oats_son
1d ago
Yes, I think it is that fish. Asian carp or silver carp is what it's called here. The Illinois River is absolutely full of them and the authorities have been troubled by this fact for years. That's great advice on how to catch them, makes perfect sense. That's probably going to end up a lot cheaper than a kayak.
I've certainly never heard of "technoplankton" and none of the fishing threads I looked at on reddit seemed to have any inkling of anything like "technoplankton". Perhaps Americans don't catch this fish much and don't know how to catch them? Do you make technoplankton yourself or do you buy it? What do Russians think of the fish? The people here (rural Midwest) think it's a trash fish. Man, glad I made the original post, how fascinating.
oats_son
1d ago
I unfortunately do not own a bow. I do own a shotgun, though. Can you use shotguns on the river, I wonder? I wonder what kind of ammo you'd use for it. Birdshot would be my guess, since it probably wouldn't take so much of the fish if it was far enough away, but I don't know if it's illegal. Where did they use the bow? On the banks or were they in a boat of some kind? If boat, what kind of boat?
oats_son
1d ago
For sure, I had to edit it once already to update that it may not be a culture war thing since it was a settlement for a larger suit. Apparently the Biden administration resisted harder, but I don't know if it made more sense to resist at that point than to settle, especially for an administration that would really want to avoid the optics such an outcome would bring. I'm not much of a lawcel.
oats_son
1d ago
I see mixed things about them outside of that thread. In real life, the sentiment is quite negative. There's some movement to rebrand them "Copi", but there was a stand at the state fair selling them and they did things like mix them heavily with potato stuff or crab rangoon mixture and then breaded them so you don't even know what they taste like. What a waste of money, and it wasn't even good, just greasy and salty with no winning flavor to save it. Really put a damper on the whole visit. I am just really interested in dirt cheap protein that the State wants gone. I am interested in hogs for the same reason, but I don't live in hog country, unfortunately.
oats_son
1d ago
Do any of you fish? I'm not sure if anyone can answer this question since it's probably niche even for fishermen. I live about an hour away from the Illinois River and I am sympathetic to the plight of the Illinois River's Asian carp problem. I am also very curious about what the bastards taste like and I won't accept the colloquial answer of "they taste bad, don't bother". I participated in a Redneck Fishing tournament one year where people sign up to get on motorboats that stir up the water and catch them with nets when they jump, which was quite thrilling. I'd guess thousands of pounds result from that every year, but I didn't ask if I could take any home; I think they were sent to a meat plant to get turned into dog food.
As far as I know, they're filter feeders. I possess no fishing equipment and I have only fished once in my life in some relatives' pond when I was 10 or so, and we tossed the fish back in that case. What's the cheapest way for me to fish Asian carp? A motorboat is out of the question, but a fishing kayak might not be, though I don't know how smart that would be on a big river like the Illinois River. These are big fish we're talking about, and capsizing is within the realm of imagination of a bunch of them smacked you on a small boat. Ideally I would be on the banks, anyway.
oats_son
1d ago
I am impressed you are unfamiliar with this shooting.
The shooting took place on January 6th, 2021, during the riot; the officers were positioned to guard the House chambers. I don't know if there were any House members inside those chambers, but the police apparently thought they would be in danger if the rioters broke through, and there was no other place for the officers themselves to retreat to. The door that Babbitt broke through was to the Speaker's Lobby which led to the House chambers. Ashley Babbitt was the only direct homicide of the day, and she has become something of a martyr since then on the right wing. Her family started a suit for $30 million based on wrongful death and it was just settled today for $5 million.
I'm pretty late to the party on discussing the Ashli Babbitt shooting, but I now get my chance, because the Trump administration is going to pay $5 million to her family. (Archived link.)
I once discussed January 6th with a conservative in real life, and his stance was that the Ashli Babbitt shooting was an example of police brutality. He said that she was issued no warnings at all before being shot, and she wasn't directly threatening anyone's life. Taking a look at the footage, I don't know how she would have been warned at a volume that she could hear, and any of the police with rifles would have been jeopardizing their own safety and the safety of the other officers to lower their rifles and physically restrain her. I think the barricaded door and the cops with guns trained on the entrance should have been enough to signal that breaking through would be a bad idea. Given all these circumstances, I think that awarding $5 million to her family is a stupid thing to do. Add it to the pile of other conflict-theory-esque actions that make this presidency a seriously mixed bag for me. regrettable. Sometimes settlements are the cheapest thing for suits.
oats_son
5d ago
Languages are ultimately useless, until they aren't. I think any of the three would be a good choice. Japanese would probably have a lot of the same benefits as Chinese, and it would open your kid up to working in neat liberal democratic Japan instead of crazy and bad and oppressive China (or Taiwan, I guess). There are a lot more admittedly insular Chinese speakers in America that could be spoken to, but Japan puts out a lot more cultural output, providing something you might actually want to use the language for.
I guess part of the consideration here would be that Spanish is relatively easy for an English speaker to learn, and Japanese and Chinese are not.
oats_son
8d ago
That first link goes to the 2nd page of your most recent posts. Is that what you intended? It will mean that if the post you wanted users to look at was there, it won't be there later as you make more posts.
oats_son
19d ago
I like reading car arguments, so I appreciate your input.
I live in a rural area and don't really have any public transport options. Cars are a must in rural areas. I've gotten in arguments with former college peers who were arguing that cars could be eliminated even in the countryside, which was a really bad take to me. However, I have to wonder. When I go grocery shopping, I typically have multiple pretty heavy bags. How do you handle grocery shopping on bikes, public transport, or on foot? Do you just take a ton of trips? What about if you were transporting something else heavy? I wanted to take a portable grill up to someone else's house to grill this weekend, but that kind of thing is only "portable" if you have a car, really.
oats_son
19d ago
Huh, I hadn't really thought about it, to be honest. I just accepted it as a fact through osmosis that Japan generally hadn't apologized for anything and that schools generally don't go over their past wickedness in detail.
I appreciate your Japan facts. I'm still learning Japanese, though my motivation has been wavering lately. I could probably hitch onto some family friends' plans to visit later this year, if I wanted to, but I don't know.
oats_son
19d ago
After seeing the kind of moral browbeating you get when you cannot let 150 year old sins go, I'm willing to say that Japan ignoring its multitude of war crimes is the next best thing after having not done them at all. I don't think they're likely to do it again, so I don't know what the purpose of such guilt would be.
Certainly, Western nations are unique in acknowledging their own crimes, but it seems that these acknowledgements have been put to effective use by anti establishment types who hate the country and want it to die, or at least want the ruling class to go away so that they can be in power.
I guess truth is a fleeting thing for me, sadly. If one side acknowledges it, and the other side acknowledges the other side's ugly truths and then totally ignores its own, then truth must be disregarded. "The first casualty of war is Truth" and all. Koreans are in an even riskier position because of their proximity to such a hostile regime.
oats_son
20d ago
I don't really understand how you can characterize South Korea as being on the way up whereas Japan is rapidly declining. Japan is older at median age 49 vs South Korea's 45, but 45 is still pretty old. They both have similar economies with similar awful work cultures and similar face cultures. Spaces are clean and well designed in both. Technology is cutting edge in both. What outdated traditions are suffocating you in Japan? Are you sure that outdated traditions aren't suffocating you in South Korea? There are some things worse than outdated traditions, like shudder kpop...
oats_son
20d ago
I don't know what to tell you, man. My mini portable grill that I dug out of the garage of a relative that they let me have for free doesn't have bottom vents. It's Char-Broil and it looks like this, though it doesn't have any ash tray or anything on the bottom, just solid on the bottom. Your comment makes me paranoid enough to check extra carefully that it's entirely closed on the bottom once I get home.
oats_son
21d ago
I did not parboil, in fact, the brats were from frozen. I will have to try the par boil. The onions part of that sounds good, and it makes me wonder if the Oktoberfest brats that I love so much were created with a method similar to this, as some of them had great onions.
There's clearly a lot of benefits to charcoal. I like that they're generally more portable with less moving parts and are significantly cheaper. Generally, I want to emulate the American Dream by grilling away from my wooden porch on some grass. Also charcoal can get a lot hotter. Apparently that's the best way to do wok cooking if you don't have a proper wok burner like a restaurant would. Maybe the best way to do pizza if your oven doesn't like to get up past 500 degrees. Also you get to play with fire, which does a lot for morale.
oats_son
21d ago
The grilling went great. The brats especially benefited a lot from the smoky flavor imparted by the charcoal. Maybe it's just because I didn't cook them as hard as I usually do, but they seemed a lot juicier as well. I had recently cooked the same kind of brats in the oven, using the broiler to char at the end, and it really was a world of difference. Chicken thighs also turned out really well. Pork loin was good, but I don't know if it was better than in the air fryer.
The grill itself is kind of horrible. There are no bottom vents, so if you want to put the lid on, you start smothering the fire (I did it anyway to get some indirect heat after searing). Some ways through the cooking, one of two points the handle was attached by detached. And of course, the darn thing is horribly small, meaning you can only cook a few things at a time, meaning the cook took kind of a long time. Two-zone charcoal seemed to work, despite its size, and despite my not really being able to get an even amount of charcoal on an entire side. Maybe should have left it in the chimney for a little while longer, because some of the charcoal wasn't really lit if it was away from the hot corner.
I like that I can throw random sticks I find in my yard into the fire. I don't know the consequences of this behavior, other than making it get a lot hotter for a minute or so. If I had a larger grill, I'd definitely be doing fajitas on it. Or longer cooking time things like potatoes or chicken leg quarters.
Also I swear that that tiny grill is still way better than the propane three-burner Expert Grill from Walmart we've got. Burners so far apart, I doubt the thing keeps heat very well, and I feel like I can barely sear on it at all. Maybe I should give it another try sometime, maybe I'm wrong. It certainly can keep a lot more food on it.
oats_son
26d ago
I'm glad someone finally posted it, but I would not say that it's flown under the radar. TracingWoodgrains also saw it yesterday pretty quickly.
If disparate impact was a part of the Civil Rights act, and if it's been upheld by the Supreme Court previously (I thought it had), how can it be eliminated with an executive order? Is the hope that it gets adjudicated by the courts and eventually stricken down?
oats_son
26d ago
For me, our house gets a bunch of Chewy boxes in the mail, so spare cardboard is handy at about any moment.
I hope I abuse this smaller grill enough to break it so I can get a proper Weber kettle soon.
oats_son
27d ago
I've experimented a little with marinades before when trying to perfect my fajitas, but there are some things I am unsure about with them still. For instance, do you always throw your marinade out once you're done with the meat? It seems a bit of a waste to me. Glazing it on is an option I've seen floated, but that seems like it adds extra considerations. And let's say that my marinade is 100% acid. How long is it safe to leave the meat marinating in it? How about 50%? I know that meat gets mealy if you marinate too long, but I don't know how long it needs to get an effect at all.
Since fajitas are just about my favorite meal, maybe I can give grilled pork or chicken fajitas a shot. Also, I can see clearly that I'll need to order a couple thermometers to do grilling correctly. Thankfully, chicken thighs are forgiving. I will take your leg quarter advice under consideration. They do really well in the oven anyway. I tried a soy honey marinade once with leg quarters, and then baked it in with the marinade, but it just turned out really watery and the soy honey flavor didn't come through very well.
oats_son
27d ago
Yes! Yes! This is the grilling content I wanted! Thanks for the amazingribs link.
I do not possess lighter fluid. I figured even if it was true that lighter fluid burned off before it got on the food, a charcoal chimney would probably be cheaper over a long period of time because you do not have to buy fluid continuously.
I have a very tiny 14 inch used Char-Broil tabletop kettle grill. We'll see if I can do two-zone with that.
I think the first thing I cook will be brats and chicken thighs and then maybe chicken leg quarters, too. I might try grilling up the cabbage in the fridge. Do you do marinades or anything like that? My lazy air frying usually involves just seasoned salt and a meat and it usually turns out pretty great, but then my uncle (who grills a lot) avails me of his complicated adventures involving brining and marinades and rubs and I feel bad.
I'm too cheap to experiment with steaks. Steaks are very expensive, especially lately.
oats_son
28d ago
$50 grill, are you buying used? About the only new thing I see in that price is a Weber Smokey Joe, which is probably not most people's ideal grill for most things. What model you got?
You have to be careful to make sure you don't have a hot spot at one end where the burgers burn and a cold spot at the other where they're raw.
Two-zone grilling follows a philosophy of having a hot spot and a cold spot so that you have indirect cooking and direct cooking. Sear and then move over. You don't do that?
oats_son
28d ago
Grilling. Do you grill? What do you grill? How do you grill? What are you grilling with? How often?
Recently I had an incident where I wanted to cook a meal at my grandmother's house, but for four people, I didn't see any way to make multiple pounds of nicely and uncontroversially roasted meat without using an oven. So now I want to learn charcoal grilling, but the Weber charcoal chimney is in the mail, so I must burn with passion regarding grilling quietly to myself. Charcoal grilling seems a lot better to me because it's a lot more unique than stovetop, offers unique flavors, offers variety like smoking meats, and has way less moving parts and the grills cost a lot less and they seem generally more portable. Also I hate running out of propane in the middle of a cook. I actually haven't used the propane grill much because it feels like a hassle compared to stovetop. So if it's a hassle either way, I might as well pick charcoal, is the way I see it.
Well no, you're wrong! Look!
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