exchemist

I see the latest is that there is, after all, no intention to "run the country" but instead to let the deputy president Delcy Rodriguez do it, with a pistol to her head. No new elections, no recognition of the guy who really won the last election, nor of the banned candidate who has just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. So business as usual, but with a degree of coercion by the US.

“Run” Venezuela? Is there a missing “i” there?

That’s something I hadn’t realised. About the apples, I mean.

Interesting though that the stock price went up, slightly, nonetheless. From the article it appears investors are willing to buy Muskie's bet on robotaxis, which seems to be where he is now focused, finding the swasticars themselves too boring. Personally I think he's gone nuts now and will blow up, as so many entrepreneurs do when they believe too much of their own bullshit, in his case becoming distracted by neofascist political meddling in Europe. But then I'm not a stock market investor.

Hmm, except apples are not very Raj-like. But OK, this is was for consumption in Britain, with cold meat rather than Indian food, then. Yes I remember the practice of cold meat with warm cooked vegetables - a pretty dreadful combo as I recall. Cold meat much better with salads and bread in my view, but back in the day the British didn't seem to eat salads much. Also I suppose things like lettuce and tomatoes would have been unobtainable in winter. Though one could grate carrots and have beetroot, shredded cabbage, things like that.

Yes like many of my countrymen I use mango chutney as a condiment with Indian food. I’ve sometimes wondered how authentic this practice is. And this chutney is rather different.

What do you eat it with? Or rather, what was its culinary purpose back when the recipe was written?

….not to be confused with the capital of Albania……😵‍💫

French women, e.g. my late wife, have a theory that English women have good complexions. Boobs, I could not say. I don’t usually notice them much.

That’s something I never knew.

Those were both dark chocolate products, though, weren’t they?

Butyric acid smells like vomit. Why anyone would add that to chocolate beats me.

There is quite a bit of good British food in fact, but we still live with the hangover of our postwar austerity, which for decades caused us to lose faith and fail to do justice to it. These days you can eat better in London than in many capital cities. But it’s true that provincial standards of cooking are rather uneven, shall we say. You are dead right about British industrial milk chocolate, though. Most Continentals wouldn’t consider it chocolate at all, adulterated as it is by non cocoa fats etc. I believe Cadbury’s Dairy Milk no longer qualifies at chocolate under EU rules - not enough cocoa-derived content.

Ha. I have a niece who has just moved to Tobermory, from Tiree. I have not visited since the move.

I love the fact it was discovered in a plastic recycling plant in Japan, having apparently evolved there. One in the eye for the creationists! Maybe that's what we need to do more of: search carefully in polluted environments to see what handy microbes may have developed to make use of our junk. Microscopic wombles, in fact.

OK, I see Cornelius went through a number of instars, migrating from aviation compressors to refrigeration equipment and thence to food handling. So out of the serious compressor business for several decades by the look of it. Now part of Marmon Food Service Technology (owned by Berkshire Hathaway). However I see there are still some of these ex B52 compressors for sale on EBay as military surplus. Other people also seem to use them for SCUBA by the look of it. (I'd be a bit nervous about using them for breathing air quality applications myself, but that's another story.) But none of this helps you, I realise.

Yes, for posting what they considered pseudoscience. At least here nobody has accused you of that.

Are there bugs that digest microplastics?

Yeah I think a lot of this is hype. They still don't have a way to make a commercial quantum computer and the technical problems are formidable.

I presume the advantage is that if these materials escape containment they do less damage. In normal use, capturing microplastics etc, I imagine the precipitated flocculant must be extracted and incinerated or something, to destroy said microplastics.

Just out of interest, what is the make and model?

But it was you that got banned from the astronomy forum, was it not? Perhaps a bit of self-reflection?............just a thought...........

Recreating sub-assemblies, or simulated similar sub-assemblies, is certainly one method of discovery and is in fact done, for instance in the case of bi-lipid membranes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_lipid_bilayer But that is far from recreating a living organism synthetically, of course. You clearly understand a fair bit about the biochemical components of life, so I am not sure why you then descend into wild-arsed-guesses (WAGs) involving QM and relativity. This is what is known as "quantum woo". It is not science and is frankly painful to read for anyone who understands science. There is no reason whatsoever to think life somehow magically bridges the gap between QM and relativity. That gap in theory is a question of fundamental physics. The biochemistry of life does not suggest any fundamental gap in theory. Relativity in particular is quite irrelevant to living organisms. (Quantum theory of course is relevant, as it is the basis of all chemistry, so there's nothing new in that.) Please drop the crap about hidden dimensions. This is more woo and has nothing to contribute to a study of the mechanisms of life. Abiogenesis is a uniquely complex problem to solve, no doubt of it, but that does not mean it requires new physics or woolly mathematical speculations. Existing physics, chemistry and biology seem able to handle the issues involved perfectly satisfactorily. Boring though it may seem, it just requires a lot of patient work, using existing science. Great strides are being made all the time, but it is a long road.

At least with wine you can just have the one glass which, even with jet lag, shouldn't do much damage. Spirits, or worse, a session in a bar, would be pretty ghastly though. I got into the habit of indicating before the trip that, if we were all going out one evening, could we please do that after the visitors from London had a couple of days to adjust, if there was a time difference.

Ah yes, I know UK universities often host conferences, usually in the summer when the students are away, to get some value out of the unoccupied facilities. The accommodation can be a bit spartan, but it’s a good idea.