Anyone replying “stretching” is basing their response on grade school gym class, not science.

Studies have not shown that stretching has a positive impact on injury prevention, and this has been widely known in the literature for over 20 years. Stretching can improve performance in some sports like gymnastics where increased flexibility is needed, but that is unrelated to injury.

Stretching has a negative effect on performance in other cases because it actually decreases muscle force generation.

Think about it, would you think that loosening all the belts on a machine would automatically make it less likely to break down?

So what does prevent injury?

• Good warm-ups. Walk before you jog before you run. Lift an unloaded barbell before a loaded one, etc.
• Strength. A joint surrounded by muscle is a stable joint. That means doing exercises that strengthen all the muscles, including minor ones. It’s part of why most people who know what they are talking about will try to get you to do compound lifts with free weights over single joint exercises on machines.
• periodization/progressive overload. Basically slowly building intensity and then backing off to recuperate.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/382128

Yeah, you are spot on.

BinaryEye (for scanning qr codes)

Do you have a recommendation for generating QR codes? I basically want to be able to make qr codes that link to notes so I can see what’s in boxes without having to pull them out of hard to reach spots. I see a couple options on fdroid (QRshare and ShareAsQR), but I’m sure there are desktop applications, too.

I do a poor man’s version of that system. I have my drippers dripping into terra cotta watering spikes.

Pressure compensating drippers seem to only work for me for a season. I’m not sure if they are getting clogged with debris, or just getting damaged from being out in the elements. I recently got drippers that are essentially like little spigots that you can dial up or down, and i end up just tweaking each one until the flow rate is good for all of them (also nice to tailor to each plant). The other benefit of those is that you can just open it all the way to blow out any sediment.

There are 2 main materials for irrigation tubing: polyethylene and vinyl. The main differences between them are that poly is stiffer and harder to bend in tight corners, but it’s probably more durable. Vinyl is (to me) a little easier to work with.

From what i understand “cottage cheese” is a cheese made from milk treated with rennet, lightly strained, and mixed with a little bit of cream. I’m sure there’s regional variation in the terminology and process.

From like 2 minutes of searching online, I seems like what people call “dry cottage cheese” is basically just what I described. Heat milk, acidify it, and strain. Typically what I do is strain it with a cloth until it’s fairly dry, then I’ll mix back in some of the whey until I get the texture I like.

The fancier version involves fermentation with bacterial cultures to create the necessary acid, but that’s not something you are going to do with a half jug of milk you want to just use up before it goes bad.

Yeah, definitely. I would argue that “nutritious” should mean “can I live off of this?”. From that context, you need high calorie, balanced macros, and no glaringly missing micronutrients.

I wonder if anyone’s made the soup version of completefoods.co (which is like a DIY soylent-making site).

Depends on your definition of nutrition. 100 g of kale only has 28 calories, so if your definition of nutrition is “can I live off of this?” the answer is no. If it’s more of a “is this good for me?”, the answer would be yes.

You just need to temper the egg. Scramble in a separate bowl, and slowly drizzle in hot broth until you’ve added like 5x the volume of the egg yolks while whisking. After that, you can just pour into the pot. It’s how you do it for ice cream and other custards, too.

Yogurt is super easy to make with any (dairy) milk.

There are some cheeses that are better with unpasteurized milk, but it still works with pasteurized milk. I think most cheeses made with unpasteurized milk are just done that way because the pasteurization is an unnecessary step. Cheeses that are aged long enough have the pathogens die off. In the US, that threshold is 60 days. In the EU, tradition is deemed more important than safety, so there is no waiting period. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12146498/#fsn370409-bib-0006

Homogenization is a challenge for curd formation with some cheeses, but you can counteract it with some extra calcium chloride.

It’s common to add cream to milk to boost the fat content for some cheeses.

You wouldn’t make rennet-based cheeses of the leftovers from a jug of milk, though, cause that’s not enough bang for your buck. I just make what’s essentially like a ricotta. All you have to do is heat it up, and add a little bit of distilled vinegar or lemon juice which cuddles it, and then you strain it through cheesecloth.

Dairy is heavily subsidized in the US. 1 gallon (3.8L) barely costs more than 1/2. Might as well buy the whole gallon and turn what you aren’t going to otherwise use into yogurt or cheese.

Great comment, and I’ll add that police, by the nature of their jobs, have to deal with a lot of things that people would (and should) find traumatic: grisly accidents, homicides, overdoses, etc. Obviously, EMTs have to deal with that kind of thing, too, but at least they usually have a partner they can talk to. Despite TV always doing the buddy cop thing, cops usually work alone.

Everyone knows it’s a problem, but the main solution has been absolutely shoveling money at grifters like Dave Grossman to give seminars and write books on “killology” (wish I was making that up). The guy’s highest level of schooling is a masters in education in counseling, but he disguises that to try to make you think he’s a proper psychologist or psychiatrist. Once you know his hypotheses, which are pulled out of thin air and unsupported by data, you see them absolutely everywhere steeped into the culture of cops and military in the US.

Newegg really went full Amazon in a bad way. Microcenter is also still good as far as I can tell.

I never understood audible. You pay $15 a month to be able to listen to 1 book per month?

Shout out to librivox, if you haven’t heard of it. It’s audiobooks recorded by volunteers reading public domain books. Obviously hit or miss on the quality of the reader, but it’s free, so you can’t complain.

Also, obviously, the humble local library and libby. (P.s., if you can get a few cards to different library systems, it’s really easy to get books).

Ah, I wonder if it was new enough to not be dead simple, but not new enough to not have any documentation or spare parts?

I didn’t even know what a zipper foot is, but it turns out I have one, lol. That shows what I know.

What was your hand-me-down? I’m working with a 1950s machine, and it seems to work great for me, but i have to admit I haven’t used a machine built in the past 20 years, so idk what I’m missing.

Most modern sewing machines have capability to do so much more than you probably really need.

Personally, all I really need is a machine that can do straight stitches with adjustable stitch length and reversing. I have a 1950s machine that does that, and it was free to me, and there’s attachments for zigzagging if I want.

If you are just patching and altering clothes, that’s probably all you need, too.

I’m the other way around. Anything I buy i want to run off 18650 (or similar) cells, and i don’t like anything that requires disposable batteries.

This is something I keep getting close to buying, but it seems like all the reputable brands i know are very expensive.

Then there’s “6-letter, All-Caps”-brands selling for like 1/6th the price and they are app controlled which is bad to me, and I’m suspicious of those brands, anyway.