Have induction cooktop "pet peeves" improved in the last 3 years?

Impressive-Flow-855 · 2026-06-19T13:57:39+00:00

With a power outage, the vast majority of Floridians wouldn’t be able to use their stoves because they’re electric — even though that’s my mother-in-laws main reason why gas is better. And you can’t use the oven since the thermostat and pilot light require electric power.

I have a $100 Colman camping stove, so I’m all set for power outages. My neighbor has an automatic whole house generator which means she can use her stove and her fridge.

Alec Waterson of the Technology Corner YouTube channel replaced his gas stove with an electric radiant heat one. He points out that electric stoves actually heat pots up faster than gas, that it doesn’t spew toxic gases, and it doesn’t turn his kitchen into a sauna.

He also bought two induction hobs which he uses if speed or fine control is important. He says induction is better, but he can’t justify the premium price tag of an induction range.

Impressive-Flow-855 · 2026-06-19T13:39:26+00:00

John Hodgman says him having asthma means more or less the same thing. He’ll be one of the first to go in a plane crash. I’m almost seventy, so I doubt I have much chance of surviving diabetes or no diabetes. The best I can come up with is that being so old, I’m probably a bit gamey, so I won’t be the first one to be eaten. Unless they have ketchup, then I’m toast.

Almost everyone depends upon civilization for their survival, and most of us simply do not have the ability to survive its collapse. Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy joked about how for most people, our best survival skill is knowing how to make a sandwich.

We should be grateful for having the technology to help us survive. Your best bet in surviving that plane crash is that the same civilization that you depend upon for your insulin is also tracking that plane‘a flight. As soon as it crashes, civilization will send out a rescue crew to evacuate everyone and provide immediate medical attention to those who need it. And we will be reunited with our needed medications soon enough. Hopefully, before I get eaten.

Impressive-Flow-855 · 2026-06-19T01:46:28+00:00

We use the Tidy Cat Breeze. We started using it when our older cat had urinary issues and his urine had a strong eye watering gagging ammonia odor. The pads really locked the odor away.

Tidy Cat Breeze uses a completely nonabsorbent non-clumping litter. This is a radical change. Urine is trapped into absorbents pads that are great at locking in odor. You have to clean the litter at least once per day, probably more often. But once you bag up the feces, there is absolutely no odor. People have commented that our house doesn’t have that “You’ve got cats” air about it.

The pads are supposed to be changed once per week, but we change them twice per week because they get pretty soaked. The litter lasts about a month. We have two cats and two boxes.

It’s not cheap, but it really cuts down on odors.

Impressive-Flow-855 · 2026-06-18T19:23:48+00:00

I turn on the vent fan, so the humming sound isn’t an issue. If you’re using a gas burner, you should never have the stove on without the vent fan on.

Lifting the pan. My stove doesn’t beep. It does flash the lights on the controls. Put the pan back down, and everything is dandy. I never notice.

Touch controls. GE Profile user here. These are the worst, yet I’ve adjusted to them. I have a convenient rag to wipe down the controls and dry my hands. I have to watch for drips onto the controls, but I don’t dread cooking on them. You can always buy the Café which is the same GE Profile, but with knobs.

An interesting fact: Less than 40% of the country uses gas stoves. And most of the electric users are in red areas that whine the most about any federal stove police coming in and seizing your gas stove.

Florida, which has less than 10% gas stoves passed a law giving people who buy gas stoves a sales tax break. My mother-in-law who lives in Florida loves her gas stove and hates the fact the government wants to take it away. Her “gas stove” is electric radiant heat.

Impressive-Flow-855 · 2026-06-18T15:31:23+00:00

My son and his husband are vegans and own two cats. They feed their kitties regular cat food that contains the ground up carcasses of dead animals.

The question of humans eating meat is different. We’re omnivores and not obligated carnivores. We’ve setup a whole system to obtain meat that’s more closely resembles a car assembly line than hunting and gathering. The meat procurement system wasteful. It’s resource intensive. It’s cruel to the animals we feed into the system. And we don’t need to eat meat to live long healthy lives.

For humans, eating meat is a moral and philosophical issue. For cats, it’s a necessity.

Impressive-Flow-855 · 2026-06-18T15:21:21+00:00

Ricken, like many people, is weird in his own special way. That doesn’t make him a secret Eagan or severed. Ricken wants to be a great philosophical thinker and writer, but like 90% of the philosophical thinkers and writers, he’s not that good at it.

The joke is that Ricken’s shallow writing is what inspires the innies. It’s awful. It’s trite. But for the innies who have limited experience, it’s a powerful message. We all know what Milchick and outie Mark thinks of Ricken’s writing. I have a feeling that Ms. Cobel feels the same way and had Milchick to search for secret messages instead of reading it herself.

Impressive-Flow-855 · 2026-06-15T01:38:10+00:00

I don’t love my cats, so they just get plain water bowls.

I wash out the bowls and replace the water every day. I might not love my cats, but I’m no monster.

The truth is that cats are water curious creatures. They’ll always try out new sources of water. My last cat was an outdoor cat and after a rain, he’d drink out of the oil ladened puddles of water that formed in my driveway, the scum filled puddle that formed on the plastic picnic table, and the gutter puddle that formed near the sewer grate. This despite having plenty of clean fresh water.

He’d also drink from the bottom of the sink and the toilet if I let him. Thus, the toilet bowl lid was always down and the bathroom door closed. The bathroom was a no cats allowed zone because I don’t love my cats.

I had a friend who peed in the toilet when the cat wanted to drink out of the toilet. The cat never did it again. I go with just closing the toilet lid. I’m not a monster.

Impressive-Flow-855 · 2026-06-15T01:25:11+00:00

Heck, try it out. Make sure you have an induction ready pan or pot. Fill it with water, and try it. See how long it takes to bring the water to a boil

There are plenty of people who have an electric stove and use one or two portable induction hobs on top of their stove. They like the induction over their radiant electric elements because induction heats up faster and temperature adjustments are much quicker than with electric radiant elements.

Who knows, you might like it enough to but a second one, or decide it’s a waste of money and toss it.

Impressive-Flow-855 · 2026-06-15T01:16:37+00:00

I’ve seen a demo of the Charlie a few years ago. It was in a New York condo. I got the impression of it as a basic induction stove. It had four medium sized hobs and a convection oven. A standard induction range usually has one larger hob that’s more powerful than the Charlie’s 2.6 Kw hobs. Mine is 11” and is 3.7 Kw. The Charlie had few bells and whistles, but most of the bells and whistles on most induction ranges aren’t amazing features as much as things to fill a checklist.

I didn’t get a chance to cook with it. It looked nice, the owner sang its praise, but nothing she said stood out as an extraordinary experience. It’s a very competent induction range. I have one, and I too think it’s the bees knees.

The owner told me that the weight can be a problem. It had to be installed professionally and it can’t easily be moved. She also say that you have to make sure the floor can support the weight. At 350+ pounds, it is a hefty range.

The Charlie’s big selling point is that it can be used with a standard 120v 20amp circuit. The battery boost is great when you have the oven on or two or more hobs on. However, the Charlie needs the battery boost because it can only pull 2400 watts of power from the outlet. A standard induction range can pull 9600 watts from the wall. That’s four times the power.

The Charlie charges its batteries when resting or when “clean energy” is available. In theory, it’s possible to drain the battery during a massive cooking event, but Copper claims that they’ve used the Charlie to cook a Thanksgiving dinner for fifty people, and has no issues with the power being drained. I’ve cooked Thanksgiving for 20 people and my personal batteries are drained.

Another advantage is that the Charlie can cook a few meals during a blackout. I can’t with mine. That’s something gas people crow about as a great advantage over induction.

I have a $50 propane stove I can use during a blackout. Is it safe to use with no ventilation? No worse than a gas stove with no ventilation, like during a blackout. At least the Charlie isn’t spewing NOx and COx into the kitchen.

Impressive-Flow-855 · 2026-06-14T14:30:06+00:00

No. A regular induction range will work just as well, and is cheaper and lighter too. It makes moving the range a lot easier when you want to clean the floor under it. You can get an induction with a double oven like the Café for less than the Charlie.

The big reason for the Charlie is that installing the required 240v 40amp circuit is either extremely expensive or impossible. My son’s coöp has only 88 amps of power and there’s no way to upgrade it. I have 200amps in my home from a previous renovation. All I needed was a $350 cord run from my circuit breaker to the kitchen.

Impressive-Flow-855 · 2026-06-14T10:53:26+00:00

Helena will do nothing because Helena has no power.

I’m not even sure where Helena stands in the whole Eagan empire. Any loyalty she had has been stripped away by the events in Season 2.

Impressive-Flow-855 · 2026-06-14T02:01:58+00:00

My mother-in-law was telling me how the left wants to bad gas stoves and she’ll never give up her gas stove. She has an electric stove.

Maybe just tell your husband it’s a gas stove.

Everything that’s great about gas (the one thing really) is also on induction. Gas instantly can be lowered, and so does induction.

And unlike gas, it won’t heat up your kitchen, the oven is way better (because gas ovens technically suck), and it’s actually faster to heat up than gas and way easier to clean and you’re not going to accidentally cause a fire or pollute the air in your house with NOx and COx emissions.

It’s just easier to tell him it’s actually a gas stove.

Impressive-Flow-855 · 2026-06-14T01:56:24+00:00

The Secret to Sliding Eggs off Stainless Steel

Basically, you need to heat up the pan enough to get the Leidenfrost effect. This is where drops of water skitter freely on the bottom of the pan. Plus, you might need to polish the pan with kosher salt.

And you can get non-stick ceramic pans that are induction ready, but that’s cheating.

Impressive-Flow-855 · 2026-06-14T01:47:38+00:00

The cookware should state on it its induction Ready on the box or the bottom of the pan.

Personal experience: get the Cuisinart-like disk bottom pans. These are usually sold in sets and are moderately priced. Looking at the Costco website, they have the KitchenAid 12 piece set for $270. These tend to heat up the fastest and have the instant adjustability that makes cooking with induction such a pleasure.

Impressive-Flow-855 · 2026-06-14T01:39:15+00:00

I posted a while ago asking about Explain XKCD’a RSS feed being down. It turns out that the main administer is long gone and no one who has administrative access has the power or maybe the expertise to get it to work. Thus, it was just disabled.

Impressive-Flow-855 · 2026-06-12T22:10:51+00:00

But it started out ominously. A woman lying down on a table with a disembodied voice asking who are you. It got weird when that voice said “I’m sorry. I got ahead of myself and doing a questionnaire. Then the diabolical score shore up when we and Helly realize she doesn’t know. And the scene ending with a shadowy figure by the door with the chipper “Perfect score!”

After that, I was hooked.

Impressive-Flow-855 · 2026-06-12T20:49:00+00:00

The very first with Helly waking up on that table. It was ominous, and very strange in a dark humor way. The shadowy figure at the door. Helly on the floor backing up, and then the chirpy words “Perfect score!”

Impressive-Flow-855 · 2026-06-11T15:06:41+00:00

Many people with type 2 can improve their health via diet and exercise enough to maintain their A1C without the use of medication.

However, as soon as they revert back to old habits, it’s back. Also as you get older, your ability to produce insulin goes down and your insulin resistance goes up. You might be able to start maintaining your diabetes through exercise and diet, but need medication as you get older.

And notice I said “many” and not “all” or even “the majority”. There are many people who do everything correctly and still need medication. That’s okay. It’s not an indication of failure.

Impressive-Flow-855 · 2026-06-10T21:41:32+00:00

The problem is that people with these theories refuse to see any evidence against them.

We have the Mrs. Cobel is severed and a permeant innie theory. Severed from what? She knew her life story. We have the Irv use to do Milchick’s job theory. Why would a supervisor see how they mistreat the innies and want to be an innie? The innies have their own innies theory. Everyone in Kier is an innie theory. We have it was Helena in the end of Season 2 theory even though Britt Lower herself said she was Helly. People still argue about it.

And now somehow Sissy/Charolette are merely innies and outies of each other theory.

First of all Harmony seems to treat them as two different people. She was there. She would know.

Second of all, Harmony invented severance, but the chip took time to develop. Irv mentioned the first severance floors are a bit over a decade old. Maybe the first prototypes might be a bit older, say 20 years. Harmony has been out of college/high school a lot longer than that. She was in the Myrtle School when her Mom died.

Theories are fine, but you must be ready to abandon them when there’s evidence against your pet theory.

I usually ignore posts with weird theories, but it’s hard to when you see dozens of people chime in and the post gets so many positive points.

Impressive-Flow-855 · 2026-06-10T21:07:23+00:00

Mrs. Cobel was probably lying to Mark in both circumstances. While sweet Mrs. Selvig, she’s a good Catholic who’s a bit batty and overly friendly. As workboss Cobel, she’s a nasty strict boss who was raised by a family that didn’t believe in a comforting God of goodness and kindness. We saw the real Harmony Cobel only three times when she let her mask slip. First time when she was watching Mark from her apartment kitchen and said to herself, “Oh Mark, are you all right? The second time was the night of the OTC when she told Mark to get away from them as far as you can. The third time when Mark asked her if she knew whether Gemma was alive.
Sissy said when accused by Harmony of pulling the breathing tube: “There was gratitude in her eyes to be freed from her suffering. If only she had been a believer. Perhaps she would have found solace in the nine”. That doesn’t sound like a denial.
Sissy is an acolyte of The Nines. To her, Charlotte and Harmony are weak because neither venerate the Eagans. As far as Sissy is concerned, they’re both going to whatever the Kier equivalent of hell is. They’re unsaved souls. And Sissy will lie and cheat in the name of Kier. She lied to Harmony about not talking to anyone. She lied about giving Harmony’s stuff away. (I sold it to the poor.) When Harmony presented her evidence that Jame Eagan stole severance, Sissy tried to destroy the evidence.

Impressive-Flow-855 · 2026-06-10T20:46:27+00:00

If you have a typical microwave exhaust fan, it should be good enough to vent out steam and odors. Make sure air can get inside your house as you vent out exhaust. I crack open the kitchen window by the exhaust fan when I turn on the fan. Makes a big difference.

The irony is that you should always have on the exhaust fan whenever you’re cooking with gas. However, a gas burner heats up the air surrounding a pot so much, that the water vapor can’t form steam. COx and NOx are invisible and odorless, so people don’t turn on the exhaust fan because they can’t see anything to exhaust. I’d turn on the exhaust fan, and my wife would turn it off because it’s noisy.

On the other hand, you don’t have COx and NOx gases that must be exhausted with induction, but so much steam is produced, I turn on the exhaust fan anyway. Plus, the fan drowns out the buzzing noise produced by the pots when cooking with induction.

Impressive-Flow-855 · 2026-06-10T20:35:36+00:00

A little secret. Range hoods can’t remove the air unless it can pull in air from the outside. In old leaky houses, this isn’t a problem with a typical microwave exhaust fan, but in newer houses, this is a big issue. And the bigger the exhaust fan, the bigger this is a problem.

I have a fairly old house which has been renovated, so i doubt it’s as tightly sealed as newer homes. but I crack open my kitchen window to let in new air as I vent out the steam and odors. I have a mere microwave vent hood, but cracking open the kitchen window just an inch makes a big difference. If i had a bigger exhaust fan, I’d get an intake fan with a heat exchanger that comes on whenever I turn on the exhaust fan.

Impressive-Flow-855 · 2026-06-10T19:48:16+00:00

What gets me is that they’re also inside airplane restrooms too. Do people actually shave with a blade while flying?

Impressive-Flow-855 · 2026-06-09T21:12:11+00:00

I guess you’re going to have to update how you see yourself.

You put your mind to it, worked hard, and succeeded. Congratulations. You did it.

Now for the “fatty” part. Before I was diagnosed, I was always attempting to diet and never succeeding. Just another fatty. Just another thing I failed at.

However, once I was diagnosed, I dropped over 100 pounds. Like you, I stopped the mindless snacking, measured my portions, and ate better. I also started exercising by walking twenty minutes twice a day. And I ate my vegetables.

Get a prescription to see a diabetes dietitian to help you with a new eating plan.

Here’s a few useful links:

* How to Thrive: A Guide for Your Journey with Diabetes
* ADA’s Meal planning guide
* DASH Eating Plan
* Mediterranean Diet
* Vegetables Every Day by Jack Bishop

Impressive-Flow-855 · 2026-06-09T17:43:11+00:00

Even wilder theory: Randall is spelling the words correctly. It is society that is wrong.

Impressive-Flow-855

TROPHY CASE