Smarter than it appears

You may have heard of Ben & Jerry's ice cream. Much of it is good. Recently, they've been in the news for having decided to introduce a new flavour, inspired by a skit on Saturday Night Live. It should come as no surprise to anyone that the name is a pun, in poor taste.

One of the multifarious "everyone else has no morals" pressure groups with which the USA is sadly infested was surprised, and has taken it upon themselves to demand a boycott of the company. Naturally, this is helping the "Schweddy Balls" flavour gain huge publicity, making the pressure group a figure of fun, and generally giving Ben & Jerry's and Saturday Night Live a huge boost. It's also distracting said pressure group from screeching about more important things. The pressure group is opposed to such things as reproductive health, civil rights for all, informed consent, bodily autonomy, and human love, but right now they're screaming about how fancy ice cream will destroy America, which makes them look foolish and pulls resources away from their efforts to deny the humanity of more than 50% of the population.

One begins to wonder if Ben & Jerry's isn't doing this entirely deliberately, perhaps even with the aim of destroying what little shreds of credibility such pressure groups may have had. After all, just because the founders were hippies doesn't mean they weren't smart.

I really am turning Californian now.

It appears there's been an earthquake, centred in Virginia. Latest reports have it as a 5.9, and the Eastern seaboard is busy saying things like "Ohnoes!" and "Wait, was that it?" because they mostly have no experience of earthquakes.

Meanwhile, my instinctive response is to say things along the lines of "Now do you get why I really don't care? Because seriously, that WAS it. I'd far rather have maybe one of those in five years or so, or maybe not ever, than be pretty much certain I'll have to deal with a hurricane most years."

Coat tails

As my mother will no doubt confirm, I have a tendency towards running to fat. The lack of activity in my daily life (due to a combination of lack of need to exercise in doing things and an ever-increasing collection of mobility-impairing health problems) doesn't help at all. The LA, having an office job, also struggles with keeping weight to an acceptable level; so much so, in fact, that she's begun (with some friends) attending meetings at Weight Watchers. Their points system is nicely generous, with the majority of vegetables counting as freebies, and her attention to it is also providing fringe benefits for me; since I cook for both of us, it's simplest to cook something that's good for her, and eat my portion of it happily. It's not impossible that I'll be able to lose some weight as well, which will make my doctor happy; he's been on at me to lose about a stone and a half. For the same reason, I'm working (when I have tuits and suitable weather available) on a frame to raise my desk by roughly 15 inches, so that I can stand at it instead of sitting.

Perhaps I ought to try posting regular updates here. Allow my readers to help keep me accountable.

In other news, my car has lost a feature it had until very recently; the powered antenna ceased to work reliably, and my efforts to troubleshoot resulted in finding that the $200 motor is up the Swanee, which is far more than I'm willing to invest in what is, frankly, a luxury on what I consider to be utilitarian transport. And so, I reassembled the thing with a shortened pigtail (having removed the mast while troubleshooting, and been unable to re-thread the pigtail) and a permanently erect mast, and then disconnected the control and power lines to the motor. I can no longer take my car through an automatic car wash, but then again I hadn't done that in over a year anyway. I wash the dust off it occasionally, and keep the important glass scrupulously clean; beyond that, it's getting on for 18 years old and is always going to look it., so as long as the paint remains sufficiently intact to prevent rust, I honestly don't really care.

I just wish you could smell this...

I had a busy day lined up, and limited tuits, so I decided to front-load the complex part of dinner. So, I made something approximating quiche. It'll be nice cold, today and tomorrow, and all of it is from the larder. This one has about 5 ounces of ground turkey, mushrooms, aged goat cheese, and a shallot in it. I'm not sure if that's four or six portions, but it's more than if I'd cooked the turkey and served it straight!

Expressions of annoyance

It is with some regret that I draw to a close my endeavours to make a business of glowing dice, but the glow is simply insufficient for the necessary price. While they are nicely glowy in darkness, they're nowhere near as wonderful as I'd hoped, and so I shan't be making them available.

Not that it's all doom and gloom. I got excited about something, which made the LA very happy, and I got a set of nuclear-powered dice out of it.

Expressions of interest

As you probably know, I like dice. I also like things which glow, and am not uninterested in radioactivity. I've had the idea to combine the three, but I cannot quite do it independently. Allow me to explain.

There is a technology known as tritium illumination. This uses the radioactive decay of a hydrogen isotope to excite a phosphor, which produces cold, visible light with no immediately obvious power source. It is possible to obtain small vials which produce this light; it is also possible to obtain clear plastic dice. With these, I would be able to create internally glowing dice, which would glow for a long time. The trouble is the price point; in order to make the project viable, an individual set of seven dice would have to sell for $80 before shipping. While it's possible to sell dice at that price point, they're a niche product, and I would not have the advantage of volume. I am also considering offering single d20s, which would sell at $11 before shipping. I am willing to make a limited production run of dice, glowing green (as the other colours are lower in light output), as long as I obtain sufficient interest. I would require pre-ordering with a deposit if I committed to a production run, and the run would be unlikely to be repeated. However, given sufficient interest, and as long as it turns out to be legal, I will do this.

Know thyself

Always good advice, that. In particular, try to know yourself well enough to avoid falling victim to the Dunning-Kruger effect, from either side.

One thing I've frequently been heard to say is that I know just enough about working with natural gas to know I don't know enough about working with it to be safe. This is, from a distant perspective, probably untrue, not least because I know enough to be cautious. Sadly, whoever was responsible for much previous gas work in this house was a victim of the effect from the low side; he didn't know to seal threads, which almost led to the house burning down before we moved in, and it turns out he didn't know enough to realise that gas hardware and water hardware are Not The Same Thing, despite both working on pipes.

I would love it if the gas standard became left-hand threads. That would make gas line idiot-resistant, in many ways.