: “minimally processed” shiitake and cremini mushrooms contain 2.4 and 3.1 grams of protein, respectively, per 100 gram serving. But those aren’t meal ready. To do that, we’ll cook the mushrooms, and they’ll shrink to 86 gram and 40 gram servings. So let’s start with enough raw mushrooms—119 grams of shiitake (or 119% of the original serving) and 250 grams (250%) of cremini. Multiply our proteins by 1.19 and 2.5 and we get a plausible range of between 3 and 8 grams of protein per 100g serving. So some are comparable to beans in their protein content! And some contain half, or less, of an already low amount when compared to the protein found in meat.

This quick comparison on Wolfram Alpha shows a similar story, with a less optimistic look at mushrooms’ possible protein content. Screenshot:

Now, the fact that you’re taking in so much more water when you eat 100 grams of beans or mushrooms than you are when you eat meat means you can eat more of them, and drink less fluids, but only to a point. And you’re certainly not getting 8 times more mushrooms than beef from a restaurant when they do a protein substitution. Getting enough protein in a vegetarian or vegan diet can be hard work. And restaurants are not making it easier by misleading people who may not know any better—I’m certain it’s careless, not malicious, but it is happening either way.

They’re (mushrooms) also constantly listed on American menus as a “protein” option despite a dire lack of the stuff