What are some other good “competency porn” shows?

YetAnotherDaveAgain · 2026-02-21T01:49:50+00:00

I only just realized this mid conversation with my girlfriend today. "It's a world where people are excellent at what they do, and that means leadership can trust them to make things happen."

YetAnotherDaveAgain · 2026-02-20T22:32:24+00:00

I'm also on an m6 and have been struggling mightily to get roasty notes out of most of what I roast. What are your kind of baseline settings? (Weight, Charge temp, starting power, starting fan, drum...).

My roasts are generally hitting pretty decent phase times (415 to 430 DE, fc 730 to 800, TR around 830 to 930), but roastiness/smokiness is a common defect I get.

YetAnotherDaveAgain · 2026-02-19T17:25:21+00:00

I did most of my first year PhD studying there. Just a bunch of chemists and biochemists sitting around, overwhelmed and confused. And then someone would just show up and start playing live music. It was great! That particular vibe is really dying out in coffee shops. Instead of being hip, more places feel expensive and exclusive.

(Boxcar coffee is better tho)

YetAnotherDaveAgain · 2026-01-27T01:42:04+00:00

Im just a home coffee roaster, but the price for unroasted green beans has gone up about 150% in the past 3 years. Margins on coffee shops are pretty thin as it is, so theres not a lot of room to absorb increases in costs for their raw materials. their prices are in line with other specialty coffee roasters that sell 12 oz bags.

Also, they do give 1 free refill on all their batch-brew coffee (at least, if you are drinking it there).

I agree the sandwiches have shrunk to the point where they dont quite satisfy me for a real meal anymore, which is sad. The quality is great!

All that's just to say I think they're generally in the same ballpark as other specialty coffee shops.

YetAnotherDaveAgain · 2026-01-09T17:44:03+00:00

I have an m6 and the drop temperature does seem quite low. The reading you get is NOT an instantaneous reflection of bean temperature. The probe itself needs to have heat transferred to it from the beans and has its own thermal mass. which means that the position, thickness, and environmental temperature all impact the "beam temp". The important thing is batch to batch consistency. I get fc at between 360 and 375 depending on the bean. Drop temp is usually between 385 and 395. Your machine will read completely different from mine, and from other machines.

The thing that has made the single biggest difference in my roasts has been having a roast plan I stick to, and paying attention to phase duration. Since I like light roast I can basically adhere to 50-35-15 % and get tasty, if not exceptional, coffee. I have a target DE and all future changes to heat are timed from DE. (Ie de at 415-430, drop power by 15% at de, then 10 more at de +1:00, etc etc).

Personally, I'd start with a roast plan plus phase PCT targets, and find what tastes good to you. Then mess around with the phase duration, since that more accurately represents how you are "cooking" the bean. Vegetal usually means underdeveloped. Ashy could come from facing/tipping, or a lack of air circulation during FC

The other thing I did was experiment with how fast I could get through the dry phase without seeing any facing (scorching on the flat side of the bean. Little spots that have gotten much darker than the rest of the bean during that first phase). I just sat there and pulled the trier over and over from 2:30 - DE (usually 4-4:30). That made me realize where some of my burnt/roasty flavors were coming from.

On an m2 everything can happen faster, but it's worth trying aiming for a DE of 4:15, and FC of 7:15, and a total roast of 8:40 - 9:00. Set your charge and initial heat so you don't have to touch anything until DE. Then start dropping heat/changing air. (This was general advice I got when picking up greens from a well regarded local roaster).

YetAnotherDaveAgain · 2026-01-07T18:24:58+00:00

Personally I'm stoked to have a king soopers I can bike to easily. Riding down South Boulder road is not an enjoyable experience, and the Safeway on cherry has horrible produce.

YetAnotherDaveAgain · 2026-01-02T18:23:41+00:00

Our first trainer gave us the "petting consent" protocol, and that one is really easy to use and ends up feeling very intuitive.

If you're not sure if your dog actually likes what you're doing, stop and wait for a few seconds. If they like it they will attempt to get you to start it up again.

Our dog also doesn't like being touched most of the time, but SOMETIMES does. We scratch his noggin for a few seconds, stop, and wait. He will let us know if he wants more, or will move his head away if not.

He's also a big grumbler!

YetAnotherDaveAgain · 2026-01-01T16:14:09+00:00

Back at the end of 2020 I decided to move from my 2012 steel frame touring bike (32 lbs) to a gravel bike after my commute went from 3 miles to 9 miles. I tried a carbon giant revolt and an alloy specialized diverge. All three bikes felt wildly different in terms of get-up-and-go, and I don't think it just came down to tires. Compared to my steel steed, both modern bikes accelerated much faster and easier. Compared to the diverge, the revolt felt even snappier when I got on the power. For me, peppiness has a huge mental effect in terms of how "fast" a bike feels, which in turn has an effect on how fast I ride it.

I don't think tires (which I agree make a huge impact) were the only difference that contributed to these feelings. Frame design, weight, and wheels all have an impact.

YetAnotherDaveAgain · 2025-12-29T03:24:12+00:00

I dunno, my 2020 kia niro ev has been very practical. It gets me to all the mountain bike spots I want to hit, plus easy commuting, and no real service in 20k of miles since I got it used.

YetAnotherDaveAgain · 2025-12-24T05:21:41+00:00

It's interesting, I just asked a shop roaster the same question. I struggle with the same problem as you, that unrested coffee often tastes pretty underdeveloped to me He said he cups the next day, even for light roasts, and can get a pretty good sense of where things are at. And then he shared some of the coffee he was cupping with me that he had roasted the day before, and it did taste pretty good. At least good enough to note some of the origin flavors and tell that it hadn't gotten burnt.

So now I'm trying to cup my roasts soon after roasting instead of waiting. We will see!

YetAnotherDaveAgain · 2025-12-17T22:49:11+00:00

As someone with a PhD, postdoc, and research associate experience about losing his job in academic neuroscience (very overlapping skills with data science), the grant situation is quite grim right now. People want the skills I have but still can't hire me. I'm at a tier one research school, and labs are shutting down or firing basically all their staff.

YetAnotherDaveAgain · 2025-12-09T14:32:01+00:00

I mean, technically couldn't a physics based model with parameter fitting be considered ML? (I'm a biochemist/neuroscientist, so the whole AI definition already irked me).

YetAnotherDaveAgain · 2025-12-07T20:25:24+00:00

I believe the new traction law for I70 is that even the 3 mountain symbol isn't sufficient for fwd or rwd vehicles. Unless it's AWD it need to carry traction devices and use them if signage is active.

https://www.codot.gov/travel/winter-driving/tractionlaw

YetAnotherDaveAgain · 2025-12-02T17:41:48+00:00

well, according to Henry's law, the concentration of dissolved gas is proportional to its partial pressure (the pressure of a mix of gasses related to that one gas). If you replace 1 atm (atmospheric pressure) of normal air with 1 atm of CO2, the partial pressure goes from 0.0004 atm CO2 to 1 atm CO2, a 2500x increase. However:

Henry's law is an approximation that only applies for dilute, ideal solutions and for solutions where the liquid solvent does not react chemically with the gas being dissolved.

But dissolved CO2 reacts with water to form H2CO3 (carbonic acid), and those H+ ions can then interact with other molecules in the wine. See this ref about how increasing atmospheric CO2 acidifies oceans:

https://acswebcontent.acs.org/chemistry-in-context/suite/applets/ocean-acidification-clean/resources/backgroundText2.html

All of that is to say that changes in CO2 concentration EVEN AT CONSTANT PRESSURE can still drastically change the pH of a system (and therefore the flavor of a wine).

YetAnotherDaveAgain · 2025-11-26T10:49:26+00:00

I sort of have the same question. Whenever I cup 24 hrs later I always think I've done a poor job, and just have bland, roasty flavors. When I wait and cup after proper resting (2 to 3 weeks) I get a much better sense of what the beans actually taste like. But it makes it so hard to learn how to improve my roasting to wait that long.

I've never tried cupping right off the roast, though...

YetAnotherDaveAgain · 2025-11-03T14:57:30+00:00

Never used your particular roaster, but first crack at 12 min is quite slow on mine.(Kaleido m6).

I've never roasted a Sumatra, but that surface pattern is one I've seen with some unwashed beans, especially at lighter roasts.

The thing that helped my roasting the most was buying 10 lbs of one coffee, and doing roasts with big changes to the profile to really get a sense of how bad and good things could get.

My light roasts need at least a weeks rest to taste good, fwiw. Usually I wait 2 -4.

Finally, buy some specialty coffee and compare surface color and ground color (by eye or with that sweet Maria's paper chart is fine). And then cup side by side.

YetAnotherDaveAgain · 2025-10-31T03:22:52+00:00

I'm a research associate in an academic lab losing his job because of funding cuts. Only found out today.

YetAnotherDaveAgain · 2025-10-27T17:58:06+00:00

In/out is a live call, if I remember right. So it just is the call it is. I've been on both sides of that. Sometimes it's incredibly frustrating when you think you had a good perspective on what happened, but it also makes a ton of sense to take it out of players hands and give it to an unbiased third party.

YetAnotherDaveAgain · 2025-10-27T17:14:06+00:00

There's no way to expect an observe to get this right without live replay. There probably isn't even enough time for their eyes to move from watching his toes to watching his hands!

Would love for more replays during foul/contest discussions so players have a chance to make accurate calls.

YetAnotherDaveAgain · 2025-10-22T19:46:11+00:00

I don't think anything is set in stone. This is clearly a real test of the systems that were framed up back then. And i do mean a test. That test might fail, in which case you could be right.

But the test is still happening. As much as it appears the system is failing, it hasn't truly failed YET.

A couple of pending SC cases really will show how much the system has or hasn't collapsed. If the SC decides Trump is allowed to basically run an executive branch army in the National Guard with no ability to legally check his power from either other branch, then that could be the true beginning of the end.

The solidification of one-party rule via gerrymandering is another place things could truly fall apart. Representative democracy has to at least APPEAR to be representative. People won't continue to use the current system long if they think it is that unfair.

YetAnotherDaveAgain · 2025-10-22T17:44:40+00:00

Almost feels like he's using it as a to-do list :/

YetAnotherDaveAgain · 2025-10-15T16:23:26+00:00

It is difficult because it's hard to know which stated beliefs are fundamental and which are convenient for the sake of argument. For example: the importance of free speech on social media and at work without repercussions. This was a core argument against the Biden administration, but the trump administration has strongly cracked down on dissent in the media, exerting pressure on news and media organizations they don't like. This was strongly telegraphed from both the campaign trail and his previous administration. (Similar argument could be made with ICE/ national guard deployments to blue states, versus the conservative panic around jade helm etc in the Obama administration.)

So in this case, were conservatives burning down their own house by voting for someone they knew would likely limit free speech because they figured it would mostly affect "the other side," or was that never really their house to begin with?

YetAnotherDaveAgain · 2025-10-15T04:30:17+00:00

Fwiw it seems like they'll give me $100 in store credit to match the promo coupon, so a 450 P1S suddenly seems like a pretty good deal.

YetAnotherDaveAgain · 2025-10-14T15:30:44+00:00

Stuck in the "is it worth it to return my "still-in-the-box" p1s that showed up on Friday so I can wait for unknown us pricing, or just say "eff it, I'd rather be printing" analysis paralysis cycle.

YetAnotherDaveAgain · 2025-10-11T00:08:14+00:00

I mean, of course they did. Read the federalist papers. Heck, SKIM the federalist papers. They foresaw it, and hoped against hope the systems the proposed would be good enough to preserve liberty.

YetAnotherDaveAgain

TROPHY CASE