Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: Kitchen Hacks, in reply to Gareth,
The gizmo that’s done most to change my cooking over the last five years: a good digital thermometer.
I like the idea of the accuracy. How does it work in practice? Do you stick it in every time you want to get a reading, or does it stay in? How about with the oven?
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Hard News: Kitchen Hacks, in reply to Thrash Cardiom,
I usually heat the pan on high heat (gas) for 10 – 15 minutes prior to doing the sear.
I think I'm seeing the flaw in my thinking. I simply don't cook anything that hot on a stove. I'd use the oven or the BBQ (which is cast iron). Must get a better BBQ, but the old dunger I inherited when my grandmother had her stroke has never missed a beat in 10 years. No hood, though.
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Hard News: Kitchen Hacks, in reply to Hebe,
Whiz with the stick blender
Now those are a hack and a half. I've never used another blender since I got one. Fits in a cutlery drawer, takes no time to set up, does an excellent job with little mess, takes about 10 seconds to clean.
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Getting some serious citrus happening at the moment. I wonder if I should have thinned. Also, despite total neglect, The side garden has decided to crank out broccoli, potatoes, brussell sprouts, to go with the existing rosemary, mint, parsley and sage. The potatoes have been bizarre – I’ve never grown them before, it seems like a lot of work for a really cheap staple. They had reasonable growth in summer but no real useful production, and I pulled the lot in autumn and biffed them. Since then they’re coming up everywhere like weeds. The compost pile is full of them. I’m going to let them go and see where they flourish best on their own.
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Hard News: Kitchen Hacks, in reply to Hebe,
I'm curious why people love heavy fry pans. I can only see one pro, which is that it's got a consistent temperature. Everything else is con. It's hard to move around, takes longer to warm up and cool down, is a bugger to clean. Also, I've not really noticed a terrible difference in the consistency with a light pan unless you actually want it to have a difference, which I sometimes do. I sometimes want one side to be hotter than the other. And I definitely like to be able to lift it with one hand and serve things out of it with the other, and to be able to put it in in the drying rack without worrying it might tip the entire load of dishes on the floor.
I'm sure I'm missing something, they're so universally liked. But all my memories involve struggling with them. Burning hot handles. Burning things badly because they don't cool quickly when you lift them, and lifting them is difficult. Scrubbing them at the end of the dishes. Making a mess because you have to lift the things out of them rather than lifting the pan above the plate and just sliding things out.
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Legal Beagle: MPs' Pay, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
There's a few other things that seem important too. Death duties seem like a good idea to me, although the details need some fleshing. For small amounts like maybe a house or so, inheritance doesn't seem unfair. But when it's old money in massive quantities it's a pile that won't shrink, and the people who have the pile didn't do a damned thing to make it. The idea that they should be so incredibly wealthy and powerful without having made any contribution strikes me as extremely unfair.
Even the USA has them. Australia has capital gains that "crystallize" on the death of the owner, become effective estate taxes. We're not unique in not having them, but we're not progressive either.
Inflating money supply might be a more effective way of taxing capital than actual taxes. It's pretty hard to dodge inflation. Not through QE, that shit is whack. I mean actually giving money to people who will spend it, not to banks to lend to people to get more indebted. It could fund the UBI, and be phased in very slowly. If bank produced inflation were actually dropped by slowly raising minimum equity requirements, the actual effect on inflation could even be zero.
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Hard News: Kitchen Hacks, in reply to Ross Mason,
Boil the water faster with the lid on and save money!
Glass lids mean you don't have to open it to see, too. Save money and time, and prevent casual steam burns!
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Legal Beagle: MPs' Pay, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
I’m not sure anyone has ever suggested such a system would be practical without a radical change in attitudes.
They may say that a radical change in attitudes might come about from such a system, though. So which one comes first?
I’m not sure that’s any fairer than paying everyone a flat rate, even.
I'm not sure, either. I'm more in favour of a universal basic income. Then people can work more if they want to. I think the long run effect would be a gradual flattening. It could be sped up by making the UBI more or less generous. Too fast would probably be undesirable, and the social order would break down very fast, there would be hyperinflation, capital flight, massive drops in productivity, etc. But done slowly, it would transform societies attitudes and actions.
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Legal Beagle: MPs' Pay, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
I do think it would change a lot!
I’m sure of that. I don’t make any particular claims about how it might be achieved, though, and as a good aim, it’s predicated around the idea that fucking around on the X-box all day really is the kind of thing someone in a poverty trap would do mostly because it’s so damned cheap. There are people who become addicted to them, of course, it’s one of the most common addictions. But if doing something else were made considerably easier, I don’t think it would be quite so popular, or at least it wouldn’t form such a large percentage of the time used by those people.
Naturally antisocial people would possibly do it more, though, if there was no requirement on them to pay to be alive. Would this be better or worse? I don’t know – probably it’s not better, but I’m not sure that our entire social organization should be set up around making that kind of life hard.
Edit: Change the word “antisocial” above to “unsocial”. Antisocial people is a stronger term, which I think denotes taking active steps to disrupt social situations. That’s not who I’m talking about. I mean people who are naturally reclusive.
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Capture: Upside Down, Inside Out, in reply to Chris Waugh,
Really? Looks more like it’s under fire from a million laser ray guns.
And the Sky tower returns fire!! This shot does actually have substantial reflection in it, too.
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