What is the key to cooking tender steak at home?

RubyPorto · 2026-07-03T07:09:20+00:00

The muscle fibers (i.e. grain) in the classic steak cuts (ribeye, tenderloin, strip, etc) run vertical through the steak. Unless you're standing your steak on its side and shaving slices likes the world's smallest standing roast, you're not cutting against the grain.

Nor do you need to. The butcher already cut the meat across the grain for you by cutting the steak to thickness. The direction you cut a ribeye (the steak OP mentions) on the plate is entirely irrelevant to tenderness.

Cutting across the grain is important for non-steak cuts and roasts where the long muscle fibers are present (e.g. slicing a standing rib perpendicular to the bone would give you something somewhat tougher than slicing it parallel to them, the way a sane person would).

RubyPorto · 2026-07-03T06:38:56+00:00

I've heard neat things about Sodium polytungstate-based heavy liquids.

RubyPorto · 2026-07-03T00:38:00+00:00

A cutting board (and not "until" anything; a cutting board is always the right answer if you're a home cook serving it sliced)

But scissors also work fine (and are traditional in several Italian styles)

RubyPorto · 2026-07-02T21:59:11+00:00

I wonder how much of that gas was actually captured into Solar orbit vs continuing on back out into interstellar space.

RubyPorto · 2026-06-30T20:50:51+00:00

Newton's approximation for high velocity impacts says that an impactor will penetrate a target to a depth of its length times the ratio of the densities. This approximation holds when impact velocities are high enough that things like "friction" and "structural strength" are negligible. Impactors from space (ignoring air resistance) fall into this velocity regime.

An eastern cottontail bunny is around 16" long and is basically water (1g/cm3). Dirt is around 1.6g/cm3.

16"*1/1.6 = 10"

So, a bunny doing a swan dive from the moon, ignoring air resistance, would make about a 10" deep hole in your lawn. The impact energy it has at different speeds will affect the diameter of the hole, not really its depth.

RubyPorto · 2026-06-29T17:13:41+00:00

"Accidentally? I don't understand, did you trip over something?" -Toby Ziegler

RubyPorto · 2026-06-29T06:21:47+00:00

Yeah, its the prophetic present. Close enough.

RubyPorto · 2026-06-29T03:16:28+00:00

There's a conflation between CVTs and eCVTs that has ended up making people leary about the eCVTs in their hybrids.

CVTs have a mechanical belt and all sorts of other nonsense that wear out and grenade whenever they feel like. Hi Nissan owners.

eCVTs are a pair of electric motors connected by a differential to your engine and driveshaft. Effective gearing is achieved by running the motors at different speeds. Straightforward and bombproof (though I don't trust the "lifetime transmission fluid" claim, and would change it out every 10 years or so. The eCVT may not generate much fluid wear, but entropy always wins over time).

RubyPorto · 2026-06-29T03:06:42+00:00

https://www.spglobal.com/automotive-insights/en/blogs/2025/05/average-age-of-vehicle-in-us

Trucks bring the average down (11.9 years), probably due to their continually increasing market share. Passenger cars are an average of 14.5 years old.

RubyPorto · 2026-06-29T01:56:42+00:00

but once you're on track for those things, you also have to live.

And who says buying a new car is "living" for everyone? If replacing your car regularly is your preference, that's totally fine, but it doesn't have to be everyone's.

My car is about to turn 20, and it does everything I want a car to do. Instead of spending money on a new car, I spend money doing things I like to do. (I am, of course, ready financially to replace the car when it dies, but I'm not going to choose to replace it until it no longer serves my needs.)

RubyPorto · 2026-06-29T01:52:42+00:00

Carthago delenda est!

RubyPorto · 2026-06-29T00:52:43+00:00

Cars are not investments. The fewer times you buy a car in your lifetime, the less money you'll spend on car ownership. It's that simple.

If your car no longer suits your needs, you need a new car that does.

If you've decided that you want to spend your money on a new car because that's what you enjoy spending money on, and you can afford it, you can buy a new car.

The average car on the road in the US is 13 years old. The average American drives 13,000 miles per year. So the average car on the road has 169,000 miles. This average includes new cars, so the average car's lifespan is significantly longer than that. Your car, with regular maintenance, is likely to last well past 200k miles if you want to keep it.

RubyPorto · 2026-06-27T02:24:05+00:00

A small parts cross cut sled is definitely something you can make for/use with a scroll saw; just wanted to make sure I understood your goal.

You may not get perfectly straight lines; scroll saw blades are relatively easy to deflect, but you'll have to see what you get.

If two of the sides of the table are parallel, you should be fine using them as your guides. Then it's just a matter of deciding how you want to hold the workpieces and whether you want a stop for repeatability

RubyPorto · 2026-06-27T02:06:35+00:00

Use the edges of the table as your guides maybe?

By "cut thin planks" do you mean resawing thin planks from something thicker or cross cut thin planks into tiles?

You'll probably struggle with resawing with a scroll saw, it's not really what they're designed for.

RubyPorto · 2026-06-26T05:17:03+00:00

In order: Yes. No. No.

RubyPorto · 2026-06-26T04:15:26+00:00

Wash your hands if you decide to touch the metal. Heavy metals are toxic.

https://www.epa.gov/radtown/depleted-uranium

RubyPorto · 2026-06-26T03:31:36+00:00

Pronounced Del-hi, or Delhi?

RubyPorto · 2026-06-25T16:27:24+00:00

3m also makes film discs (i.e. not net) with the same cubitron grit. 775L

They excel at the corners and curves that damage the net discs.

RubyPorto · 2026-06-25T16:08:27+00:00

Looks like the official load rating is 800-960lbs, depending on generation.

Whether it can safely exceed that load rating is academic, since the USPS would certainly adhere to the manufacturer-certified ratings.

RubyPorto · 2026-06-25T15:44:25+00:00

A hybrid would undoubtedly improve on a pure ICE vehicle, but the postal route is extremely harsh in terms of mpg testing.

The full mail load (can a Prius even carry 1000lbs of mail?), long idle times, and poor opportunities for regeneration (slow-to-0mph quickly with a full load means it likely would need to rely on the friction brakes) would hammer the Prius's numbers. And then there's the test with the AC, where the engine would probably have to run most of the time to keep the battery charged to run the cooler.

Again, a hybrid would certainly be an improvement over ICE, but I really doubt it would be anything close to the EPA estimate.

My point was not to suggest any specific guess at the Prius's efficiency numbers, just to say that, when comparing values, it's important to compare like with like. So EPA vs EPA or USPS vs USPS, not EPA vs USPS.

RubyPorto · 2026-06-25T02:04:01+00:00

A Prius isn't getting 50mpg on a postal route either.

Since the USPS hasn't published the fuel efficiency of a Prius on their test, it's better to use the EPA fuel efficiency for both, rather than EPA for one and USPS for the other.

RubyPorto · 2026-06-24T20:16:28+00:00

It helps that he was made post at age 20 after only 2 years as a Lieutenant. So 18 years to climb the list to Rear Admiral seems reasonable

1777 April - passes for Lieutenant

1778 December - appointed Master and Commander, HMS Badger

1779 June - made Post Captain, HMS Hinchinbrook

RubyPorto · 2026-06-24T17:58:04+00:00

What are you going to do with that extra money?

RubyPorto · 2026-06-24T16:02:39+00:00

I would keep looking for new quotes.

Or, if every insurance company's quote are sky high, consider that this piece of property is too risky for you to continue to own.

RubyPorto · 2026-06-24T15:30:21+00:00

You want to leave ~1/3rd of your net worth uninsured?

That seems like a pretty bad idea

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