Today I Learned #3: There's a wiki for everything!

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It's a good thing we're not talking about my ice cream/laundry problems. :dubious: That sentence isn't a good one to take out of context.
Well, the traditional meat empanada (a semicircular pastry filled with stewed meat, basically) is traditionally eaten sitting hunched forward, with your legs wide apart, precisely to prevent your clothes getting stained. I was just referencing that.
While we are on the topic of how to sit, I have always wondered if men have a difficult time sitting with their legs crossed at the knee? Physiology and anatomy being what they are.
If it actually hurt we wouldn't do it.
 
Well, the traditional meat empanada (a semicircular pastry filled with stewed meat, basically) is traditionally eaten sitting hunched forward, with your legs wide apart, precisely to prevent your clothes getting stained. I was just referencing that.

I'd lean over my plate or put a napkin over my lap. Or I'd use a knife and fork. Maybe. I don't actually know what this thing is, or if I've ever seen one.
 
While we are on the topic of how to sit, I have always wondered if men have a difficult time sitting with their legs crossed at the knee? Physiology and anatomy being what they are.
I've never seen it as a problem or noticed any particular discomfort. I would say that "things" just "float to the top" and when the circulation to one leg gets cut off, switch them or change positions.
 
The game on it I've probably played most is Solitaire :blush:
Doesn't include any of my favourite games, must be a bad list :D
I used to spend a lot of time playing Bejeweled.

Now I'm spending a lot of time playing Jewel Match Aquascapes. It just came out on Big Fish Games, and one of the developers is available for questions and comments on one of the other gaming forums I belong to.
 
I'd lean over my plate or put a napkin over my lap. Or I'd use a knife and fork. Maybe. I don't actually know what this thing is, or if I've ever seen one.

Empanadas don't necessarily come with plates or cutlery at all, you're meant to eat them with your hands

Spoiler :
empanadas-de-carne.jpg
 
There's a knife in that picture and they're sitting on a plate. Add a fork and they're ready to be eaten.
Empanadas are finger food and eaten with one's hands. Using silverware to eat them is like eating an ice cream cone with a spoon.
 
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There's a knife in that picture and they're sitting on a plate. Add a fork and they're ready to be eaten.

The plate is there because the picture is from a home recipe - But most empanadas are eaten out on the street where plates are an inconvenience at best. The bread knife in the picture looks like it's just there for show, and bread knives aren't used alongside forks anyway.
 
What kind of person are you that eating empanadas makes you stop wanting to eat them?
 
What kind of person are you that eating empanadas makes you stop wanting to eat them?
Too much of what they might consider a good thing? I love broccoli and wouldn't mind eating it a lot more often than I do, but lately I've left the cream of broccoli soup in the cupboard and gone for the tomato soup.

As for cutlery and finger food... I've used a knife and fork occasionally when eating pizza, on the odd times when the pizza was literally too hot to touch, or I was doing something while eating that meant I didn't want to risk getting sauce on it. Thankfully there was nobody around to comment on my table manners other than Maddy, who of course was put out that I didn't share any cheese or pepperoni with her.
 
While we are on the topic of how to sit, I have always wondered if men have a difficult time sitting with their legs crossed at the knee? Physiology and anatomy being what they are.

They reposition fine, but then they're stuck in a squished mass at the top. No airflow, stinky sweaty and sitting in a lump. It's unpleasant. Ankle across the knee to cross legs.
 
Sexual dimorphism in the extreme

https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/11/us/anglerfish-football-fish-california-trnd-scn/index.html

A monstrous-looking fish normally found thousands of feet deep in the ocean washed up on a California beach
By Amanda Jackson, CNN
Updated 11:00 PM ET, Tue May 11, 2021

210511162501-01-football-fish-exlarge-169.jpg


The angler fish washed ashore at the Crystal Cove State Park in California.
(CNN)An unusual fish with teeth as sharp as glass and a body shaped like a football washed ashore on a California beach last week.

The black colored creature with it's gaping mouth laid on the sand on the shore of Crystal Cove State Park's Marine Protected Area in Laguna Beach last Friday. The park shared images of the fish on social media and identified it as being most likely the Pacific Football Fish.
"To see an actual angler fish intact is very rare and it is unknown how or why the fish ended up on the shore," reads the Facebook post.


A huge, strange-looking fish washed up on a California beach. Scientists say it's a first

The Pacific Football Fish is one of more than 200 species of anglerfish worldwide, according to California State Parks, and is normally found in the dark depths of the ocean. The creature's teeth are sharp and pointy like shards of glass and their "large mouth is capable of sucking up and swallowing prey the size of their own body."

Due to the creature's size and the protruding stalk on the top of the head, California State Parks said this is a female.
"Only females possess a long stalk on the head with bioluminescent tips used as a lure to entice prey in the darkness of waters as deep as 3,000 feet!," according to the Crystal Cove State Park post.
210511162514-02-football-fish-exlarge-169.jpg


The stalk on the fish's head is used to lure prey.

They added that females can grow to lengths of 24 inches while males only grow to be about an inch long. The sole purpose of the male fish is to help a female reproduce, reads the post. "Males latch onto the female with their teeth and become 'sexual parasites,' eventually coalescing with the female until nothing is left of their form but their testes for reproduction," reads the post.

The body of the fish is being held by the California Department of Fish & Wildlife, according to CNN affiliate KFSN. It is expected to be studied for research and educational purposes.
"Seeing this strange and fascinating fish is a testament to the diversity of marine life lurking below the water's surface ...," reads the Crystal Cove State Park post. ".. and as scientists continue to learn more about these deep sea creatures it's important to reflect on how much is still to be learned from our wonderful ocean."
 
From New Scientist

Nuclear reactions at Chernobyl are spiking in an inaccessible chamber
Scientists monitoring the ruins of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine have seen a surge in fission reactions in an inaccessible chamber within the complex. They are now investigating whether the problem will stabilise or require a dangerous and difficult intervention to prevent a runaway nuclear reaction.

The explosion at Chernobyl in 1986 brought down walls and sealed off many rooms and corridors. Tonnes of fissile material from the interior of a reactor were strewn throughout the facility and the heat it generated melted sand from the reactor walls with concrete and steel to form lava-like and intensely radioactive substances that oozed into lower floors.

One chamber, known as subreactor room 305/2, is thought to contain large amounts of this material, but it is inaccessible and hasn’t been seen by human or robotic eyes since the disaster.

Now, researchers have seen a spike in neutron emissions from the room, with levels increasing around 40 per cent since the start of 2016. This points to a growing nuclear fission reaction, so researchers are trying to determine if this surge will fizzle out, as previous spikes in other parts of the ruins have done, or whether they will need to find a way to access the room and intervene.

Neil Hyatt at the University of Sheffield, UK, who studies nuclear waste disposal, likens the situation to “embers in a barbecue pit” and says “it’s a reminder to us that it’s not a problem solved, it’s a problem stabilised”.

One suggestion for why this is happening is that a new structure placed over the ruined reactor in 2016 is causing the plant to dry out. When uranium or plutonium fuel decay radioactively, they emit neutrons, which can promote a fission reaction if the neutrons are captured by another radioactive nuclei. However, large amounts of water slow these neutrons down, preventing them from being captured.

The original shelter, which was hurriedly constructed over the reactor in the months following the accident, was riddled with holes that allowed rainwater and birds inside. If the rainwater was helping to suppress reactions in room 305/2, its absence due to the new structure could mean there is no longer enough water in the room to sufficiently slow neutrons down. Equally there could still be enough water left to cause problems, because if the room fully dries out, the neutrons would then be too fast to be captured, also preventing fission. So the water could be at this critical level.

“We’re talking about very low rates of fission, so it’s not like a fizzing nuclear reactor,” says Hyatt. “And our estimation of fissile material in that room means that we can be fairly confident that you’re not going to get such rapid release of nuclear energy that you have an explosion. But we don’t know for sure.”

“We have seen excursions like this before with other fuel debris. The neutron base rate has increased, stabilised and decreased again. That’s obviously what we hope might happen,” he says.

Hyatt says that the situation is “cause for concern but not alarm”, but that if the rate of neutron production continues to increase, researchers may need to intervene. This could involve drilling into the room and spraying it with a fluid containing a substance such as gadolinium nitrate, which would soak up excess neutrons and choke the fission reaction.

Maxim Saveliev worked on more recent confinement of Chernobyl and later joined the Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Power Plants National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. He says that precise monitoring is difficult because there is no neutron sensor near the room in question, and scientists have no idea what material lies between their sensors and the melted fuel, making it hard to predict the exact scale of the problem. “We have only assumptions,” he says.

Saveliev says that robots should be used to get as close as possible to room 305/2 to install neutron and temperature sensors and, if possible, take samples of the lava-like material and install a solid neutron absorber, such as gadolinium in metal form.
 
From New Scientist

Nuclear reactions at Chernobyl are spiking in an inaccessible chamber
I thought the picture that science put with that story was good.
ca_NID_Cherenobyl_New_Safe_Confinement_online.jpg

Spoiler The elephants foot is still scary :
 
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