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Have you learned anything interesting today?

MildredHubble said:
"Electrophorus" is a real word!
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Nice!

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I learned about kedging today.

Why Was the Kedging Anchor Used?​

According to the 1904 seamanship manual of the Royal Navy, kedging is described as the ability to maneuver massive engineless ships around harbors or narrow tidal river entrances. As described in the manual, sailors would make their way out in longboats and row out the kedging anchor in the direction they wanted the ship to go. This kedging anchor would then be dropped in the water when the cable ran out and go back to the boat and use a capstan for pulling the ship up to the dropped anchor.
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In theory, kedging is simple. In reality, there are a number of things that can make it a challenge. Kedging is an art that requires practice. If you ever need to do it someday to save your boat, you will be glad to have rehearsed. A combination of patience and smooth actions is the key.

Kedging works best with a long line. Unlike anchoring, it is scope rather than the weight of the ground tackle that provides the holding power. Those rowing out a kedging rode in a hard dinghy often have an easier time of it. Inflatable dinghies with outboard motors take longer to launch if they are stowed deflated, and long lines and propellers are a bad mix—especially if you are in a hurry and are trying to drive the dinghy with one hand while paying out line with the other.
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The Curious History of the Potato Chip (Smithsonian Magazine)

When Covid-19 forced people to stay home, many of us found solace in a snack: potato chips. The crispy treats enjoyed around a $350 million increase in sales from 2019 to 2020. When the chips are down, it seems, Americans gobble them up.


Any search for the origins of this signature finger food must lead to George Crum (born George Speck), a 19th-century chef of Native and African American descent who made his name at Moon’s Lake House in the resort town of Saratoga Springs, New York. As the story goes, one day in 1853, the railroad and shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt was eating at Moon’s when he ordered his fried potatoes be returned to the kitchen because they were too thick. Furious with such a fussy eater, Crum sliced some potatoes as slenderly as he could, fried them to a crisp and sent them out to Vanderbilt as a prank. Rather than take the gesture as an insult, Vanderbilt was overjoyed.

Other patrons began asking for Crum’s “Saratoga Chips,” which soon became a hit far beyond Upstate New York. In 1860, Crum opened his own restaurant near Saratoga known as Crum’s House or Crum’s Place, where a basket of potato chips sat invitingly on every table. Crum oversaw the restaurant until retiring over 30 years later; in 1889, a New York Herald writer called him “the best cook in America.” Crum died in 1914, but today’s astounding variety of potato chips, from cinnamon-and-sugar Pringles to flamin’ hot dill pickle Lay’s, are a tribute to the man American Heritage magazine called “the Edison of grease.”

Still, historians who have peeled the skin off this story have hastened to point out that Crum was not the sole inventor of the chip, or even the first. The earliest known recipe for chips dates to 1817, when an English doctor named William Kitchiner published The Cook’s Oracle, a cookbook that included a recipe for “potatoes fried in slices or shavings.” And in July 1849, four years before Crum supposedly dissed Vanderbilt, a New York Herald reporter noted the work of “Eliza,” also, curiously, a cook in Saratoga Springs, whose “potato frying reputation” had become “one of the prominent matters of remark at Saratoga.” Yet scholars are united in acknowledging that Crum popularized the chip. It was in Saratoga that the chips came into their own—today you can buy a version of Crum’s creations under the name Saratoga Chips—and in America that they became a culinary and commercial juggernaut.

For a long time, chips remained a restaurant-only delicacy. But in 1895 an Ohio entrepreneur named William Tappenden found a way to keep them stocked on grocery shelves, using his kitchen and, later, a barn turned factory in his backyard to make the chips and deliver them in barrels to local markets via horse-drawn wagon. Countless other merchants followed suit.

It would take another bold innovator to ignite the revolution, the result of which no birthday party or football game or trip to the office vending machine would ever be the same. In 1926, Laura Scudder, a California businesswoman, began packaging chips in wax-paper bags that included not only a “freshness” date but also a tempting boast—“the Noisiest Chips in the World,” a peculiarly American marketing breakthrough that made a virtue of being obnoxious. The snack took another leap the following year, when Leonard Japp, a Chicago chef and former prizefighter, began to mass-produce the snack—largely, the rumor goes, to serve one client: Al Capone, who allegedly discovered a love for potato chips on a visit to Saratoga and thought they would sell well in his speak-easies. Japp opened factories to supply the snack to a growing list of patrons, and by the mid-1930s was selling to clients throughout the Midwest, as potato chips continued their climb into the pantheon of America’s treats; later, Japp also created what can be considered the modern iteration by frying his potatoes in oil instead of lard.

When Lay’s became the first national brand of potato chips in 1961, the company enlisted Bert Lahr, famous for playing the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz, as its first celebrity spokesman, who purred the devilish challenge, “Betcha can’t eat just one.”


Americans today consume about 1.85 billion pounds of potato chips annually, or around 6.6 pounds per person. The U.S. potato chip market—just potato chips, never mind tortilla chips or cheese puffs or pretzels—is estimated at $10.5 billion. And while chips and other starchy indulgences have long been criticized for playing a role in health conditions such as obesity and hypertension, the snack industry has cleaned up its act to some extent, cooking up options with less fat and sodium, from sweet potato chips with sea salt to taro chips to red lentil crisps with tomato and basil.
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www.smithsonianmag.com

How the Potato Chip Took Over America

A fussy magnate, a miffed chef and the curious roots of the comfort food we hate to love
www.smithsonianmag.com www.smithsonianmag.com
 
I like flying on the Boeing 787-9 "Dreamliner".

Partway through flights, the windows go blue. I've never noticed a screen go on or off, and as it turns out, that's because the blue isn't from a screen.

The window is actually two panes of glass with a layer of gel in between, and increasing amounts of electrical current through it make it turn increasingly dark shades of blue.

This makes for some interesting shots.

Here's a blue-tinted view of the northern part of Michigan's Lower Peninsula.

Specifically, we can see Bois Blanc Island and Mackinac Island, and behind them, we can see Cheboygan, Mackinaw City, and Little Traverse Bay.

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^ Great picture! I went to Macinac Island as a kid. That was a pretty interesting place. No cars, except an ambulance and fire truck, I think.
 
Cows eat grass. The grass is then eaten by microbes. The cows then digest the microbes for their own sustenance.
 
The other day I learned that some people who aren't from Canada think that everyone up here is white. Someone even asked how there can be racism if we're all white?

I could be really sarcastic and say, "Yes, we are all white so that we can camouflage ourselves in the snow during the winter", but instead I'll just say Canada is a very diverse country. Athough it's the major cities where you'll see most of it.
 
Small-town Canadian here- half the locals are indigenous.
Today I learned that there is a robot with a little hammer that can make complex shapes from sheet metal, pushing it one "layer" at a time, as in 3-D printing.
 
Not today, but I learned something Saturday and just got home today.

When I first learned I was ASD-1 (Asperger's), I was highly skeptical.I insisted on additional tests. When those agreed with the first, I was still skeptical. I had known enough about autism to know that I should have had significant difficulties in life, yet I was retired from a job I had held 34 years, and I was married for 24 years before my wife passed away. This seemed at odds with what I knew about being autistic. So I did my deep-dive into Asperger's specifically and autism in general. The more I read, the more I was seeing my life's story! What I had considered my unique quirks were textbook Asperger traits.

From about age 13 onward, I had learned what activities and social situations to avoid, and steered my life accordingly. The jobs I had over the years were technical jobs that didn't require interaction with customers, and allowed me to work alone mostly. I knew my strengths as well as my difficulties, and since social interaction was one of my biggest difficulties, I simply didn't do it. Essentially, I created my own life-path of least resistance and followed it. Besides social interaction, I have always been touch averse, noise sensitive, and the feeling of clothing on my body has always been intensely annoying. Once I was living on my own (nice and quiet), I basically lived nude - only dressing to go out in public.

Fast forward to now. I am now 65. Years ago, I read about the World Naked Bike Ride (WNBR) and decided I would have to do that one day. It became a "bucket list" item. Since I am now retired, I researched when and where one of the WNBR rides would happen this year and made plans to go. I knew there would be challenges. The rides take place in major cities. (I hate major cities.) Thousands of riders take part in the rides. (I hate crowds.) But I figured it's a bucket list thing, so a little difficulty is acceptable.

So I went to this year's Philadelphia WNBR. I figured that if I stayed at the edge of the group of riders, and at or near the end of the group, I wouldn't have the sense of being surrounded by the other riders, so that's what I did. Unfortunately, I quickly found that the other riders at the end of the group had a habit of suddenly stopping, or going so slowly I had to use my feet to keep the bike upright. At one point when the others were moving well, the bike directly in front of me suddenly stopped, and to avoid collision I had to stop rapidly too. My front wheel locked, the bike did a front-wheelie, and I was thrown off the bike. I abraided the road a bit with my knee;). After this mishap, I moved further up the line so I didn't have to deal with the slow pokes, but I stayed on the right edge of the riders. Now that I was further up the line, I was among riders who were shouting, honking horns, and playing portable sound systems, and even smoking.

The route followed central city streets, and many of them had cars parked in the street, so I had to be careful not to scrape the cars as I passed, while also maintaining distance to riders on my left to avoid collision. While this was going on, spectators on each side of the road were cheering, whistling, blowing air horns, and running out into the road to slap hands with passing riders. I had to dodge several of these spectators.

The route passed several historic buildings in downtown Philadelphia. I didn't see any of them. My entire attention was focused on avoiding collision with other bikers and cars, and dodging spectators. The noise and visual chaos of the other riders and the spectators was way over the top. I couldn't finish. I recognized that the route had gotten within 3 blocks of where I was staying that night, so I pulled off to the side, got my shorts out of my backpack and put them on, and once the riders had all passed, made my way to my lodging. It was a 12 mile ride. I had done about half of it.

I'm glad to have done this bucket list item, but of course was disappointed I couldn't complete the full course. It has been an eye opener for me. This was the first time in my adult life that my autism has spoiled something I had really wanted to do. Had I tried to follow a "normal" life-path, rather than the painstakingly avoiding-the-obstacle path I actually followed, I WOULD have had the aforementioned "significant difficulties in life".
 
That apparently almost everything I do or don't do is socially acceptable if you're a man but "wrong" if you're a woman. Not being married and never having kids and not wanting to, not sitting uncomfortably with my legs crossed even when I'm wearing pants because seeing any space between my legs is "dirty", being overweight, being over 25, not wearing a bra, having an opinion, playing video games, being treated like an equal, and on and on and on.
 
GrownupGirl said:
That apparently almost everything I do or don't do is socially acceptable if you're a man but "wrong" if you're a woman. Not being married and never having kids and not wanting to, not sitting uncomfortably with my legs crossed even when I'm wearing pants because seeing any space between my legs is "dirty", being overweight, being over 25, not wearing a bra, having an opinion, playing video games, being treated like an equal, and on and on and on.
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It's a tradeoff. If someone gets a glimpse of my crotch, I might go to jail. I can't walk past a playground without getting hostile glances. If I call the Police about domestic trouble, I'll be the one taken away. If there's a war, I get drafted, and if I'm a regugee, I see 90% of the charity appeals ignoring me. I can be easily sabotaged by false accusations both socially and professionally. Even the best men's organization in Canada just ignores men who are not fathers, they are so busy trying to get justice for divorced men in a kangaroo court. The news is full of celebrations for anyone else doing "men's work" and vilifications of anyone defending the win-win partnerships that we were designed for, with each gender specializing to do better work, and dependent on each other.
 
The birthwort is a plant used in many different types of alternative (quack) medicine in spite of the fact that it is highly toxic and causes cancer and kidney failure.

I'll bet the many of the people who take it believe it's vaccines that are toxic and dangerous.
 
Rodafina said:
I’m familiar with and enjoy the info dumps around here, but has anyone come across any info tidbits today? Any small surprises in your day where you learned something?

I learned that some species of owls have asymmetrical ears. I’ve never once heard that before. Fascinating!

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I have learnt:
The person who can hurt you the most is yourself
But if someone loves you, they do not purposely hurt you. And if they do, they make it up to you.
You always deserve the best and no one should ever take it
Autistics should never be made to understand something they cannot
No one should ever steal your dreams
It is ok to need help and support
Love and affection is an essential for humans
You should always be there for ur family and never take them or your memories with them for granted
Greed will always be wrong
Someone who loves you unconditionally never betrays you or let's people get away with hurting you particularly if you have spent your whole life with them.
 
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