Your weekly crème de la crème of the Internet is here!
\n17.10.2023 (read in browser)\n\n\n\nIntro
\nWhatever is on my mind this week.
Things I enjoyed reading
\nTen-ish articles I found worth reading.
Things I didn't know last Tuesday
\nTen-ish facts I didn't know when I wrote the previous edition.
Book of the week
\nSome thoughts on the latest book I've read.
Seems like the proper mushroom season is only starting here in Scotland, despite the cold overnight sweeps and the last flushes on chanterelles:
\n\nI've also picked a few Birch Polypores, initially mistaking them for a different mushroom (Resinous Polypore).
\n\nThey're nearly impossible to digest on their own, even though they're edible it's like eating dry leather, so I dehydrated them first:
\n\nAnd ground into fine powder, which smells like chocolate but is very bitter:
\n\nSome people make tea with the powder, which still smells like chocolate but is not bitter at all, but I know that it could also be used in desserts:
\n\nAnd speaking about other \"mushrooms\", I was quite proud of my latest pearl barley koji batch:
\n\nHere it is mixed with split yellow peas and salt:
\n\nAnd then tightly backed in jars tov make miso:
\n\nI will report back with results in half a year or so (if everything goes well).
\nI've learnt about the Atholl Brose only recently (and shared it in one of the newsletters) but I had no idea about the story behind it, and it's a pretty cool article to get you up to speed:
\n\n\nSpies informed the Earl of Atholl that MacDonald was hiding in the hills, waiting to strike. According to the legend, they also said that MacDonald and his troops liked to drink from a certain well. In the dead of night, Stewart instructed his men to fill the water supply with oats, honey, and Scotch. The rebels drank their fill of this extremely potent grog and promptly fell asleep. As a result, the uprising was quashed and a popular drink, the Atholl Brose, was born—or so they say.
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Now I just have to find the time to try it myself.
\nWhile the rest of the world is trying to use LLMs for boring things like writing emails or generating corporate feedback messages, at least someone took on a really important project:
\n\n\nTo test out these capabilities, I asked both GPT-4 and Claude to translate a randomly-chosen passage from a 1599 book about demonology: Magical Investigations (Latin: Disquisitionum Magicarum Libri Sex) by Martin Delrio or del Rio, a Dutch Jesuit of Spanish descent. If the title makes you think of a Renaissance version of Ghostbusters, you aren’t far off: del Rio was a committed believer in witchcraft, necromancy, and demon-summoning, and regarded his book as a kind of guide for how best to combat these dark arts. Demonology is a topic I’ve been interested in ever since I read Stuart Clark’s brilliant Thinking with Demons. However, it’s also one I find intimidating to do real research in, since so many of the sources involved are written in a highly erudite form of Latin. I can read Latin at an intermediate level, but these books tend to be challenging, mixing obscure Biblical or Kabbalistic references with complex theological reasoning.
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I'd like to revive my basic Latin skills one day so I too could casually write \"I can read Latin\".
\nI was lucky enough to try quity a few varieties of apples this year (and even more than one different apple juice), thanks to Sasha's new-found love for apple orchards. This is a completely different level though:
\n\n\nAmy Dunbar-Wallis, a plant ecologist at the University of Colorado Boulder has been collecting these lost or half-forgotten apples in the hope of finding genetic variants that will unlock the flavour and texture profile of the next blockbuster fruit1. Apple-conservation efforts are continuing in other parts of the world and the specimens that they are reviving reflect the cultural and ecological history of their place in the world.
\nThe genes might also encode traits that make the trees more resistant to disease, climate change and other environmental pressures. These genes could then be incorporated into other apple varieties through careful breeding strategies or potentially through genetic engineering.
\n
Maybe one day I will get to try these varieties as well.
\nI've recently upgraded my phone (for the first time in almost five years), and while the process itself involved multiple Python scripts to scrap phones availability from Apple's servers, I am still discovering new features:
\n\n\nBut what is the log of log? What does this math concept mean to me?
\nThe essence of log (in its purest form) is that every stop of light gets the same amount of data. Ten-bit footage holds 1,024 shades of gray. To represent 12 stops of light values (or dynamic range), that means each stop gets about 85 shades of gray.
\nThis means highlights and shadows all have detail that you can access for basic color corrections like exposure and white balance. You can recover some shadow and highlight detail, and make substantial color adjustments that look natural.
\n
I don't have plans of video production though, and probably am too lazy to colour edit my pictures, but it doesn't make it any less cool.
\nFrom the same author who wrote about walking Tokyo in one of the last year's newsletters, here comes a different story with a familiar motif:
\n\n\nI didn’t know what my buddy Peter had gotten me into. He had some time off. The Wainwright Coast to Coast walk — a walk cobbled together around 1973 by fusing a mix of rights-of-way paths and hiking routes, put forth in a lovingly and precisely described hand-written book of weird facts (“place your coat over barbed wire fences so you don’t rip open a testicle” (???)) — up in northern England, was a walk that had moved my friend, had “changed his life” when he was 15. And he wanted to do it again, and do it with me. I was honored! Who was I to say no?
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I also am quite surprised that this is indeed a very long but a proper footpath, and would love to read this book as well. Sounds rather exciting and also goes from the Irish to North Sea taking in 3 national parks.
\nI really like this perspective on finances, that also explains well why high earners continue to push for an even higher income:
\n\n\nSo if you were making $100,000 more each day but the person next to you is earning $1,000,000 more, then you will feel poor, irrespective of the fact that you’re still making a ton of money.
\nIn this situation, it doesn’t matter that you’re not poor in any absolute sense. No one with a sound mind would say that a person making $100,000 a day is poor. But if you’re making that much and doing so next to someone making 10x that amount, then you will feel poor. In other words, the difference between being and feeling is all about environmental context.
\n
This also explains, why the people around you matter a lot, and could either make you feel poor even if you are not, or quite the opposite. That being said, the environment also matters a lot when it comes to personal growth, and handing out with people who don't grow doesn't help (they don't have to grow money-wise though, it's unrelated).
\nI knew about importance of properly cooking snails, but never read sucha a detail account on the reasons behind it:
\n\n\nAnother creature belonging to the “small but deadly” category is the freshwater snail, which is responsible for more than 200,000 deaths a year — more deaths than sharks, lions and wolves combined.
\nFreshwater snails carry a parasitic disease called schistosomiasis, which infects nearly 250 million people, mostly in Asia, Africa and South America.
\n
Now my list of fears has two creatures: cows and snails. Well done, nature.
\nAnd as we talk about horrors (and also as Halloween is nearing), this is an interesting story about one of the BBC shows that was supposedly so grim they had to destroy all its recordings.
\n\n\nIn 1970, two years after the series first ran and amid complaints from viewers and British morality advocates that the show was too scary, Late Night Horror was taken out of circulation. Just how scary were those six episodes? We may never know. Shortly after, all known copies were supposed to have been erased or discarded. Overnight, every episode of Late Night Horror seemingly disappeared.
\nIt was, perhaps, the scariest thing about the series. In both art and life, what we don’t see is often far more terrifying and compelling than what we do, from the slasher lurking behind the shower curtain in Psycho to the anonymous voice on the other end of the phone in Scream, from the monster that just has to be under the bed to Shakespeare’s “undiscovered country.” Nothing excites an audience like not knowing. And this is what has transformed Late Night Horror’s six-episode run from a cheap thrill to a kind of modern Necronomicon: an occult tome that only existed as a myth.
\n
The setup does sound like a start of many documentary-style horror movies though, so I wonder how come no one took it to make a movie \"based on real events\".
\nI wrote a bit about my own experiments with Birch Polypore earlier today, but this article was of huge help to me, and also has lots of inspiration for the next time whenever I find young polypores:
\n\n\nFirst, I tested a piece raw, and it was definitely much softer, so I sliced and fried a couple of slices. Although, pleasantly crispy on the outside it was less pleasantly gelatinous in the middle and I didn’t much care for the texture!
\nI decided to try frying much smaller pieces for longer and to season them, one sweet and one savoury. For the sweet version, I mixed Cinnamon and Sugar. For the savoury, I used my Rosemary and Wild Garlic Salt.
\n
I also quite liked the other articles on the website, just saying.
\nThe last time I did web development seriously was in early 2010s, but I don't really miss it, especially when I have to update my own websites. This thoughts do apply to modern development in many other fields though and I share the author's sentiment:
\n\n\nToday, unless you are a tiny team building small apps, you probably invest in picking an ecosystem like React, Angular, or Vue or combining smaller frameworks with other tools to roll your own environment. You must worry about CSS frameworks, asset packers/assemblers, and many other open-source frameworks and utilities, which are built on layers of yet more open-source items. Now, you must keep everything updated and avoid incompatibilities and security holes.
\nWhat a pain in the ass all of this has to be. Of course, it's job security!
\n
Even building iOS apps a decade ago was way more straightforward. More time-consuming, yes, but also very efficient for the end-users.
\nThere is this monument / tomb not far from our house, and people still argue why it's so fancy:
\n\n\n\nIt is partially due to his elusive behavior that rumors began to spread that this gentleman was, in fact, a gentlewoman. Because this was the 19th century, a woman could not own land. So, speculation began to form that an impersonation was incorporated to circumvent the law, and that the elaborate tomb was meant to help conceal his identity.
\n
A more possible explanation though is that the person was afraid that their dead body would be snatched by students of a medical college, so took all possible precautions.
\nA few months ago I wrote about paper wheels used by railways, but apparently there were other attempts to reshape the industry, includding adding rubber tires to trains:
\n\n\nThe special pneumatic tyres, fitted with metal flanges in order to keep the coach on the rails, had a wooden hoop inside them so if they punctured, they only deflated slightly to prevent derailment.
\nAt the time it was claimed that this type of tyre had an adhesion three times greater than steel wheels, so the test trains could accelerate faster and brake later than conventional steam trains of the era. The pneumatic tires absorbed shocks and bumps, and were considerably quieter in use — a boon it was said for passengers, but surely also for people living near the railways.
\n
It is not a surprise though that the invention was proposed by a tyre industry magnate.
\nThis is a relatively small research, but it states that people renting properties they live in are agining faster:
\n\n\nAbout 5m households live in privately rented accommodation in the UK – a a figure that has doubled in the last 20 years. Costs are higher, conditions are worse and tenure is more precarious than in owner-occupied housing or socially rented housing.
\nThe study concluded: “Our finding that tenure is associated with faster ageing at nearly half the rate of that associated with current smoking and twice that with obesity suggests that our results may have clinical significance.
\n
So money again seems to be a way to look younger.
\nI rarely use an espuma gun, mostly to make a perfect batter for deep frying things, but this law still annoys me a lot:
\n\n\nPossessing laughing gas will be made illegal in three weeks, with those who repeatedly misuse the drug facing up to two years in prison.
\nAnd dealers of nitrous oxide will face up to 14 years behind bars, the Home Office said.
\nThe ban will come into force on November 8, and will make nitrous oxide a controlled Class C drug under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.
\n
At least the streets might get cleaner (even though here in Scotland I am yet to see people using NO2 as much as they used to in London).
\nOver the last weeks I mentioned many things banned (or used to be banned) in the States, like black currant, but tonka beans are the new one on the list for me:
\n\n\nSelling tonka beans to eat has been illegal in the US since 1954. Foods containing tonka are considered to be ‘adulterated’, though that hasn’t stopped them appearing on the menus of Michelin-starred restaurants, from New York to California.
\n
So folks in US are smuggling tonka beans through the borders the same way I will soon be ordering NO2 canisters for my desserts.
\nThink pulled pork (beef, chicken, fish, you name it) but dried out:
\n\n\n\nMeat floss is made by stewing finely cut pork, chicken, or beef (though other meats may be used) in a sweetened mixture of soy sauce and various spices until individual muscle fibres can be easily torn apart with a fork. This happens when the water-insoluble collagen that holds the muscle fibres of the meat together has been converted into water-soluble gelatine. The meat is teased apart, strained, and partially dried in the oven. It is then mashed and beaten while being cooked in a large wok until it is nearly completely dry. Additional flavourings are usually added while the mixture is being fried.
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Looks like a nice garnish though.
\nFor the past few years I occasionally go on a cutting spree and significantly reduce my calorie intake to loose weight, which brings a tall to my weightlifting numbers. Apparently a moderate reduction, counter-intuitively, does the opposite and helps to grow more muscles:
\n\n\nThey found that during a two-year span, the goal for participants was to reduce their daily caloric intake by 25%, but the highest the group was able to reach was a 12% reduction. Even so, this slight reduction in calories was enough to activate most of the biological pathways that are important in healthy aging.
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That won't stop me from going on a dirty bulk in December and for a few months living off double cheeseburgers and pizzas only.
\nI thought these are just common defects on walls, but it's actually an architectural decision:
\n\n\n\nA weep, a weep hole, or a weep-brick is a small opening that allows water to drain from within an assembly. Weeps are located at the bottom of the object to allow for drainage; the weep hole must be sized adequately to overcome surface tension.
\n
So closing it up might actually lead to mold and make things worse.
\nMost of ancient laws in the UK are myths or urban legends, but it's nice to see people respecting them when they're real:
\n\n\n\nThe large bale, which these days is lowered on climbing rope by workers in hi-vis jackets, is intended to alert river traffic of the reduced headroom.
\nUrgent repair and cleaning work means the bridge was closed on Saturday for three weeks, until 5 November.
\nAccording to the Port of London Thames Byelaws, clause 36.2: “When the headroom of an arch or span of a bridge is reduced from its usual limits, but that arch or span is not closed to navigation, the person in control of the bridge must suspend from the centre of that arch or span by day a bundle of straw large enough to be conspicuous and by night a white light.”
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Imagine being sued for breaking a 900 years old law though.
\nWhy would a writer leave their publisher if things go well? Now I have at least one reason:
\n\n\nApparently the reason beloved sci-fi writer Terry Pratchett left his German publisher back in the early 90s was because they inserted an ad for Maggi soup into a scene he’d written! (Without his permission, obviously.)
\n
I wonder what's the conversion from reading it was though.
\nAs now I have a 24/7 access to a cold and moderately humid room (read, the garage), I am planning on taking a few salt-curing and dry-aging projects. My Ultima Thule is some kind of venison jamon, but while I am getting mentally ready for it, I am preparing a few way smaler items, thanks to the guidance from Michael Ruhlman's Charcuterie:
\n\n\nDuck breast is one of the easiest dry-cured items to prepare at home. Duck breasts are widely available, and their size is perfectly manageable. Even a frozen store-bought breast of duck will provide results that will surprise you, especially if you’ve never cured your own meats, yielding a rich prosciutto-like flavor. You can add additional seasoning here—garlic, juniper, and bay are good—but salt and pepper are really all that’s needed for a great duck ham.
\nThis is best sliced, skin side up, on a bias as thin as possible and served like prosciutto, with Parmigiano-Reggiano, arugula, and lemon juice, or with the ham’s traditional companion, melon, and a few drops of good balsamic vinegar. It also makes an excellent addition to a charcuterie plate or a canapé. Or arrange a border of slices around a plate, garnish with a mixed green salad with a basic vinaigrette, and you’ve got an extraordinary course to begin or end a meal.
\nThe type and size of duck aren’t critical in this recipe, though if you want an extraordinary duck prosciutto, order magrets, moulard duck breasts, which come from the ducks used for foie gras. They’re especially thick and flavorful, in this or any other duck breast preparation.
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Making proteins safe to consume without any heat treatment always made me slightly cautious, but at least the guidance in the book explains everything in great details, so while I need to work on my theory base, I am not afraid of what I am going to cook.
\nSadly there is no venison jamon recipe in the book though, so I will have to figure out something else for it.
\nThank you for your support and subscribing to the weekly edition.
\nIf you have any questions, or want to suggest a link for the next newsletter, please drop me a message on Twitter or reply to this email.
\nCheers! 🍸
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n","recentPosts":[{"id":7619431,"title":"Tuesday Triage #232","slug":"tuesday-triage-232","status":"published","readingTime":19,"campaignCompletedAt":"2024-12-24T08:05:10.000Z","publishedAt":"2024-12-24T08:05:10.000Z","orderByDate":"2024-12-24T08:05:10.000Z","timeAgo":"15 days","thumbnailUrl":"https://drobinin.com/assets/newsletter/lost_shore_2.jpg","thumbnailAlt":"","path":"posts/tuesday-triage-232","url":"https://tuesdaytriage.com/posts/tuesday-triage-232","isPaid":null,"introContent":"TUESDAY TRIAGE #232 by Vadim Drobinin Your weekly crème de la crème of the Internet is here! 24.12.2024 (read in browser) This is the free monthly edition of the newsletter. If you want to receive every weekly edition, plus access the full archive of both free and paid newsletters, subscribe here. In case you missed it, the last three paid editions included: #229, which didn't happen because I was en route to Iceland. #230 on Iceland, where I travel to the land of geysers and back, eat raw...","campaignId":17725242,"publicationId":14271866,"metaDescription":""},{"id":7612930,"title":"Tuesday Triage #231","slug":"tuesday-triage-231","status":"published","readingTime":25,"campaignCompletedAt":"2024-12-21T15:49:41.000Z","publishedAt":"2024-12-21T15:49:41.000Z","orderByDate":"2024-12-21T15:49:41.000Z","timeAgo":"17 days","thumbnailUrl":"https://drobinin.com/assets/newsletter/decaf_1.jpg","thumbnailAlt":"","path":"posts/tuesday-triage-231","url":"https://tuesdaytriage.com/posts/tuesday-triage-231","isPaid":true,"introContent":"TUESDAY TRIAGE #231 by Vadim Drobinin Your weekly crème de la crème of the Internet is here! 17.12.2024 (read in browser) Intro Whatever is on my mind this week. Things I enjoyed reading Ten-ish articles I found worth reading. Things I didn't know last Tuesday Ten-ish facts I didn't know when I wrote the previous edition. Book of the week Some thoughts on the latest book I've read. On too much coffee My coffee journey was long and thorny – I went from instant coffee with copious amounts of...","campaignId":17717492,"publicationId":14264006,"metaDescription":""},{"id":7545393,"title":"Tuesday Triage #230","slug":"tuesday-triage-230","status":"published","readingTime":26,"campaignCompletedAt":"2024-12-14T20:16:09.000Z","publishedAt":"2024-12-14T20:16:09.000Z","orderByDate":"2024-12-14T20:16:09.000Z","timeAgo":"24 days","thumbnailUrl":"https://drobinin.com/assets/newsletter/iceland_2.jpg","thumbnailAlt":"","path":"posts/tuesday-triage-230","url":"https://tuesdaytriage.com/posts/tuesday-triage-230","isPaid":true,"introContent":"TUESDAY TRIAGE #230 by Vadim Drobinin Your weekly crème de la crème of the Internet is here! 10.12.2024 (read in browser) Intro Whatever is on my mind this week. Things I enjoyed reading Ten-ish articles I found worth reading. Things I didn't know last Tuesday Ten-ish facts I didn't know when I wrote the previous edition. Book of the week Some thoughts on the latest book I've read. On Iceland We've just came back from almost a week in Iceland, so my time at home was divided between looking up...","campaignId":17636945,"publicationId":14183035,"metaDescription":""}],"newsletter":{"formId":3349991,"productId":47093,"productUrl":"https://tuesdaytriage.com/products/tuesday-triage-weekly","featuredPostId":5583281,"subscribersOnly":false},"isPaidSubscriber":false,"isSubscriber":false,"originUrl":"https://tuesdaytriage.com/posts/tuesday-triage-170","creatorProfileName":"Tuesday Triage ","creatorProfileId":54086}This post is only available to premium subscribers.
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