Mark Brunnr

Libraries are becoming MORE important now more than ever before IMO, for several reasons. It's one of the few public places where a person can go and just be, without being required to be a "consumer". A homeless person can come in, drink some water and use the toilet, then sit down in a warm space in winter or cool space in summer, and read without having the police called for 'loitering'.

It's still a reliable place to find information that isn't laced full of advertising, clickbait, and misinformation, while the internet overall is becoming less info and more garbage. Reading a book causes more active-use brain activity than passively watching a screen, and encourages our attention spans to expand. Reading online, or even using an e-book reader, tends to distract us with ads and the like. Even worse are sites like tiktoc or youtube reels, with short little clips (usually of silly nonsense) that encourage a lack of attention, training our brains to move on to the next thing if we experience more than a few seconds of boredom.

My local libraries offer a ton of free resources, like $5 per day of free photocopies/printing (no need to waste money on inkjet printers and ink that is always low or out!), free laptop and desktop use, free dvd movie loans, access to databases that aren't behind paywalls, even free meals for kids up to 18 Mon-Fri at various locations, the only requirement is that it must be eaten there.

I don't mean to sound like a conspiracy kind of person, but I do believe there are at least some businesses that would like libraries to go away, so they can move in to fill the void left - for a "small" fee of course. And those fees will always go up, and more and more "revenue streams and advertising partners" get added over time once they have their hooks in. It's just how businesses work, they primarily (or sometimes only) exist to make as much profit as possible. Our society deserves to exist and thrive without being beholden to profit centers, and libraries are one way to do that.

Tiffaney I'd suggest flipping the cushions up into backrest form if possible any time you aren't using it, or for as long as the heat is tolerable. The cushions will definitely insulate the mass and cause significantly higher temps than RMH users normally see with one of those temp readers, or at least I've only ever seen people taking temps from exposed surfaces of the mass. Placing a cushion on top that traps in the heat for a couple hours, and I'd expect to see the mass surface temp higher than normal. Keeping the mass surface exposed most of the time will help there, as would anything that would allow air flow between you and the mass.

Perhaps you could break up just the top several inches of mass above the pipes, and then add a thin layer of perlite-cob, say an inch of it, where it's at least 50% perlite, then add back the last couple inches of normal cob. This would reduce (but not eliminate) the heat flow into the top of the mass, and also encourage the lateral heat flow into more mass that doesn't have that perlite in it. The top surface would also heat up eventually, but it might take long enough that your evening sits wouldn't need the cushions at all, if the primary use is heat shielding.

As for the wood support in the wall next to the mass, allowing the wood to heat up over 140F over time will lower the char point of the wood. I recall seeing a strawbale house (online) that had a RMH built against a wall with no air gap, and I'm not sure if it was months or a couple years, but eventually the strawbales in the wall caught fire and burned a significant portion of the house. So you definitely want to ensure an air gap between your mass and anything combustible. Even better IMO would be to use stand-offs to position a piece of material that quickly radiates heat away (typically a metal sheet), and leave a gap between the metal sheet and the floor, with an inch between the wall and the metal, and at least another inch between this heat shield and the mass. The floor gap allows fresh, cooler air to draw in as warmed air rises up and away from the mass and wall.

If a mass rebuild is an option, you could position the ducting pipes lower in the mass, so you can have more material between the ducting and butts. This will allow more time for some of that heat to move laterally into more mass, which should lower the temp on the surface directly above the pipes if all other variables are the same. I'd call this a distant second option if you find adding the perlite layer mentioned above doesn't help enough.

Another option would be to make thinner pads, maybe you could fill them with cotton clothes that you no longer are wearing? Instead of turning old t-shirts into rags, you can roll them up the way some do when packing a suitcase, and have them packed into a less-gicky cover that doesn't off-gas when warmed up?

Yes that is a 3 part venting system, here is a video describing the parts, he starts talking about the venting at 2:40:

This scenario is why I think at least some folks prefer to have say a year or a few months of stuff, and just rotate through it. If I were to go that route (I buy some in bulk that takes a 5 gal bucket to store, but not most things), I'd say buy 3 months at a time, using up the oldest stuff as my newer food arrives, so I'd always have say 6-12 months of staple foods available. Or even just 3 months, buying a month at a time and using that oldest month, so a big storm or pandemic that affects access to food for a bit doesn't cause a crisis.

"To get people tasted up for the rocket mass heater ticket blitz,"

Is this a typo, or just a phrase I'm not familiar with? Is it similar to whetting ones appetite perhaps?

Clay's list of links above mentions food, specifically "food - in most cases you are on your own for food. There are community cooking options in Allerton Abbey, others possibly by special arrangement, and, in the winter, Taco Tuesdays with Paul in the Fisher Price House."

All the past events I've been to included 3 meals a day as part of the ticket price. Is that still the case for this event? If so, it might be helpful to update the referenced post to clarify that the "you're on your own for food" is more for people who come up to visit separately rather than as part of an event.

I thought this was an important note as someone might read the previous linked post and expect they also have to bring and cook their own meals, and might pass without ever realizing the actual situation.

I like the clarity of the button text, it makes it quite clear that it defaults to a monthly description so there's no confusion about that. I would suggest having the buttons default to a one-time purchase, and have the lower link be in bold with a "subscribe for a X% discount" and showing the price drop/difference. So the user is encouraged and rewarded for clicking the subscribe link, versus it being the default to subscribe and risking the user take offense at a perceived "gotcha". But if your metrics show that more purchases are for recurring subscriptions, then I'd leave it as-is but mention above the buttons that most people subscribe. That should minimize the risk of a perceived up-sell.

Within the 'What's Pie', 'Build Up Your Pie' blurb, it mentions earning pie by getting enough apples. Didn't that option go away several years back? Or is there a one-time threshold of apples that gets you pie that this refers to, rather than getting pie for every X apples?

If you find joy in playing an instrument, then I say increase the joy in your life by getting one! If instead you find it more of a "I'm bored, that looks interesting", then I would wait. I tend to fall into the second option, so I try to wait a while before a purchase or see what alternatives are out there or if it was a passing thing. But if you know it's what you would enjoy learning (and prepare for a learning curve if this is your first stringed instrument), don't wait any longer as every life can use more joy in it. You'll increase your own joy, as well as those around you (after you learn a few notes ).

paul wheaton wrote:

Anne Miller wrote:I have not grown sunchokes because some folks say they cause gas.

I have heard the same thing.  And I have learned three very important things:

THING-1:   I have eaten sunchokes about 50 times and had gas only once.  But it was sooooo good, I ate way, way, way more than i should have.  

THING-2:  my understanding is that you need to build up the ability to thoroughly digest sunchokes.  Start small.

THING-3:  apparently, if you harvest after the first hard frost, there will be less digestive issues.

Thing 2 is true for a variety of veggies with fiber, our guts need to build up the proper bacteria with regular feeding to better digest said veggies.
Thing 3 is true with other starchy foods, for example if you cook up potatoes and then chill them in the fridge, some of the starches become resistant starches with a significantly lower glycemic index (yay for those with diabetes!), which could also be the mechanism that benefits sunchokes. Chilling and/or reheating helps potatoes, perhaps sunchokes too:


For warmer climates I'd vote for sweet potato, otherwise regular potatoes if colder. There are varieties which have more vibrant flesh colors like purple, which provide more antioxidants too, but I'm not sure how they compare for planting and forgetting. But a person could visit their site once to plant several crops with a similar harvest date, then  come back months later to harvest what they want to store in a root cellar for example.