Category: Announcements

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That’s a Noif!

I wanted a knife. A bigass noif, if you will. Because I buy vacuum-packed whole primals and break them down. Why? Well, if you can afford the upfront cost, it’s cheaper long term. I also like the flexibility of determining the size of my cuts (sure, I could ask a butcher to cut me something exact, but that’s a bother for both of us). And lastly, I enjoy the opportunity to maintain certain butchery skill sets.

But, I am an anomaly. No one puts themselves through such tasks voluntarily, even if they possessed the skill sets. Consequently, it was somewhat difficult to find the type of knife I was after. I could have gone to commercial knife vendors, but I also wanted a knife that looks nice. No wide-gripped nonslip ugly white plastic polymer handles for me! Something elegant please.

Alas, Wüsthof does not make such a blade in their Classic Ikon set (the design that I prefer). What’s a former part-time professional meat cutter/deli clerk to do?

Fortunately, Dalstrong makes a design that’s very close. I don’t like the steel as much, and the handle doesn’t quite match, but it’s close enough and I can live with it, despite the hokey marketing-ism terminology they so love (“Lionshield treatment”?).

And it comes with a pin! So I can wear a badge of honor that I was able to fork over $139, I guess. It kind of reminds me of those plastic captain’s pins they used to give out to kids on airlines. I also get stickers with some products. I guess we all need a little bit of psychological validation these days?

Anyway, so here we have it with the Wüsthofs:

Close.

It’ll work.

–Simon

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AI Search and Cotyledonic Polyembryony

I’ve started to embrace AI engines. The aging crank that I am has been reluctant to jump aboard too soon, but it turns out I was thinking about it all wrong. Instead of using it to lazily bypass the process of basic internet research, as its main purpose appears to be, I discovered that I can instead use it to bypass the bullshit copy/paste non-researched web articles themselves. A simple query returns aggregated, compiled, and distilled information; which I can then use to better refine my internet searches to find the actual information that most websites simply scrape and regurgitate. It was, perhaps, a slow revelationary process on my part.

Here’s a good example. One of my tomato starters had three initial leaves. I had never seen that before. My standard internet searching revealed that these first leaves that reside within the seed are called cotyledons. Sounds like a dinosaur to me, but okay. And as a seasoned gardener, I know that tomato seedlings have two cotyledons, not three. What was going on? It was time for Wikipedia to bestow me with closure.

But it didn’t. It just talked about the leaves themselves and their purpose, though not why there would be a non-standard number on a plant. Genetic mutation? Monsanto? Government conspiracy? Tell me!

That isn’t right! It’s some Damien shit right there. Mark of the beast!

But again, it didn’t. So I used an AI engine, and asked it why a tomato seedling would have 3 cotyledons. And it promptly told me that it’s rare, sometimes from genetic mutation, but usually resulting from polyembryony, which happens when more than one embryo forms within a single seed. Furthermore, it’s apparently a non-issue long term, though it causes early variations in normal growth patterns. Now that’s useful information, and also kind of fascinating.

And to drive the point home further, another one germinated, from a completely different variety!

Something in the water?

Most of the seeds I plant are ones I’ve saved, so this double occurrence is intriguing. Perhaps attributed to a statistical Poisson distribution, it could be an unintentional result of my decades-long solanum eugenics project.

Whatever the cause, I’ll be keeping a close eye on these samples. Maybe I’ll have developed new varieties! Or, more likely, the bigger achievement here is that I’ve finally dabbled in AI.

–Simon

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Every Snow (Part 4)…

Twice in one year! It’s been cold winter. Polar vortex and such, again. I guess that’s cyclical – the weakening of the polar vortex that allows cold air to push south. Something like that. Anyway, here’s the February snow:

Not as much as January, but a lot more than last year.

–Simon