https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podophyllum_peltatum

The plants (around me, at least) generally have a single flower that when pollinated turns into a single green berry. The berry eventually turns yellow when it’s ripe.

https://plants.ces.ncsu.edu/plants/podophyllum-peltatum

Seems like the taste is pretty mild. The toxin in it is used (in real medical sense) to treat warts, apparently, so that’s cool.

based on binging Ave back before he for political

Yeah, that’s been a disappointment to me. There are other channels that test tools like Project Farm, but he primarily tests out of the box performance, which is important, but I’d rather have a tool with 5% less performance but 2x the service life. Big Clive does teardowns of electronics, and I’m sure there are others, too.

I think what one could do, at the very least, is some kind of federated materials/parts database. If a tool uses an ABS casing and unbranded battery cells, you know it’s not as good as something made of fiberglass reinforced nylon that has Samsung cells, and it doesn’t leave room for gaming the system beyond selectively improving parts that have been called out as low quality, which is effectively as good a response as we could hope for. It doesn’t even necessarily require expertise from people who would contribute. I’m imagining something that works like Street Complete for collecting inputs to OpenStreetMap.

I think about this a lot. When a company updates a design, they often don’t have “release notes” on what actually changed. Sometimes they swap out components for cheaper stuff, which they won’t tell you. Sometimes they fix some stuff that was bad from the original design, which they often won’t tell you. The only time they tell you about updates is if they are just making something presumably better, but that also doesn’t let you know for sure if parts will be compatible.

Some brands keep the same product name, but make lots of changes, and some brands make essentially the same product, but change the name (e.g., vitamix 5200). Sometimes model numbers help, but they don’t always show you the model numbers, and oftentimes retailers have their own model number that you’d have no clue is the same. I often end up having to rely on stuff like the wattage where if it changes, you know something changed.

I have a tool (milwaukee circular saw) that started getting an intermittent failure. When doing some reading to try to fix it, I found the schematic and parts list for replacement parts (Milwaukee is good about this). I then found the same list for the newest Milwaukee circular saw (i don’t remember if it was the same model number or just n+1). The only replacement part that was different between them was the switch that sits behind the trigger. Enough people must have had the same exact issue that I did that they changed parts, but you would never see that information somewhere. The issue ended up being that the switch design created arcing that fouled up the contact surfaces, so you could technically just take it apart periodically to clean them, but that was a pain, so I just sent it in to have it fixed with the new part since it was under warrantee.

In terms of “fruit”, the only things I see ripening so far are strawberries and mayapples. I keep wanting to try eating mayapples, but they are toxic if you don’t get them when they are ripe.

I have a plant that is either a reservoir or trap crop (depending on how you look at it) for aphids and what looks like some kind of weevil. I’ve noticed over the past couple of weeks, though, that every manner of wasp seems to be interested in it, presumably eating the aphids (or just the honeydew). Hopefully they hang around enough to help control populations of aphids on my other plants.

My kitchen scale that runs off of one of those batteries lasts for years, and I use it every day (coffee). Yours must have some kind of parasitic draw.

Recycling plastic is a sham created by the plastics industry to make us let them create as many plastics as they want. Yes, it can be recycled, but a heck of a lot of the time, it’s not profitable to do so, and a certain percentage will be littered, fall off a truck, or whatever, and end up in the ocean. Ultimately, that’s all their fault for making it in the first place.

If a someone manufactures poison and sells it to whoever wants it, and someone puts it in the water supply, who is more at fault, the person who put it in the water, or the person who profited by no-questions-asked sales?

Yeah, i was going to say, unless you are talking about a cell phone, or wireless headphones where space is really at a premium, companies aren’t going to bother developing their own batteries, they’ll just pull 18650 cells (common in cordless tool batteries) or whatever other off the shelf lithium cells suit their use case.

As long as you can get inside the device without braking parts (unfortunately common), you can replace them.

The only thing to watch out for is what kind of additional circuitry is involved. Some cells have protection circuitry built in, some don’t. Some tool brands have smart batteries with dumb tools, others have dumb batteries with smart tools.

People often lament that things these days don’t last as long as they used to, but they forget that our grandparents were constantly mending clothing, repairing electronics, etc.

I have a GoalZero Yeti 1000x. I haven’t put it through the paces too much yet, but it seems to work well.

It’s not LiFePO4, but I chose it cause it allows you to expand it with additional batteries as needed, and it technically supports integrating with your home panel (though I have no plans to do either thing yet).

They try to be a bit more “plug and play”, so they use semi-proprietary jacks for their solar panel integration. They seem to count on the fact that most people are scared of electricity so they try to make it easy, but they definitely charge for the convenience (for the solar panels specifically).

Their “high power port” that you can use for solar panel input is really just standard APP connectors in a vertical configuration instead of horizontal, so you can easily buy a cable that allows you to plug into it. They just try not to tell you that openly for liability, I’d assume.

Other brands I’ve looked at previously include jackery and westinghouse. I might have bought one of those, instead, but I got a good deal on the goalzero.

I think the biggest thing is that the battery cells themselves always have a finite life, so it’s most important to see if you can get something with a replaceable battery, or expandable capacity.

Plenty of people treat camping not as “let’s go sleep in the woods for a while” but more as “let’s not pay to sleep anywhere while we roadtrip across the country”. Especially for people who work remotely, why not take your computer and keep up with work?

Based on plenty of reading I did lately, the Sofirn LT1 might fit the bill for you. I was just looking for a lantern, but my use case was more as a small light I could take backpacking, so I went for a flashlight with a diffuser.

The LT1 is aluminum, waterproof, has replaceable batteries, can run on 1-4 batteries, runs on open source firmware, and it can be used as a power bank. It runs on 18650 lithium batteries, which are widely available. I’m no battery chemist, but lots of 18650 powered devices can run on cr123 batteries (which arent rechargeable), and those supposedly can hold a charge longer than the rechargeable batteries.

If you want to avoid electronics altogether, the Coleman powerhouse might be the move. Obviously, you need to be careful with anything flammable indoors, and it generates a lot of heat, but it should last a lifetime (minus the mantles which are a wear item). A lantern that uses mantles is going to be an order of magnitude brighter than a lantern that uses a wick (which is still a wear item). Propane lanterns are similar if you prefer that to liquid gas.

Chest freezer with an aftermarket temperature controller. Commonly called a “keezer” in the homebrewing community.

My dream is to one day have a setup like this. Like others said, humidity and heat in a greenhouse are 2 big concerns. They make all kinds of automated systems for opening vents, etc.

If your primary goal is growing in a contained area to keep pests away (vs. needing to really keep the space warm in winter or something), you best bet could be a hoop house. Basically you can drive rebar or fence posts into the ground, and then arch something (pvc pipes commonly) from one side of the space to the other. You’d then pull plastic sheathing overtop. Those are commonly used to get growing started in early spring and extend growing in the fall. When it’s warm enough, they basically roll up the material. You could do something similar but still have a structure of chicken wire or netting or something to keep animals away.

If you actually want to keep the space warm to grow in the winter, you might want more permanent walls with better insulation, like double walled polycarbonate.

Another thing to consider is water. If you have a greenhouse next to your house, you don’t want rain that falls on it to direct water to your house’s foundation.

Searching around, it seems like stucco and high humidity may not work well together. Personally, I’d be a little concerned about algae/moss growth on my walls if I had high humidity on stucco.

I love the look of repurposed windows/doors for greenhouses, and I’ve even seen them advertised for that purpose at resale shops, but it’s really important to be careful about lead paint if you want to do that. Lead was the primary white pigment for a long time, and since windows/doors are often trimmed white, if they are older than 1978 (in the US, EU was 2003, though many member states had their own laws previously), it could be lead. Lead testers are fairly cheap if you want to go this route.

I wonder if they have an order-of-magnitude estimate of the cost to install/operate a system using this technology in municipal systems. Ideally, we’d have systems to remove microplastics from both municipal water sources and municipal wastewater. Also, does this have to be a standalone step in a separate tank, or can it be included in existing flocculation processes.

It’s not a very long article, so they don’t get too into detail. This would use bifacial solar panels. On a purely optics standpoint, you’d think they are much worse than traditional (i.e., facing south at the right angle) panels, but they gain efficiency by staying cooler, and they generate more power when traditional solar isn’t, which helps smooth out the power generation curve. They also self clean and don’t have as much hail risk.

Hyperloops business model is to scoop up funds meant to develop technology to combat climate change. It’s Teslas business model, too. It definitely makes me skeptical right off the bat. It’s just a matter of if the airships are like electric vehicles (oversold climate harm reduction, but likely still a harm reduction), or if they are like hyperloops (complete scams that can be defeated with high school level math).

Or sometimes, they will reinvent trains and boats, but worse.