Wednesday, September 25, 2019

September 25th Links

  • You'll also note that 'insulin resistance' while carbohydrate dominated, can also be activated through, for example, too much fat (triglycerides). Any macronutrient may produce ATP, which will overload the system and cause glucose to back up. Proteins and fats, however, are more difficult to overeat, because they naturally activate satiety hormones that prevent this exact situation. The logical solution? Fasting. Boom. [link]
  • Ukrainians love their lard. Lard is the country's most consumed meat product—and the national food. The first time I visited the daily farmers market, I was overwhelmed by the amount of pork belly for sale. Lard is everywhere and is prepared in many different ways. The man in the business suit who ate a plate of lard all by himself ate it with three different seasonings. It is very popular to eat lard raw by adding it to a sandwich or just eating it as a small snack. It is also a component of soups and dumplings, and Ukrainians add extra chunks of lard to their cured and fermented meats. Many parents have their babies suck on pieces of lard instead of a pacifier! [WAP]
  • I'm excited about another upcoming announcement that involves a 22-foot conference table that has been the center of my office for 15 years. It is where we have hosted dozens of business and political leaders as well as elite athletes. It's also where we've made...and, sadly lost...billions of dollars. We auctioned that table a few weeks ago and the tale of where it will land is incredible. [T Boone Pickens]
  • While we will always honour our commitments to our customers, our decision on sourcing our committed supply will always be value based, not volume based. We have cut production well below our committed sales and are purchasing material to fulfill our commitments, backed up by a strong balance sheet that ensures we can self-manage risk while executing this approach. This is what separates commercial suppliers from non-commercial suppliers. Production curtailment decisions are among the most difficult decisions I have ever had to make. And, unfortunately, I have had to make a number of them. But without direct or indirect statebacking, we must make these decisions along with marketing and financial decisions that insulate us from contributing to today's near-term oversupply and that prevent us from having to chase this market down. Also, we preserve the value of one of the world's very best mining assets for the future giving our customers the confidence in our long-term, tier one supply base. [Cameco]
  • To many on the left, Donald Trump is an order of magnitude more disastrous a commander in chief than was George W. Bush, whose reputation now stands thoroughly rehabilitated in the popular culture. Bush is no longer the incurious man who launched an unnecessary war that killed hundreds of thousands in Iraq; today, he's the goofy old fella who paints portraits of the troops, pals around with Michelle Obama and seems to be in on the joke of our times. [NYT]
  • The best pilots do not sit in cockpits so much as strap them on. The United States Navy manages to instill a sense of this in its fledgling fighter pilots by ramming them through rigorous classroom instruction and then requiring them to fly at bank angles without limits, including upside down. The same cannot be expected of airline pilots who never fly solo and whose entire experience consists of catering to passengers who flinch in mild turbulence, refer to "air pockets" in cocktail conversation and think they are near death if bank angles exceed 30 degrees. The problem exists for many American and European pilots, too. Unless they make extraordinary efforts — for instance, going out to fly aerobatics, fly sailplanes or wander among the airstrips of backcountry Idaho — they may never develop true airmanship no matter the length of their careers. [Langewiesche]
  • As rich and powerful as the Godfather becomes, he never loses sight of the reciprocal strands of respect, obligation, honor, and loyalty due family, friends, fellow Sicilians, and the Catholic church. These are not ties that bind. They are bonds, sources of strength, foundational stones of his life and empire. Such bonds have bolstered the human race for most of its history. That they are now under sustained assault would strike Don Corleone as foolishness. Their proposed replacement would strike him as madness. [Lew Rockwell]
  • Hello from the tail end of Japan Swelter Summer. The humidity broke a few days ago and everything is crisp and glorious and markedly less soggy. I am obsessed with humidity — my home is filled with hygrometers. I have a dry case for camera equipment and my one pair of fancy leather shoes. My friends send me the latest in dehumidifier news. Few people fully understand the implications of runaway humidity. What an odd thing to care about, you may think. But spend a summer in certain corners of Japan and you will suddenly care very much. A comfortable life is contingent on very narrow bands of humidity:temperature ratios. 60% humidity and 22 degrees Celsius is excellent. [Craig Mod]
  • Some SoftBank executives are balking at taking on large personal loans to buy into the Japanese group's portfolio of technology companies, an investment scheme described internally as a test of loyalty to founder Masayoshi Son. The scheme encourages participants to take a huge personal bet on SoftBank's $97bn Vision Fund — the vehicle which has come under intense scrutiny after the collapse in value of WeWork, the shared office provider that is one of its bigger investments. SoftBank offers the loans on a sliding scale depending on salary and length of tenure. Some executives have been encouraged to borrow more than 10 times their base salary, according to people familiar with the situation. [FT]
  • The legal wrangling over Universe is knotty. Although the sculpture was effectively integrated into the tower's lobby from the start, ownership of the work was governed by a separate "option agreement" created during a 1994 financing deal involving the tower. The option agreement granted Sears the right to purchase the Calder from any subsequent owner of the building for a set fee of $3.625 million, plus interest, during the first six months of 2010. [Artnet]

2 comments:

CP said...

Lard consumed as a spread on bread was once very common in Europe and North America, especially those areas where dairy fats and vegetable oils were rare.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lard

Anonymous said...

I took a Cessna 152 up and did 7 spins in rapid succession:
Climb to 4000 feet, spin, fall 3000 feet, climb to 4000 feet again, and fall again, one right after another.

That was the most aerobatics I could do in a lowly Cessna 152, and without having yet soloed.

You enter a spin by stalling and kicking in right or left rudder to start a turn while stalled.

The wing on the inside of the resulting turn loses lift, compared with the wing on the outside of the turn, because it is moving through the air more slowly.

So the wing on the inside of the turn drops off, while the plane continues to turn in a circle.
From the ground this looks like the plane is falling like a leaf. It does not look like flight.

This continues until the plane hits the ground or the pilot pulls out of the spin.

Do this by

(1) Kick in opposite rudder to stop the turn. This leaves the plane in a steep dive, so
(2) Chop power to slow the dive. Chopping the power cools the engine, maybe enough for the carburetor to be blocked by ice buildup, causing the engine to quit, so
(3) Quickly put in carburetor heat, and
(4) Pull back on the stick to get out of the dive.
(5) Level off before you hit the ground, if possible.
(6) Resume a normal power setting.