Reading theory ≠ being highly competent, though. Dunning Kruger states that people with low competence (in specific areas) overestimate themselves, and highly competent people underestimate themselves.

Reading doesnt necessarily make you better at things (though obviously it can help). A community organizer that’s been feeding the hungry for 40 years but has never read a political book will be more competent than someone who’s read hundreds of books but never gone out and done stuff.

Northern baptists were decentralized abolitionists, while southern baptists were centralized and pro-slavery.

According to the one i just had to replace, combo carbon monoxide detectors need to be replaced. I don’t know how the carbon monoxide part works, but i wonder if it’s a reagent or something.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floater

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.

Yogurt is super easy to make with any (dairy) milk.

There are some cheeses that are better with unpasteurized milk, but it still works with pasteurized milk. I think most cheeses made with unpasteurized milk are just done that way because the pasteurization is an unnecessary step. Cheeses that are aged long enough have the pathogens die off. In the US, that threshold is 60 days. In the EU, tradition is deemed more important than safety, so there is no waiting period. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12146498/#fsn370409-bib-0006

Homogenization is a challenge for curd formation with some cheeses, but you can counteract it with some extra calcium chloride.

It’s common to add cream to milk to boost the fat content for some cheeses.

You wouldn’t make rennet-based cheeses of the leftovers from a jug of milk, though, cause that’s not enough bang for your buck. I just make what’s essentially like a ricotta. All you have to do is heat it up, and add a little bit of distilled vinegar or lemon juice which cuddles it, and then you strain it through cheesecloth.

Dairy is heavily subsidized in the US. 1 gallon (3.8L) barely costs more than 1/2. Might as well buy the whole gallon and turn what you aren’t going to otherwise use into yogurt or cheese.

I would argue that it is currently a big part of the current economy if you know where to look. Lots of labor works via the principles of a gift economy.

E.g., you help your friend move to a new house, they help you redo your deck, you babysit your brother’s kid, they cook you dinner, etc.

The problem with bartering is that it doesn’t handle 3+ way trades (i.e., person A needs something from person B who needs something from person C, who needs something from person A), and it doesn’t usually handle asynchronous trades.

In gift-based systems, people can literally retire based off the goodwill that they’ve cultivated. There are many old people who serve their families/communities for years who then get taken care of when they need it.

Bartering wasn’t made immediately illegal when currency came in. Currency was made to make bartering easier and more fairly divisible.

I pointed this out above, but I think it’s worth repeating: bartering did not exist before currency, or at least there’s no anthropological evidence suggesting it did. People barter when they are used to currency, but don’t have access to any.

Bartering is a replacement for currency. There is no anthropological evidence of bartering existing before the introduction of currency. You would think somewhere there would be, but there’s not.

Ah, yeah, forgot that was another one I’ve done. It seems like I’ve taken apart most of my household appliances at this point.

Until you do like step one of taking an appliance apart, and realize that the real manual is marked “for technician use only”, and it’s hidden inside of the appliance.

My washer and dryer both have good manuals complete with circuit diagrams under the top once i take a few screws out. My chest freezer has one taped up under the hatch where the compresser sits. My refrigerator has one hidden in the door hinge.

Reject bartering, embrace gift economy

If you are a business generating rubbish, it is your moral responsibility to account for that rubbish. The business selling stuff doesn’t have their employees filling their pockets with the bulk food packaging rubbish at the end of the day to dispose of at home; they have their own bins. They just don’t want to be responsible for all the rubbish they generate cause it costs them more money than trying to put that responsibility on someone else.

Food that comes on reused plates and/or drinks in reused cups. Much of the advertising around littering prevention was developed by industries who saw profits in creating a lot of single use items that wanted to shift the blame for any litter to individuals instead of them. When you see an empty bottle of Pepsi floating in a pond, Pepsi deserves more criticism than whoever dropped that specific bottle since they are the ones who brought it into the world, and they do it on a much larger scale than any 1 person could ever manage.

My manual says:

DO NOT USE IN CARAVANS, TENTS, MARINE CRAFT, CARS, MOBILE HOMES OR SIMILAR LOCATIONS

So i guess you can use it indoors, but I definitely don’t.

Yeah, I want one of those, too. I think it fits different needs, though. Stove vs grill.

A gas furnace won’t keep you warm when the power is out, either. I will say a camp stove feeds just as well as a regular stove, after all, how often are you using more than 2 burners simultaneously?

I think there are some municipalities with that in code, but it’s definitely not universal in the US.

https://codes.iccsafe.org/content/IFGC2021P1/chapter-5-chimneys-and-vents

I live in a house with a gas stove that vents into my kitchen.

I definitely hear you about the coffee roasting. I assumed when they said that it smokes that it would just be like thin wisps, and I definitely smoked out my house. I’m not going to do it inside again.

For a lot of these large scale, epidemiological findings, it’s important to remember that the effects are small enough that you pick them up on a population level over a lifetime. I’d say that if you can, find a way to properly vent your stove outside if you are doing some home improvement. If you are replacing your stove, consider induction instead, and in the meantime, having an air purifier is good. Opening a window is probably also good. Other than that, I wouldn’t be super alarmed. Obviously, if you have little kids or something, you might have a lower tolerance for potential pollution, but it’s good to think about these things in context. Alcohol causes cancer, but everyone still drinks.