Lemmy.World

From Brynda Ivan

When stopped by this little Screech Owl's hole yesterday morning, it was clear he'd had a meal shortly prior to my arrival. I don't usually crop in this tightly, but there are 3 feathers (2 on his right, 1 on his left) and wanted them to be easier to see in this pic.

I wonder what breakfast was?

From Ericka Berja

Someone's being sad that autumn's almost over. Eastern Screech Owl.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/25341720

Well, not ALL puzzles... [Dark Side of the Horse]

Via Mastodon.

Source: https://www.berkeleymews.com/comic/cruella-de-vil/

I've been doing homebrewing together with my wife for quite some time, and at some point we started collecting a yeast library. There was a point in my life where we had an opportunity to start a company that does something we enjoy; we've tried starting an analytic lab for microbreweries (as we are both actually doctors in chemistry), but it didn't take off at all due to lack of demand (and COVID breakout), we had to switch to doing whatever brings cash (of course IT stuff it was, mostly, I feel ashamed).

But yeast library kept growing. We've decided to give it another try, got permissions from the Big Brother, and rolled out a small production!

We've deployed a webshop at https://store.zymologia.fi/ , there is other stuff that's kind of a byproducts of whatever other things we've had to do to get along (some of it was and is fun after all). The idea is that I don't think it makes sense to scale it up any further, we just have proper but minimalist equipment to do sterile pure culture cultivation, not large tanks, only glass that could be properly washed and autoclaved, and full-grain growth media because I hate smell of extract (and proper preparation of wort is about as difficult as getting extract clear enough for yeast making). Anyway, it's an actual commercial operation, I'm curious to see how far we can go with such attitude and whether it would become profitable or just another "make the world a bit happier place".

Most of yeast on sale is listed as "not available" which means we'll just have to wake them up, feed them up to speed, and package, which takes up to 2 weeks, which is less than beer recipe planning and preparation phase, at least for me. I don't think keeping an inventory with live yeast is a good idea anyway - many times I've had sad starved liquid yeast fished out of fridges in stores only to see lags on 30+ hours. That's also why I'm reluctant to go to resalers, though I might try it.

What I really think should be happening is yeast exchange. I don't want to keep things any more commercial than the general Finnish anti-soviet spirit tells me, so let me propose this idea: yeast growth takes time and effort, but sharing is caring - I'd be happy to share a swab of yeast culture with anyone who comes to our place (just tell me when, of course most of the time there is only yeast in the lab) with their own sterile slant carrier - I won't be shipping these, for I'm absolutely certain delivery services will mess it up, and also I (or whoever would be hanging around at that time) won't get to have a chat with you. (Please do this if you know what you are doing though, storing culture and scaling it to a starter is a bit more complicated than just making a starter, mistakes multiply badly with exponential growth and it's not very feasible to propagate without going through single-cell plating or something similar. If you don't know what that means, learn it first, or it's worth just buying a ready liquid yeast, the great purpose of sharing culture material is to let other people have it in their library, which would require you to go through single-cell propagation at least a few times a year).

We also have an opensource (all we do is opensource, I believe in the idea) piece of software to keep yeast lineage in check here: https://github.com/Alzymologist/yeast It's a bit underdocumented at the moment to say the least, but it uses Bayesian inference to analyze yeast parameters and catch mutations, and it was able to detect deviations before we've tasted the outliers blindly, I think it's quite cool too. I don't think anybody did this before.

Sorry for self-advertisement, I've asked moders if this sort of thing is OK here before posting. I hope this is interesting enough to be worth being here.

From Paulo Andrade

Striped Owl
'Asio clamator'
Nov/24
Brasil

Freunde, ich wende mich an euch aus tiefster Verzweiflung heraus. Das hier ist keine Werbung, sondern ein Hilfeschrei.

Warum genau schmeckt mir die Tiefkühl-Tonno-Pizza von Dr. Oetker so gut? Was ist da genau drauf? Ich habe endlose TK-Tonnos durchprobiert und selbst viele gemacht, aber irgendwas ist auf der Dr. Oetker-Pizza drauf, das ich nicht reproduziert bekomme. Aber auch nur auf der! Es sind Klekse aus einer undefinierbaren Masse, die mein Ambrosia sind - vermutlich eine Mischung aus Thunfisch-Ersatz und Gewürzen, aber jeder Versuch es zu erforschen hat ins Nichts geführt.

Hat hier jemand Zugriff auf die geheimen Rezepte und wäre bereit für ein kleines bisschen Industriespionage? Meine aktuelle Vermutung ist geht in Richtung Koks oder Heroin o.Ä., anders kann ich mir meine körperliche und psychische Abhängigkeit nicht erklären - doch der rationale Teil meines Hirns widerspricht vehement, weil man das bestimmt rausschmecken würde.

Versteht jemand, was ich meine? Oder bin ich gefangen in einem sisyphosischen Kreis, verdammt dazu stets zum Supermarkt gehen zu müssen um das High erneut zu erleben?

Falls ihr das lest und die TK-Tonno noch nie probiert habt, bitte ich euch: tut es nicht. Es war schwer genug, die Kommentare von dem einen Reddit-Account durchzulesen, der nur Mal Heroin probieren wollte. Ich möchte für ähnliche Abstürze keine Verantwortung tragen.

Policing often harms sex workers. That’s not up for debate – copious academic research and sex worker-led advocacy and research demonstrate that. But we’re not actually sure why law enforcement behaves the way it does. Few researchers have seriously studied the motivations and justifications for police action when it comes to sex work, or asked what lies behind the police’s continued reliance on methods that hurt the people they claim to help.

Source | Author: Deburi | Characters: Remilia Scarlet, Sakuya Izayoi

I cannot repair my washing machine without documentation. I have no idea how to use my multimeter to check the components. There are parts dealers for Beko in my area, but none of them have the service manual.

The parts shops all say go to the website for the manual as a flippant off-the-cuff answer. There are no service manuals on the Beko website -- at least not for my model. The navigation of the Beko website does not even have a path to docs. And worse, my model is treated as non-existent by the website.

What would I do if I were a professional repair service? What is the official channel?

I am open to “piracy¹” but it would be a long shot to scour all the dark web for a manual for a specific washing machine. It’s not the type of content people have a strong interest in spreading/trading.

¹As RMS says, it’s not a just term for it but sharing is awkward too.

Last september everything came to a head and due to my failing mental health I tried to commit. It failed and I've been off work ever since.

Next June will be my 10 year anniversary with this company. I thought I was, well, not "liked" but at least somewhere above just "tolerated".

Well, that's one fantasy out if this world.

I probably will be fired because of my prolonged absence. I used to dread that option, but now I welcome it.

For a decade I felt unheard & unseen and when I spoke up about it, people convinced me it was all just in my head.

But it isn't. I really am as loathed as I feared I would be.

Then again, I loathe myself most of all, so I "understand" the situation.

I wouldn't reach out either if the roles were reversed.