u/Henri_Dupont

AI (an unreliable source at best) says the SUV squareback option won't reduce range. Is that true?

Adding the option of 17" all terrain tires, and a lift kit which is apparently required with this tire, reduces the range by up to 24% according to the robot. 180 miles range or thereabouts with big tires.

I went on A Better Route Planner (no idea how good this site is) and estimated a Slate trip from Missouri to Seattle. I used specs for the squareback SUV with regular street tires, 205 miles of estimated range. Several times the route planner showed I'd be down to 10% charge on such a trip, a white-knuckle amount of range anxiety. If I route through Laramie, Wy it goes down to 0%, dead on the side of the road. I never go below 20% charge in my current EV.

The AI says there might be an aftermarket mostly DIY air dam (EZ Lip) that could retrieve about half of the lost range. Does this make sense?

With the lift kit and all-terrain tires, 180 miles of estimated range, would I be out of luck trying to drive across sparse charging station areas like Kansas or Idaho?

I see a few Smart cars around town, those iconic stubby little cars. I love mine, "easy to park, etc.

Have you found a shop that's good at working on these cars? They are technically a Mercedes brand, but the local Mercedes dealer isn't keen on working on them.

My 2014 Smart is electric, so super low maintenance. Just tires and brakes. I've never needed any real service before. Now there's a little problem that will require a good mechanic, but many shops are puzzled by this unusual brand.

Where do you take your Smart car in COMO?

Is there some expansion pack for Catan that reduces the intense competitive nature of this game we all love, and pits the team against a common enemy, barbarians or floods or such?

Has anyone explored cooperative gaming in the world of Catan?

Sure, lots of people won't be into this, if that's you, please don't shoot this idea down. I have some relatives who don't generally play games that involve intense competition, and we've really enjoyed some of the cooperative games that pit your team against some common enemy, like Pandemic or Forbidden Desert. They are visiting soon, and I'd like to entertain their preferences.

We have "Das Buch Für Spielen" by Klaus Teuber, which has dozens of alternate rules for Catan, for instance flying about in a balooon on the island. It's really fun to attempt Catan under different rules. And also fun because Das Buch is only available in German last I knew so translating is part of the challenge. But none of them are cooperative games to my knowledge.

If there isn't a mod already, what rule modifications would turn Catan into a cooperative gaming environment?

Talk to a podiatrist. Usually they are surgeons. Mine says my prognosis is grim and surgery is the ONLY option.

Talk to a physical therapist. They deal with stiff and injured joints. They say motion is lotion. They tell you move the joint. Stretch the joint. Push it through its range of motion. It will heal and improve.

Who is right? THE PHYSICAL THERAPIST.

I have HR, my podiatrist was skeptical but gave me a referral. The PT prescribed several exercises, but the most important (for me, talk to your provider and get a personal recommendation) are these:

Passive Dorsaflexion. Push the toe joint as far up as it will go, like push it against a wall or put your toe against the ground when flexing your heel up, like a runner when they are taking off.

Active Dorsafexion: move the toe through it's range of motion up and down. Like wagging your finger at someone

Any other stretches that move the toe through it's range of motion, or move the joint - side to side, splaying the toe, etc. PT had several more of these. But the first two are key.

I do these excersises multiple times per day. Whenever I'm waiting around, or sitting at a meeting, or wake up in the middle of the night, or putting on my socks, I keep moving those toes (both feet can benefit, only one hurts.), keep stretching them.

Results? AFTER A YEAR OF THIS I HAVE NO PAIN.

You heard it right. The toe isn't healed. The joint is still missing cartiledge. I still have a bone spur. But it doesn't hurt. My range of motion has improved. No pain at all.

Physical therapy works, folks. You have to be religious about it. Every day, several times a day, for months. If I lay off for a week, pain starts to return.

If you have HR, see a physical therapist. Follow ther instructions. You have every chance of, at the very least, arresting the progress of this malady. PT won't work for everyone, but it won't work at all if you don't try it. It's harmless and cheap to try. Conservative treatment, as they say.

If you do PT, then get really committed to it. Every. Single. Day. Several times a day. It may hurt at first, don't do it so far it's painful, just to the point of pain. Take your PT's counsel on how far and how fast to push the range of motion. But motion is lotion.

Don't give up when you find out you have HR. Don't leap straight into the nuclear option (surgery) before exploring gentler alternatives. See a physical therapist and find out if they recommend you some lotion and motion.

Dude, like, every stoner has known this for years.

On wilderness trips, I struggle to estimate food properly, and usually take too much. I take a canoeing trip in the wilderness for a week at a time every year, usually with 4-6 people. If we don't bring it, we don't have it. It is really easy to say "Everyone eats an apple a day, right?" and suddenly you've got 24 apples for a 6 day trip with four people, which is 2X to 3X what you'll use. A recent canoe trip to the Boundary Waters resulted in the following stats:

• We used 0.62 KG of food per day. Mostly it was dehydrated foods made in a home dehydrator. My old "rule of thumb" was 1 kg of dehydrated food per day, so I'm adjusting that down. This weight included the bear-resistant bags mentioned below.
• We used 1.25 liters of food per day. Our entire food cache was in a 52 liter blue barrel, commonly used in the Boundary Waters area for a food container. All the food was inside bear-resistant IGBC certified bags, and also inside smelly proof bags, and all these bags-within-bags took up quite a lot of room and added non-edible weight. The blue barrels also do a lot to contain smells, but are not bear resistant once Yogi gets wise to them. Blue barrels are waterproof, squirrel proof, and easy to pack with a special backpack. My old food budget was 1.5-2 liters of food per day, so I'm adjusting this number down. It really stinks to pack food in, then pack the same food out of the wilderness. We ended up packing out 1/3 of our food across some gnarly portages.
• 3 - 4 liters of water per person per day, plus dishwashing. Dinner plus breakfast requires 2 liters potable water per person by itself, and we all used up 2 liters each for any of our day expeditions from base camp, paddling or fishing. Everyone ran out of water on a 13 mile day -trip by canoe in warm weather, so I'd recommend more than 2 liters per person on any day trip. Since we were gravity filtering our drinking water, potable water was a major chore. This budget does not include dishwashing, which we did with bleach-treated lakewater. Often if we were boiling water anyway for breakfast and coffee, we'd just boil some lakewater, so this water budget of 4 liters per day per person is a little light.
• 4 people used two rolls of toilet paper in 5 days or a half roll per person per week. I'd still bring one roll per person per 5 days (twice as much) in case someone has some problems.
• 4 people used half a 4 oz jar of camp suds in a week. 4 people used 3/4 of a 3 oz bottle of bleach in a week.
• 4 people used most of one 2.1 oz/60mL jar of hand sanitizer per person in a week. We used hand sanitizer when handling the water purification system, after using the pit toilet, after cleaning fish, before meals if handwashing water wasn't available, etc. The rule I'm going with is one travel sized 2.1 oz jar of hand sanitizer per person per week, plus one extra if it is more than two people.
• In the Boundary Waters, we eat a lot of tortillas with stuff smeared on them. Tortillas keep well, come in a whole wheat variety which makes shy persons get up and do what needs to be done, and don't spoil. Most people ate two tortillas each for lunch, with either peanut butter and jelly, or rehydrated refried beans and rehydrated dehydrated salsa. Four people ate two jars of peanut butter in 5 days, most of a jar of squeeze jelly (that jelly that squeezes out of a tube keeps without refrigeration for a week), we four could eat about 8 oz of refried beans and 4 oz of salsa at a sitting or 3/4 of a jar of peanut butter at a sitting.
• Along with tortillas, we ate nuts and dried fruit (gorp) for lunch, about 1-2 oz per person per lunch. We four could down a 16 oz bag of gorp in a couple of days. I tend to eat a lot more gorp than most people, so if if I was going alone I would up this to 4 or 6 oz per person per day.
• Butter: I used to bring Ghee (clarified butter) which keeps for long periods, but regular butter will keep for a week without refrigeration. Do soften it and put it into a watertight plastic jar like a peanut butter jar - we just put the storebought sticks in a plastic bag and it was a huge mess. We also brought a small 16 oz plastic bottle of olive oil, both are good for frying up fish and pancakes.
• Suppers were often dehydrated soups (lentil soup was a hit), dehydrated chili, or dehydrated Indian food (Tasty Bite brand, we dehydrated the packaged Indian food, and brought shelf stable rice packages as is. 3 packages of dehydrated sauce and two packages of rice fed four, with a little bread or some tortilla). I can recommend Mushroom Masala or Bombay Potatoes for dehydrating successfully.
• We tried shelf stable Naan from a grocery store but it was starting to mold after 4 days. Same with some sourdough bread baguettes. Tortillas for the win! We also had some really heavy german-style nine-grain bread that kept a week without refrigeration and was sturdy enough not to crumble. This is not the kind you'll find in the grocery store aisle, it was from a local bakery. Real peasant bread. Quite a treat with cheese, peanut butter, or just buttered. Generally, don't bring bread it will mold or get turned into breadcrumbs.
• Cheese keeps surprisingly well in factory packaging, but it's really heavy and I won't bring so much of it next trip.
• Foil packed tuna is an excellent protein source, lightweight, shelf stable, but does produce smelly trash.
• Dehydrated tofu, previously frozen then thawed then marinated with soy sauce, olive oil and prepared dijon mustard was a hit. Mix it with something for protein or just nibble it like a potato chip. Becomes chewy when rehydrated.
• Powdered milk is OK in coffee, powdered soy milk for some of us lactose intolerant types is OK, but messy. Neither are great tasting. A pro tip on these foods is to mix the powder into a paste, then add more water, instead of trying to mix all the water at once (which results in many dry lumps).
• Dried apples and similar fruit, no more than 1/2 apple per day per person. We brought back most of the apples we brought with us, figuring everyone would eat an apple a day. This was too much.
• Grocery stores sell these small tins of tuna with beans and veggies, or salmon with veggies. Although they generate a smelly trash, they are very lightweight, the tins can sometimes be repurposed as bowls or containers, and were a huge hit. One 160 gram "Wild Planet" Tuna and Bean Salad and some gorp makes a decent and filling lunch for a person, the tin is lightweight aluminum and can be repurposed if washed.
• Halva (candy made with sesame paste) is tasty, calorie dense, and a fine treat. High calorie dense foods are a perfect addition.
• We brought some extra Tupperware leftover containers that were used for rehydrating things. Rehydrate a half jar of salsa at breakfast, it is ready to eat by lunch, keeps for days. Since we weren't backpacking we had an elaborate kitchen that included extra pots, rags, utensils, and so on. This sort of thing might be less useful in backpacking where weight is at a premium.
• We really struggled with organizing all this food. All the bear-resistant Ursacks are black, and won't take a sharpie, so the blue barrel is filled up with identical-looking black bags. We made an index and a menu of each day's planned meals, and kept editing it as things changed. Breakfasts and lunches were always the same. Each dinner was in it's own numbered smelly-proof bag. All the breakfasts were in one numbered smelly-proof bag. All the lunches in other numbered smelly-proof bags, divided up so that you didn't have to hunt through three or four bags to find all the peanut butter, tortillas, and nuts each day. Each black Ursack had a little keytag on the rope that says what smelly-proof bag was inside. After a week, and several people packing up every day, this whole system was in complete chaos and we could not find things that we had. I wish there was a better way of organizing a week's work of grub in mysterious black Ursacks.
• Sharpie labels come off of any plastic surface with use. The bleach bottle was unlabeled by the end of the week, as were the most-used smelly proof bags. I'm a big fan of labeling things, especially harsh chemicals like bleach, lest someone uses them for the wrong purpose by mistake. (Mmm! Honey! Oh wait that was bleach!) A better system of labeling plastic bags and bottles is needed.

Got any suggestions for my organization problems? Any other rules of thumb for camping food that you can think of, honed by experience? Do any of these rules not make sense in your experience?

We say that antimatter and normal matter would instantly annihilate if they touch. But what exactly does that mean? Does a positron only annihilate an anti-proton, or does a positron annihilate any normal particle?

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The nucleus of an element never touches the nucleus of another element normally. Positive charge keeps them separated unless massive energies drive them together. If there were an anti-element, the positrons would contact electrons first, releasing massive amounts of energy. Would the anti-protons in the nucleus ever get close enough to the protons to interact? Would anti-protons and protons be attracted by opposite charges once electrons and positrons had been destroyed? Can a free anti-proton ever pass through an electron cloud, which it would be repelled from, without massive energy being applied, or would it interact with normal electrons in annihilation?

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Many campers use portable water filters for drinking water in the wilderness.I've got one that I've taken good care of, Sawyer recommends to quit using if it's been boiled, stepped on, frozen, or water goes through it too easily, all of which can damage the membrane or show it has been torn.

I'll be relying on this filter for all my drinking water for 6 days in the wilderness. If it's no good, I'll end up with a good case of Tecumseh's Revenge.

Sawyer also says there is no good home test for these filters, so one has to just trust that a filter that was used last year, and hopefully stored properly, is still good. I store mine in a jar of salt water per recommendations, when not in use. Then we take it out in the woods and hopefully don't get Giardia or worse from inadequately filtered pond water. Sawyer's best recommendation is to buy new ones all the time.

I have a microscope. My spare bedroom is basically a science lab. Maybe there is a simple test that can show the filter is removing microbes properly?

An easy test would be to start with some live culture Kombucha, check it under the microscope, filter it with the Sawyer Mini, then compare the filtered and unfiltered output under the microscope. Sawyer filters have dealt with far worse, I've drunk water from positively muddy sources with no problems. Proper backwashing with clean water is a critical part of the operation of these modern wonders.

Or create a simple sterile petri dish using sugar and tea (Kombucha ingredients), inoculate one with Kombucha and the other with filtered Kombucha, keep it at the proper temperature and watch it for three days.

If there was a powder or chemical that could easily be detected, with large enough particles to be filtered out reliably by Sawyer's 0.1 micron filter, that would be an easy test. Sawyer Minis aren't RO filters, a good home RO filter can be easily tested in a minute using water hardness paper. Is there an easily obtained substance with greater than 0.1 micron particles that could be detected as easily?

Of course I could just buy another filter. But what fun is that?

Bio Hive Mind, how would you go about testing a water filter designed to eliminate harmful bacteria? Bonus points for a test anyone can do in their kitchen.

My ace in the hole is a 12"x18" aluminum griddle, and a little stand I made that allows two pocket rockets to sit under it. I can also place two larger pots on the stand but that's probably not for the fish.

Previously, I've always baked fish in foil with some onions and other goodies over some coals. Fried fish in a pan seems to involve breading - the only recipe I know for breading fish involves raw eggs and cornmeal, that wouldn't work in the cooler-free Bdub.

What do you like to do to cook fish during a fire ban? Any favorite recipes?

Olympus Mons rises 22km above the surface of Mars. The slope of its sides are gentle, only 5%. What if there was some sort of mass driver or evacuated tunnel or other system to launch spacecraft from its slopes? Would the reduced atmosphere at 22km be low enough that a craft launched from the peak at orbital escape velocity would not burn up before it reached space?

Anyone tried them? The 14L grizzly sack by Adotec is certified bear resistant (like Ursack), weighs 199 grams. It's basically a thick dyneema rolltop bag. Ursack weighs in at 249 grams.

Of course it costs more than an Ursack, but not that much. I've gone in the direction of bear resistant bags over BV450's, I think overall it can be lighter.

Adotec has larger bags, but only the 14L is certified at this time. Rangers have def stopped me in the BW and enquired about my bear-resistant systems.

Oh, by the way, make sure not to stumble and fall into the STAUBER if you get up at night to take a leak.

Now about those bear bags - anyone tried one?

Adotec is a tiny company run by a Canadian couple. I love supporting such a venture.

I see announcements about putting fission reactors in space. Everything that goes up has to have a plan for end-of-service. How are these going to be de-orbited without making a horrendous radioactive mess in the atmosphere?