Philip McGarvey

I'd rather LLMs didn't exist but while they do they can be useful for finding information.  Some kinds of information are hard to find with a normal google search but LLMs can find them easily.  (Google often gives lots of fluff websites rather than original sources)

Still, take care not to replace human connections with LLMs.  I respect anyone who chooses to stay off the internet and learn from real people, or goes in that direction in some way.  Meanwhile, to the degree we do use the internet to find information, LLMs are useful, and there are a variety of ways to use them.  Getting them to give direct links to original sources is the most useful I think.

For anything that's likely been discussed on permies I'd start by googling "site:permies.com blah blah".

For example, I recently successfully convinced a friend to put in a wood floor instead of vinyl floor.  I Googled site:permies.com vinyl floor and read all the discussions that seemed relevant.  I also queried an LLM with "how long does vinyl flooring last, and does it shed toxic compounds into the room?  give direct links to sources for all the information you give"

Other example LLM queries:

"give me five direct links to pdf of the manual for ______"   And then I have the manual.  For a quick follow up I can give the pdf of the manual back to the LLM and say "give me exact quotes with page numbers for everything this manual says about ____"

Or e.g. troubleshooting a chainsaw there's a lot of information out there that won't be in manuals and the LLM can be very handy for giving next steps for what to try.  I could have made a post somewhere like arboristsite but it might take some time for useful replies to come in, and they might be mixed with people mocking me for not intuitively knowing what to do without asking.  I troubleshoot a lot of mechanical/tech things and I don't want to invest the time to become a thorough expert on all of them, LLMs are really useful here.

Or "are there people out there who think ____, and what do they say about it?  (even if they're kooky that's OK)   Give direct links to places where they're talking about it"

Or "give me direct links to pdfs of five scientific papers that discuss _____"  And again, give the pdf of the paper back with "give exact quotes and page numbers where this paper explains or shows data on _____"

At the moment, LLMs are not yet completely full of ads and stuff.  I imagine this will change rapidly and they might become far less useful.  But at the moment it's a relatively distraction-free way to find info from the internet in a simple text format with links to relevant original sources.

r ransom wrote:I'm happy to hear these things.

Do you guys worry about sunlight or other things when choosing a spot for the guitar to live.  Or is convince most important?

This is a good point - I wouldn't hang an instrument somewhere where it would get direct sunshine.

Hanging them on the wall is the way to go, so you don't accidentally set things on them or knock them off something, and so they're always accessible to play.

Tip:
If you want to never see these short videos from any source (youtube/facebook/instagram/etc) do this:

On Android or on a computer:
Use Firefox as your browser, with the SocialFocus browser extension.  Ideally, use Firefox to access youtube and facebook.  If you must use the youtube or facebook app for some reason, the "StayFree" app can block short videos inside those other apps too.  

On iPhone use SocialFocus in safari, and there are other apps that might be able to block videos inside apps.

I set this up for myself over a year ago and have not had to watch any of these short videos.  I've now helped set it up for several other friends and family.  If you or someone you know is being preyed upon by this stuff and doesn't want it, it's worth doing.  

The SocialFocus extension can also entirely block all social media feeds as well, not just short videos.  I use certain facebook groups and marketplace, but I don't want to ever see a feed of random crap.

Note that this is a sort of arms race similar to ad-blocking, where the social media companies are trying to push this stuff at us despite our trying to block it, so the specifics of how to block them may change over time.

I despise social media and the way that these algorithms and the people that control them now decide most of most people's conception of the world.  They are so good at finding whatever media will captivate one's attention, and they so pervasively thrust themselves at me in apps/websites that I am using for other reasons, that I was sometimes falling prey to it myself even though I knew how bad it is and don't want it.

Christopher Weeks wrote:We bought a disposable can of spray oil four years ago when we got our first air fryer but we haven't used it up yet. Thirty years ago we had a refillable stainless steel and plastic can that you could pressurize by hand-pumping but it kept getting clogged with sticky olive oil so we got rid of it. Mostly we use brushes for the kind of thing you're talking about though we don't really use the waffle iron very often.

FWIW, I would bet that four year old oil is rancid.  It might not smell terrible if it's refined oil because the stuff that would start smelling off was removed in the refining, but the oil itself will be rancid aka oxidized, and not good to eat.

If you do use some kind of spray bottle make sure you're using it up and replacing the oil frequently.  Olive oil typically goes rancid 3-6 months after opening.  

But again, there aren't really any natural liquid oils that are good for cooking with.

I suppose if it's a really small amount and just for lubricating the surface, maybe a little rancid refined oil isn't so terrible.  I wouldn't want to eat it, but quantitatively in terms of how much rancid oil you're consuming, spraying the surface of the waffle iron with rancid refined oil might be equivalent to eating a couple of conventional tortilla chips.

Anne Miller wrote:My question is how do you get those lard or tallow to replace cooking spray?

Fair.  I guess my answer is I haven't run into any situation where I needed cooking spray - I haven't thought of making waffles.

If you have a cast iron waffle iron that's seasoned well initially you might not need to grease it at all.  

Any other kind of waffle iron I've seen had a toxic coating I wouldn't want to use anyway.

I mostly use lard or tallow or butter for cooking.  I put some on the pan as it's heating up and tilt the pan back and forth so it flows around and covers it all.  If I'm baking I'll put the fat in the pan in the oven, and when it melts take the pan out and tilt it the same way.

Olive oil is good but real unrefined olive oil is expensive and burns/smokes easily so I don't cook with it.  The less expensive olive oils and avocado oils are usually refined and/or cut with other refined oils like soybean oil.

My soap box:
I bet that refined oils are not healthy.  They aren't natural, require weird industrial/chemical processes, and only existed in the last ~100 years or so.  Animal fat, butter, or unrefined coconut oil if you are vegan, seem to me to be the best cooking oils.  These are mostly saturated fat, which you'll hear is bad for you.  I've done extensive research on this and believe that this was largely a scam to get people to eat refined oils and grains instead of real natural fat which is mostly saturated fat.  I haven't found any good evidence that saturated fat is unhealthy.  And, I've been eating lots of it my entire life and seem to be in excellent health.

I have a large 32sqft solar dehydrator, so a few times I've made a giant batch of beans with seasoning like chili powder and some salt, simmer a long time like overnight in a huge pot, and then pour them on the dehydrator trays.  After drying I store them in big airtight glass jars particularly because the salt would bring moisture in otherwise.

 I keep a jar of them in the car for a crunchy on the go snack.  I can also throw them in soup at any time - they're already cooked after all.  Or just add them to a jar of tomato sauce for an instant chili that can be eaten cold with no cooking.

I do a similar thing with mushrooms sometimes - cook one big batch of dried mushrooms and then dry them after cooking so they're ready to eat immediately without needing to cook again.  

M.K. Dorje Sr. wrote:But I'm curious, how do you make manzanita sugar? And would Hairy Manzanita (the main species in my food forest) be a good species to make it from?

Manzanita deserves it's own thread so I just made one:  https://permies.com/t/357565/berry/Making-manzanita-berries

A quick google shows hairy manzanita having similar looking berries to the ones around here so I'd assume it's similarly good.