I thought it was interesting that the climate caused them to decompose, when orange peel is one of the most common forms of garbage I see on higher elevation (6000 ft. / 2000 m) trails. It's dry enough that the peel effectively never rots.
Are you able to square the levels of CO2 on planes, which are 1000-1800 ppm, so over 2-3x atmospheric air, with the 12-15 ACH? I don't understand how those two things can be true.
ACH often refers to filtration and not ventilation; that is, recycled air counts for ACH calculations but won't decrease CO2 because that's not scrubbed by the filters. So it's possible you can have high CO2 levels but also no virus or particulate matter in the air; this is why some places will report PM2.5 as well as CO2, as a proxy for filtration. To make it more complicated, you can also use UV-C to inactivate pathogens, which may not decrease PM2.5 and won't decrease CO2.
I'm not saying this is the case necessarily for planes, but I'm just trying to provide context for how proxy measures of air quality may not tell the full story.
I was really turning this over in my head. "Okay, the French are generally humane but they completely lose their minds when it comes to certain forms of non-Frenchness, typically those associated with colonialism. And terrorism is a big deal there, most recently the Bataclan. So maybe there was a person who was, like, ethnically Algerian and autistic, but how in the world could a press agency spend that much money doing such an investigation?!?" Makes so much more sense now.
Water is a lubricant as well. And yet it is not a good lubricant for all applications. WD-40 is absolutely spectacular for certain things, but if what you want is a lubricant there are much better options. For instance, there is a silicone version that will make a sticky old lock work like new.
> And yet it is not a good lubricant for all applications
seems like a bit of a straw man, no?
> a silicone version that will make a sticky old lock work like new.
In my apartment, my deadbolt was so sticky that it was hard to turn even with the door half open. Two spritzes (keyhole and the bolt) with WD-40 classic, and it moved easily, and continued to turn easily for the remaining 6 months in my time there. Could lubricant-X have done a "better" job? Maybe, not that it mattered in practice.
If NASA designed an even better lubricant, would lubricant-X no longer be a lubricant at all by your standards? Because now there's something that can also unstick your lock, but with an even lower coefficient of friction?
WD-40 contains lubricants, and it can be used as a general-purpose around-the-house lubricant. Proven by my years of personal experience. Trying to claim that it isn't a lubricant is like trying to convince me that my lightbulbs are dim. I just laugh and move on.
> In my apartment, my deadbolt was so sticky that it was hard to turn even with the door half open. Two spritzes (keyhole and the bolt) with WD-40 classic, and it moved easily, and continued to turn easily for the remaining 6 months in my time there. Could lubricant-X have done a "better" job? Maybe, not that it mattered in practice.
It was likely the solvent properties of WD-40 that helped. It dissolved the old, tacky lubricant or rust and left you with a cleaner lock. For a six month fix on a rental, that is probably fine. For a long term fix on a house you own, it may be worth using one of a plethora of lubricants designed for that specific use case (including a more specific variant of WD-40 that is designed for locks and leave behind a dry lubricant when it evaporates.)
> Because now there's something that can also unstick your lock, but with an even lower coefficient of friction?
WD-40 is decent at removing rust, but not great at repelling water and thus preventing rust.
There are a lot of things that go into picking the right lubricant for a specific application. It isn't just "which lubricant is slipperiest?".
WD-40 is indeed a lubricant, but much of the benefits of using it are due to its solvent properties and people often don't understand that applying it in the wrong circumstances can lead to removing the correct lubricant and result in less lubrication.
Given that the other risk he cited, of ice damaging the heat shield tiles, is exactly what led to the loss of Columbia, I'd say he has an excellent grasp of the risks.
Anyone with the slightest bit of interest in the tales should read the recent English translation of the first edition.
https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/the-original...
or
https://archive.org/details/originalfolkfair0000unse
It's obvious reading the originals that it they were more a collection of tales with no particular moral, some unspeakable brutality, and a ton of hallucinatory weirdness. Why does an anthropomorphic needle go down the road? Heck if I know! The later versions, as explained in the preface of the above book, were sanitized and Christianized for popular consumption.
I think there are morals in Grimms Fairy Tales even in the earliest versions. What is striking to me when I read them is that many of the stories come from people at the bottom level of society and reflected their struggle for survival. These include terrifying consequences for misbehavior and that violating group norms (including those imposed from above) is a big no-no. A lot of the stories feature tricksters who cleverly got around these restrictions.
These patterns don't show up clearly in individual stories. But it's pretty strong if you read them from end to end.
Yeah, this is definitely the case IME. It's easy to read these stories and go away thinking "WTF." But it's important to remember that these stories come from oral societies, which means 90% of the communication is lost since it's only written on paper. But that communication can be reconstructed by a charitable mind.
For example, in the first story in Grimm's Fairy Tales (at least the version I read), there's a mouse and a cat that are friends. The cat and mouse find some delicious food and they hide it somewhere far away from their house. The cat then proceeds to go "visiting relatives" (in reality he is eating up the delicious food) and the mouse is gullible and believes the cat. After a while the mouse discovers the cat ate up all the food and angrily accuses the cat of being deceitful. The cat then proceeds to eat the mouse. The end.
I think this is a profound story on not ignoring the fact that the cat is the natural predator and the mouse is the natural prey in the relationship. The mouse has convinced itself that this time will be different. This has relevance for e.g. not dismissing signs of abuse.
But it's so easy to read that story and be like, "Well, I guess the point is that gullible people get screwed, so don't be gullible." Or even, "It's a dog-eat-dog world." It's a good story to tell a friend who's trying to rationalize being passive in an abusive relationship.
To me that story reads like thinly veiled political commentary. Peasants and feudal lords/nobility/local government working towards a common goal (e.g. paying taxes to fund defense against bandits, building grain stores for times of famine, etc). A person in power misappropriates the funds for personal gain, and any peasant who complains loses their head.
Telling a story about a mouse and a cat allowed you to keep your head, and the situation was probably common enough for the fable to become widely known before it was picked up by the Bothers Grimm.
It's not that different from Gulliver's Travels complaining about pointless religious wars under the guise of talking about far-away islands of tiny humans, or Star Trek criticizing the Vietnam War under the guise of talking about a primitive planet light-years away centuries in the future.
My thoughts were this might also be on the World politics level. E.g. a case where a stronger country during wartime will co operate with weaker country, and then slowly infiltrate because it's easier than to do full on invasion.
Then finally when weaker country starts to complain they will completely take over. The stronger country in theory could at any time swallow the weaker, it's just that it might be more beneficial for stronger country to do it in a slower, methodical, deceiving manner, until it can. Or when it actually needs to.
In this case it seems to me it was strategic behavior by the cat to not immediately eat the mouse, but instead consume the fat first. Eating the mouse was a fallback in this scenario.
But overall this specific scenario happens on so many levels of relationships including, but not limited to interpersonal, business, country level, World level, etc.
The main key points in my view are that it is a cat, and cat always will want to eat the mouse in what you would think is pscyhopathic mannerism if it was between people, but it's most easily explainable on level of countries. Because ultimately countries as entities have to act in psychopathic ways with each other, because territories, resources are all clearly limited.
Due to the complexity of World politics you have to co operate with your enemies as well. Both sides are lying to each other, keeping secrets, but at the same time co operating, because they have to or they otherwise will fall behind other countries.
I hate to break it to you but this is ahistorical, as this story is several hundred years old the peasants at that time had no concerns for world politics nor were they concerned by whom they were governed, the circumstances for them wouldn't change
It's the second story. The first is the "frog prince".
> The cat then proceeds to eat the mouse.
Even the english Wikipedia article does not mention the most important part:
When she beholds the empty pot, enlightenment dawns on the mouse: "First 'Top-off,' " she murmurs, "then 'Half-gone,' and then ..." The cat warns her to say no more, but the mouse persists. The cat pounces on the mouse and eats her up.
Yeah dang I just read the original version and the moral is a double whammy of don't fool yourself into being deceived/oppressed by a predator, but if you do, don't ever call them out on it!
Wait, isn't the mouse screwed from the beginning though?
One read I get is that the cat is making friends with the mouse so that, specifically in the lean times, it'll be able to eat his "friend", while also not sacrificing any hard-earned payoff in the good times.
I think there are two ways to think about stories like this: that they are Wisdom, or that they are tools for those who are wise. I prefer to think of them in the second way. The stereotypical Bible-thumping Christian thinks of the Bible as Wisdom. That is, it doesn't require much critical thinking or wisdom to apply. The Bible says X, therefore X is true in every situation and you should apply it to everything.
But I think in an oral culture it was more likely that these were tools for thinking. E.g. if your wise friend tells you this story (which you've heard before) and says, "I think in this area you're being the cat in the relationship," then that has some weight. But when a random priest says, "You're the cat in this area of the relationship," their priestly authority doesn't mean they are the voice of God and they are speaking infallible truth into your life. Your wise friend has more weight because you know from experience that they are wise and because they know you.
Basically, the story is a tool that is only useful to those who are wise. The story is worthless in the hands of a fool.
The problem I see in the current culture is that most people view the ancient texts through translations that seem almost illiterate compared to the original language.
I will take your word that some religions don't study the Bible. The study I went through was pretty in depth and I still have revelations 40+ years after the initial studying.
The difference between oral tradition and the written word is that the written word takes discipline. Some of the early religions have strict rules on capturing the text of the documents. The fidelity between contents of the Dead Sea scrolls and the current Torah is impressive.
The oral tradition is a secondary collection of contemporary stories that become the living dialog of the evolving culture.
Some religions contain both oral and written tradition. The written word is stagnant and the cultural understanding is always evolving. I understand the divide you are describing but I know a culture that has managed to maintain both.
> It's a good story to tell a friend who's trying to rationalize being passive in an abusive relationship.
Uhmm ... so they should be passive or they will get killed? I guess that was not the point you were trying to make? Like, warn them, that if they don't play their cards right, it will end bad, like for the mouse?
Well, not OPENLY confronting your abusive lord was a pretty good advise. Cutting your losses and leaving when nobody was looking, or, some "happy little accident" if there was no way to leave would have been the clever choice.
They have morals and lessons, they are just so alien to modern Christian morals that they are misunderstood. I suspect what you are calling “hallucinatory weirdness” is where the important parts are that are being misunderstood, as these are often about spiritual unconscious personal development.
The book Iron John by Robert Bly is a great example of explaining the purpose and meaning of the “hallucinatory weirdness.”
Yup. The early collected tales often violate a lot of what we'd today understand to be basic "rules" of storytelling, for example maybe somebody gets given a magical item, they're told it can be used three times - in any modern story we known we will see it used three times in the story, maybe the last time is a twist, but a reader or audience knows that's how this works - but in one of these tales it'll sometimes just get used twice because that's all the story needed.
Chekhov's Gun is another rule, in these early tales maybe our hero is given a magic whistle, big deal is made of the whistle, there's a ceremony for it, and then he fights a dragon, and... he slays the dragon with a sword. What is the whistle for? Nothing, it's just a magic whistle, the real world is untidy like that. If you wrote a Hollywood movie which did that, reviewers would be appalled.
These rules create a straitjacket that I think needs to be resisted more often, and so I'm glad to see that the stories targeting small children (e.g. "The Tiger Who Came To Tea") don't obey them as strictly, and that's why my favourite comic book issue is "Winter's Tale", Gaiman's telling of the story of how Winter Moran (Miracleman's daughter) went far away and came back. Gaiman chooses to tell this as a kid's picture book in a story-within-a-story because in this mode it needn't obey normal adult rules - Winter meets various ludicrously powerful people across the galaxy, they all seem perfectly delighted and assist her. Adults would suspect that maybe the galactic slaver traders and arms dealers aren't entirely aligned with Winter's preferences, but in a kids book that never comes up. Winter says "Everything" already belongs to her and the arms dealers just say OK, then this is already yours. Just like that. There is no big fight scene (back on Earth a climactic fight is happening, but it's not shown at all), there are no verbal or physical clashes, she just meets people around the universe who are all very agreeable and then she comes home.
I'm actually actively researching the Grimms tales - I'm glad you linked to Zipe's translation! I think he has the most accurate and complete English translation out there, but it's still being frequently overlooked for lower-quality public-domain translations.
Yes, they set about on an academic exercise and found themselves with a surprise bestseller. They spent the rest of their days churning out subsequent editions. It was kind of the Harry Potter of its day.
They revised the stories themselves. The initially publication was an anthropolical work collecting folk tales but it became succesfull as childrens litterature. So in subsequent editions they revised the stories to be more child friendly (according to the standards at the tme).
This does not mean the original publication was completely uncensored though. In any case orally transmittet stories does not have a single canonical version.
After the second revision only Wilhelm, Jacob did add some "scientific remarks" for these.
The biggest problem had been the idea of the Grimms' of the books being both a "scientific" collection of stories (which never were meant exclusively for children) and a book for children.
Unfortunately for Weingarten, the only living two time Pulitzer winner for feature writing leaned into his ignorance about Indian food and managed to get himself invited to retire from the Post.
After 10 years of only writing his opinion/humor column, not features, his contract was not renewed in 2021 in the wake of the curry controversy. His feature writing was long done by then.
I have installed that unit but I wouldn't characterize it as for the "least bit handy". It involves removing all the panels from the screen, center console, and shifter, and fishing some wiring behind the climate controls. Definitely do-able, but not for the faint of heart. The wiring is easy to connect, to be sure, Japanese are outstanding at that. Totally worth the money. I just wish I could put in one of the factory backup cameras, neither the dealer nor my trusted local stereo shop will do that for me.
You also have to update the software first, which is a 45 minute process that requires touching the brake pedal every 20 minutes to prevent the head unit from going to sleep.
I've installed it twice: a few years ago in a CX-9 and two-weeks ago in a Mazda 3. There's YouTube videos for it so you know what you're getting yourself into. I found the procedure straight-forward. Mostly you need to know which parts to pull off and where the bolts, clips and fasteners are. If you're someone who'd install their own dash cam, you can probably do it.
Having done this recently, the pro tip is that you can pop out the old USB/SD panel by inserting a hook pick into the holes on the front and yanking. It will pop the plastic faceplate off, and then you can access the clips to remove the entire unit. Mine was actually fine and I was able to pop the faceplate back on if I wanted to reuse it (not sure why I would), but no guarantee.
Turned it into a 15 minute job vs probably an hour+ of messing with the center console. Babysitting the software update takes the most time.
Very much depends on the model, trim level, and generation. Even on the Mazda 3, the location of the USB hub depends on whether the car has a CD player.
I did the "drill holes in the front of the USB hub" trick so I didn't have to remove the console. But then I dropped a socket and ended up having to remove the console to retrieve it and it only took maybe 15 minutes. I could do it again in 5 knowing all the steps.
Even a short novel is 50,000 words, that's 100 hours at a brisk pace of 500 words per hour. The NaNoWriMo folks famously challenge writers to do that in a month. So I don't doubt that some people can do it (10x writers?) but even typing 50K words at 70 wpm would take 12 hours. Famous writers tend to produce a few hundred to a few thousand words per day. Lets say 300-3000, so between 17 and 170 days to write a short novel.
The thing is "10x writers" (in terms of volume, at least) aren't uncommon at all. My best day while writing my second novel I wrote ~11k words. That was <6 hours of writing. My biggest challenge was 1) maintaining focus, 2) I have other things to do.
Most writers can write quite fast if they really have to, but given the income distribution it rarely seems worth it: If you make little, it becomes a labour of love and you're more interested in producing something you can be proud of; if you make a lot, the pressure to churn it out at high speed lessens. And while there are some in-between who need to churn things out fast because they depend on the income, they are few (incidentally there seems to be only poor correlation between rate of writing and income per book). And so the speed people write at seems to often depend more on whether people choose to because they see it as a job to get done vs art/a personal project.
Just goes to show that it's all about the system.
https://thetrek.co/pacific-crest-trail/how-much-trash-gets-l...
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