Small tiger

The material largely forms the pit walls. The pits would be underwater otherwise. The actual deposits were found under the water originally.

I’ve been there. The air photo makes it look like something much worse. It’s mostly rock that has been dug up, crushed piled sorted (diamonds removed), and then piled up. The rock is clean. There’s no acid mine drainage or similar. The water next to it is so clean you can see 30m into it on a clear day and drink directly from the lake (it meets drinking water guidelines). When the mine closes, they’ll let the pits flood and the rest will slowly grow over. The worst thing about this mine is the carbon footprint from operating the machinery.

Well, the second worst thing is that diamonds are silly. ;)

Tell me about Glamis and why it is cool 😎

That would never pass inspection here… Might depend on where you live I guess

What is your favourite ship built in Scotland? (I toured some historical ships in Dundee once…)

What is your favourite castle for historical stories?

I think the background image is Diavik diamond mine in Northwest Territories.

This is really strange that there is no master switch. Are you sure this isn’t a sub-panel which is wired into another breaker box somewhere else in the building? I’d go hunting, following the main wire.

There’s less than half of the number of breakers on here that I’d expect in a house.

Shit.

Predestination Foundation

Was about to reply with guesses for centre two switches that match your reply. But you’ve got the manual so I’ll just say: great answer! :)

D11. Bottom isn’t flat ;)

Disclaimer: am a scientist and not a silicone mat expert. Advice offered us based on chemistry knowledge. Take it or leave it.

From first principles: your baking mat is probably made from polydimethylsiloxane with fibreglass reinforcement. Both of these things will be almost entirely chemically inert versus any cleaning solutions you likely have access to. So you can more or less throw anything at it provided you aren’t worried about ingesting the cleaning agent.

The staining will largely be carbon or similar that is stuck in between the polymer structures. Basicly, food particles that worked their way in and then got very very hot, driving off everything except the carbon. What’s left is effectively charcoal or graphite. Removing carbon is damned near impossible. It doesn’t melt. And the chemicals you’d need to apply to attack it would likely also attack your mat.

Effectively, your mat has been tattood with soot. Congrats.

If you want to make sure there aren’t other reactive things in the mat, leave your mat in the oven at a temperature just above whatever you expect your maximum cooking temperature will be. For example, if you never cook above 425, put the mat in at 450 for a while. That’ll drive off all of the remaining volatiles from old food and convert what remains to carbon. The staining will remain but it’ll be safe enough.

Don’t put it in the oven on super high temperatures though (like self-cleaning ovens or something) as you risk vitrification (turning the mat into glass).

Trivia: polydimethylsiloxane is the same chemical used in condom lubricant, usually…

E: phone keyboard typos

We can’t even agree on the definition of life (within the context of the search for life). Largely we’ve settled on: whatever definition helps win grants!

Land whale. My new favourite phrase

It begins. Fascism requires enemies within and without.

Yeah, it’s too space wizard for me :/ want something more like The Expanse but with 5e rules.

I really keep trying to shoehorn sci fi into D&D 5e but it never really works, much to my annoyance. Particularly, trying to get people to learn additional systems is hard, so I keep trying and failing.

Scientific equipment. Connect a bunch of electrodes into the dirt, inject some current, monitor voltage changes on other electrodes, come up with model for electrical properties in the ground. Useful for designing grounding for substations, or depth to bedrock, or water table exploration…

Had coffee the other day with a Meta engineer. After Trump got elected, suddenly their manager was like “we have to ensure we have no false positive removals” of content that violates their various policies. When pressed, the manager was like “damn right this is about the election.” Previously they were more concerned about false negatives, apparently. Anyway, I suspect they’re trying to avoid Elon aiming his ion cannon at them or something. All social media in the US is probably going to swing further right as a result.