u/jhsu802701

Here's a design for a quiet and portable Corsi Rosenthal box. It's a narrow design consisting of 6 PC fans on one side and a 14"x20" air filter on the other side.

I don't plan on building this design, but it has some great ideas that can be used for other designs, such as the use of a flange to help hold the filter in place.

Duct tape seems to be the norm for Corsi Rosenthal boxes and other DIY air purifiers. The first drawback of duct tape is the sticky residue that it leaves behind. The second drawback is the VOCs produced. While the classic Corsi Rosenthal box is for removing particles and not VOCs from the air, it just seems wrong for an air purifier to be actively producing VOCs.

Painter's tape and gaffer tape, on the other hand, do NOT leave a sticky residue behind and do NOT produce VOCs.

Most Corsi Rosenthal boxes consist of filters taped to cardboard or foam board. The problem is that the filters become dirtier as they capture more and more particles. Eventually, it will be necessary to replace the filters.

Unfortunately, removing tape from cardboard or foam board will tear it up and damage it. What's the standard solution? The instructions I've seen for building Corsi Rosenthal boxes never address this matter.

Here is my solution: Before taping filters to cardboard or foam core board, I put clear packing tape on it to protect it. I know it looks tacky, but at least I can keep using the cardboard or foam core board over and over again rather than expend the effort to obtain new cardboard/foam board and go through the entire build process all over again. Even if I were a billionaire, and money were no object, I would still insist on the protective layer of tape. Why does it feel like I'm the only one who has acknowledged the issue and done something about it?

Disabling the wiki makes it harder to get up to speed on the people talked about in this sub. The ones whom I know the most about are Carpetbagger, Papa Woo, and Mermaid Woo. I don't know much about the others, such as Tampa Jay, WrightDownMainStreet, Paging Mr. Morrow, and Dunebuggy Jim. A wiki, FAQ, or sticky post would make it easier to get up to speed on everyone discussed here.

I have some old pillows that I no longer use for sleeping. No, they cannot be recycled in my area.

I know from experience that throwing old pillows into a bag for a Craigslist curb alert is a hit-or-miss proposition. (PLEASE do not tell me to use Facebook Marketplace or NextDoor. I unfriended Facebook in 2020 because the feed made it a toxic environment. I deleted my NextDoor account earlier this year for the same reason.)

I'm aware of the uses for old pillows - as padding for moving/shipping, as knee pads, and as pet beds. Unfortunately, most of the people in my area don't realize this, or perhaps the supply of old pillows out there exceeds the demand for them.

What are your favorite ways to get rid of old pillows?

If you look at the FAQs and wikis of the various weight loss subs on Reddit, one of the first things you're told to do is use one of those TDEE calculators to figure out how many calories per day your body uses and subtract a certain number from it. You just enter your height, weight, age, gender, build, and other parameters. The algorithm spits out a certain number of calories per day that you'd have to consume to maintain your current weight.

However, these TDEE calculators are a textbook example of Garbage In Garbage Out. They'd have you believe that a small change in calories per day corresponds to a LARGE change in weight. If you don't believe me, try one of those calculators yourself. Vary the weight while keeping everything else the same. You'll see that you'd have to gain or lose a LOT of weight to get much change in your daily maintenance calories.

Over the course of the seasons, my calorie consumption varies a LOT more than my body weight does. Cold weather gives me a large appetite. Bitterly cold weather gives me a gargantuan appetite. Hot weather gives me a small appetite. Enough food for July would be extremely inadequate for January. Enough food for January would be excessive for July.

According to those TDEE calculators, my summer diet is consistent with starving to death while my January polar vortex diet is consistent with being double to triple my actual body weight. Both extremes are lies. While I lose weight in summer and gain weight in winter, the change in my weight is more than a full order of magnitude smaller than what the calculators would have you believe.

I remember when the Atkins Diet was all the rage in the early 2000s. I feel like I'm the only one who hasn't been on a low carb diet at one time or another.

Atkins wasn't the first kooky diet I heard of, but it felt like the first one to go mainstream. Prior to the rise and fall of the Atkins Diet, fad diets (such as the infamous Cabbage Soup Diet) were promoted in supermarket tabloids and other sketchy sources, not the mainstream media. I remember that interest declined after the death of Dr. Atkins himself in 2003, but the Atkins fad has since ended up being replaced by other kooky fads and schemes, including The Biggest Loser. I never imagined that the Atkins Diet would return, but it has. Diet culture simply slapped a fresh coat of paint on it and renamed it as the Keto Diet. Worse yet, some people complained that the Keto Diet isn't kooky enough, and this led to the even kookier carnivore diet.

It

I've noticed that people think that they need to severely restrict calories while doubling down on protein. I've tracked my food intake on a few select days because I was curious, and I just cannot imagine eating under 1500 calories per day while also eating at least 150 grams of protein per day. It's just not possible to get 150 grams of protein from only 1500 calories from a variety of foods. So this requires lots of protein supplementation, but protein has calories. If you subtract the protein supplement calories, that means that the ration of real food is EVEN MORE restrictive.

Why doesn't anyone seem to notice how incompatible a low calorie limit and a high protein target are? This is yet another example of how dysfunctional diet culture is.

Although I've always consumed much more fiber than the average person, I've increased my fiber intake since the spring of 2020 by eating even more of the whole grain foods and less of the refined grain foods. In the last few years, I've gotten into the habit of starting off each meal/snack with non-starchy vegetables and/or nuts, because it seems like a good idea for dampening any blood sugar spike.

I've noticed in the past few years that refined grains seem even less filling than they used to be. I once went out to eat for breakfast and ordered two boiled eggs and a bagel (with little or no fiber). This wasn't enough to satisfy my appetite, so I ate some nuts when I got home, and that helped satisfy my appetite. I'm also finding that pizza doesn't really fill me up that well, unless the weather is so hot that I have a tiny appetite that's easy to satisfy.

Eating out is when I'm most likely to consume refined grains. I don't eat out during the colder months, but I'm sure that if I did, I would much more acutely experience why foods with carbs but no fiber are called "empty calories". Indeed, I once learned first-hand about empty calories years ago (when my nutritional standards were much more lax) when I was camping out and ate cake for breakfast because the only other option available was donuts (which I hate). It was still well before 10 AM when I was suddenly overcome by a weird hollow feeling in my stomach. I didn't know what it was at first, and then it dawned on me that I had eaten cake for breakfast, and my blood sugar had just collapsed after the sugar high.

Apparently, my gut microbiome is so adapted to a high-fiber diet that all refined grains are the new cake.

As far as I know, Stalker Park Memories spends all her time at Casey's Corner in the Main Street area of Magic Kingdom. (We know what she's notorious for, but I won't go into that here.) Doesn't she ever go to other attractions around Magic Kingdom? Doesn't she ever go to EPCOT, Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom, or the water parks? At least Ethan the Pervert goes to different parks in Disney World and even sometimes goes on a cruise. Yes, he's an even bigger evil loser than Stalker Park Memories, but at least he gets to experience all of what Disney World has to offer.

I just cannot imagine going to Disney World, only to spend all my time sitting in one spot. Casey's Corner sounds like a great place to stop and rest for a few minutes, but if I were at Magic Kingdom, I'd want to go on Space Mountain, Thunder Mountain, Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, and the PeopleMover. I'd go to the Swiss Family Robinson treehouse. I'd watch the shows in the Tiki Room and the Hall of Presidents.

I also can't imagine spending all that time in Disney World and never going to the other parks. Has Stalker Park Memories ever been on Spaceship Earth or the Mexico boat ride? Has she ever seen the China, Canada, or other shows in World Showcase?

Stalker Park Memories has access to so many fun attractions but never goes to them. That's a shame. If I could take her place, I'd go to everything. Then again, I'm sure that I'd probably get tired of Disney World after spending every day for a few weeks and go elsewhere. I'm sure that being familiar with every nook and cranny would take the fun out of it. Even the script for the Haunted Mansion would lose its charm once it became as familiar as the Pledge of Allegiance.

Adam the Woo was banned from Disney World and Universal Studios Florida for trespassing. He was later able to get the ban from Disney World lifted with legal help but never got his ban from Universal Studios lifted. Stalker Park Memories is notorious for stalking piano players but has not been banned so far.

Disney and Universal were fully justified in banning Adam the Woo, so I'm not defending him. However, he at least didn't stalk or harass cast members.

Stalker Park Memories, on the other hand, keeps stalking and harassing the piano players. Magic Kingdom cast members consider her to be the bane of their existence. Thanks to video footage on social media plus Disney World's own security camera footage, there's plenty of evidence against her. So what's stopping Disney World from banning her?

If you see Ethan the Pervert, Stalker Park Memories, or any of the other dysfunctional loser grifters discussed here livestreaming or filming, the thing to do is loudly announce "This video is sponsored by . . .!" and make a brief sales pitch for that sponsor. That triggers the AI to automatically demonetize the video.

For Ethan the Pervert, I'd announce "This video is sponsored by Kentucky Fried Cholesterol! Kentucky Fried Cholesterol, we do clogged arteries right!"

I'm old enough to remember when Holiday Inns everywhere had the iconic Great Sign, but I was a child back then. I marveled at those beacons in the night, but I can understand why they were phased out. If you have the inside scoop, please post what it took to keep them going.

While I don't think that Ethan the Pervert or Kathleen the Piano Player Stalker is mentioned, I thought you might find this video interesting.

I've been inactive for the past several years. I have a LOT of cleaning up to do.

One of the things I need to get rid of is three old RG-213 coaxial cables with PL-259 connectors on them. They're dirty, but I think they're still usable. If the cables don't work, I'm sure that one could cut off the ends and install new PL-259 connectors. I understand that there are several other uses for old cables as well.

I put a curb alert for these cables on Craigslist, and I advertised this giveaway on the email lists of two amateur radio clubs near me. It's been about 24 hours (and the weather is nice), yet there have been no takers so far.

Is giving away these cables a lost cause? Should I give up and just take these old cables to the household hazardous waste facility for proper e-waste disposal?

Has Toyota or Honda ever acquired a pre-existing vehicle brand ever? It seems to me that only the very worst automakers acquire more brands.

In 1999, Nissan was acquired by Renault and has been careening downhill ever since. Renault had left the US market in the 1980s because it couldn't even compete with Vegas, Pintos, Citations, Aspens, and other Malaise Era junk from Detroit. I'm sure that there are plenty of stories of people who bought a 1980s or 1990s Nissan that provided many years of trouble-free service and then replaced it with a much newer Nissan product that proved to be an unreliable money pit.

Jeep has a long history of being acquired by automakers with increasingly lax attitudes about quality control. I understand that Jeeps were once solid and dependable vehicles. In 1987, Jeep (previously owned by AMC) was acquired by Chrysler. Then the DaimlerChrysler Era began in 1998, which didn't pan out for either Chrysler or Daimler. In 2007, Daimler sold Chrysler to Cerberus (private equity). In 2009, Chrysler went bankrupt and was acquired by Fiat. Like Renault, Fiat had left the US market in the 1980s because it couldn't even compete with Detroit's worst Malaise Era junk. Then in 2021, Fiat merged with a French company called PSA Group, and the resulting company was called Stellantis. PSA Group consisted of several French automaker brands. One of them was Peugeot, which pulled out of the US market in 1991 because it couldn't even compete with 1980s Cadillac. That was Cadillac's worst era, because its products were burdened with a series of bad engines - the V8-6-4 engine, the diesel engine, and the HT4100 engine. All those bad engines ended up sending numerous Cadillac buyers to Lincoln, Mercedes, BMW, Infiniti, Acura, and Lexus but not Peugeot.

So why didn't Toyota or Honda acquire Jeep instead of Chrysler? Why didn't Toyota or Honda acquire Chrysler instead of Fiat? Why didn't Toyota or Honda acquire Nissan instead of Renault?

How common or rare is air filtration in buildings? Based on what I saw from my IKEA air quality monitor, the hotel I stayed in didn't appear to have air filtration. Or if it did have air filtration, it was too anemic for the size of the building to keep up with the wildfire smoke outside.

I was in Chicago a month ago during the very worst of the bout of wildfire smoke from Canada. It was so bad that when I took my 3M Aura (N95) mask off to take a few sips of water that morning (and that was before the very worst smoke that came later in the day), I could easily smell the stench from the smoke. My 3M Aura, on the other hand, fully protected me from the smoke. I have great confidence in the 3M Aura mask, because I know from my cheap and informal mask fit testing (sweet or bitter spray of water from a nano-mister device) that it fully protects me from the taste of both the sweetened spray AND the bitter spray.

There were a LOT fewer people out and about than had been the case when the air was cleaner. A significant minority of the people were wearing a mask outside, though I wish that everyone had worn a mask outside.

I hadn't anticipated this nasty bout of smoke, but I was still well prepared, because the same precautions for avoiding infectious airborne diseases also provide protection from smoke. (I didn't have time to be sick, and I definitely do NOT have time to deal with Long COVID.) I had brought plenty of my 3M Aura masks with me on this trip, because I never dropped the habit of wearing a mask when sharing indoor air with others. (However, I have ditched the ear loop masks. Every ear loop mask I ever wore hurt my ears and/or was prone to falling off.) The first thing I did after I checked into my hotel room several days earlier was make a beeline to a nearby Ace Hardware store to buy a Lasko 20-inch box fan and a 20"x20" furnace air filter in order to build a box fan air purifier. I made sure to run it full blast after entering my hotel room. Except when I was using my phone to talk/listen to someone, I made sure to keep my box fan air purifier running full blast.

I had brought my IKEA brand VINDSTYRKA air quality monitor on my trip to Chicago. In the days before the wildfire smoke struck, running my box fan air purifier full blast in my hotel room would lower the PM2.5 particle count from 10 to around 1 or 2 in a matter of minutes. When the wildfire smoke rolled in, the PM2.5 figure was up around 100 even though I had kept my box fan air purifier running all night long. The PM2.5 figure was in the 300s in the hallway outside my hotel room, at around 500 in the hotel lobby, and around 600 outdoors. So my trusty box fan air purifier was working hard but had difficulty keeping up with the smoke.

What do you all make of all this? Did my hotel lack an air filtration system, or was it simply too weak to keep up with the wildfire smoke making its way inside? Do most buildings out there have air filtration systems? Do most of the air filtration systems work well, or are most not effective enough for such a severe bout of wildfire smoke?