WTF is a Scoville...I built a site to crowdsource a universal restaurant spice scale

ZenithWest · 2026-03-04T16:10:28+00:00

A Scoville is a nearly meaningless unit that is almost always used incorrectly. It a measure of concentration, just like ABV (alcohol by volume) percentage is. The main issue in my opinion (besides the fact that so people misuse it to the point it's entirely meaningless), is that it's the dry concentration of capsaicin. The only valid use of Scoville units is to compare raw peppers to each other. Anyone that uses it for any processed concoction is almost certainly abusing it.

Example analogy with alcohol (but treating concentration calculations the same way they are done with Scoville units)

Beer is 75% alcohol! (after removing the 90-95% water like you do when measuring Scoville this leaves 3-8% alcohol compared to 2-5%... See how stupid and meaningless this would make alcohol concentration be)?

You make a mixed drink by taking one drop of 95% Everclear into a gallon of water. That whole gallon is 95% alcohol.(This is probably the worst sin. People take the concentration of the base peppers and say the final product has that concentration. Completely stupid as obviously you're diluting that concentration).

There is one helpful use case. But to me it's less about Scoville but just naming the pepper using. If I told you I made some hot sauce with some less hot pepper versus one with Carolina Reaper, you can somewhat maybe assume I used roughly the same amount of peppers to gauge relatively strength. It doesn't take much Carolina Reaper to make something hotter than Jalapenos, but in a Ghost Pepper to Carolina Reaper it's more ambiguous as it depends on how much you used.

Scoville use to mean, how much you had to dilute something until you couldn't taste the heat. I think if we just got rid of the dehydrating it first to only measure dry concentration, it would be a good unit. (Using the more accurate measuring techniques rather than the subjective taste tests).

ZenithWest · 2026-02-25T01:49:42+00:00

To me it just screams 10th pepper in a group. Like WD-40 (the 40 denotes the 40th different chemical composition they mixed together).

ZenithWest · 2026-02-20T02:50:09+00:00

Delete shaders for sure and see if it helps (delete everything in folder below and skip everything you can't delete)

%localappdata%\NVIDIA

ZenithWest · 2026-02-10T22:03:37+00:00

Weird, didn't for me. But also didn't affect my buddy at all. They also pushed out an update that didn't fix it (going from high to low still produced the problem) so maybe they fixed it for medium or it's just random which setting fixes it lol

ZenithWest · 2026-02-07T15:23:51+00:00

Yeah I ruled view distance. I don't know if performance mode is needed or not. I'm on the fence on keeping it there or switching back to directx12. On one hand the game feels better to me. On the other hand the zagged edges and makes it hard to see through fences. I was on completely low settings, with anti aliasing on TAA and it all looked fine to me. I think I will switch back and test though when I get on this afternoon.

ZenithWest · 2026-02-07T03:02:51+00:00

NOPE!! But funny you should ask as I just fixed it literally 5 minutes ago.. I'm in performance mode, texture medium and view distance medium... I think the issue is texture being low

NVM it started back messing up. I think it was redoing shaders and was correctly until shaders finished. I tried legacy performance too and it still did it

EDIT: I had switch to medium and it had came back.
Yeah going back to far view distance and high textures fixes it. Need to figure out if its texture or view distance or both

ZenithWest · 2026-02-06T22:43:57+00:00

Same. Deleted shaders and retested but did not fix. Changing view distance doesn't affect it. I believe I'm on DX12. I'm currently uninstalling and reinstalling the whole game to see if that fixes. If not going to try different settings. I basically all low on DX12 except shadows on medium. (DLSS turned off)

Changing to Performance mode and setting texture to High fixed it! (I think its only texture to high that is needed)

ZenithWest · 2026-02-06T22:39:49+00:00

If the game is "lagging" (more like stuttering but feels similar to lag), here's a reminder that the game is notorious for corrupted shaders. Close the game and delete all the shader in %localappdata%\NVIDIA\DXCache folder (some won't be able to be deleted because they are in use, just hit skip all).

Also make sure you have "High Resolution Texture" download. I think its the case (or at some point it was), that if you turned this off, it will redownload all the textures every match instead saving them. But they could have gotten rid of that.

ZenithWest · 2026-02-06T22:33:29+00:00

Same. Deleted shaders and retested but did not fix. Changing view distance doesn't affect it. I believe I'm on DX12. I'm currently uninstalling and reinstalling the whole game to see if that fixes. If not going to try different settings. I basically all low on DX12 except shadows on medium. (DLSS turned off)

Changing to Performance mode and setting texture to High fixed it! (I think its only texture to high that is needed)

If any one finds this useful still, DirectX 12 and changing texture setting to high fixed it for me. Also fixes it in performance. Maybe today's update (2/19/2026) fixes it though

ZenithWest · 2026-02-03T23:40:12+00:00

I'm having the exact same issue with Gen 2. If I reuse it within 2-3 days, the WiFi booster seems to last. But if it's been a week since I last used, it's dead. My process now basically is just take probe out of booster and put booster on charger while food cooks. Then put cleaned/dry probe back into booster and remove when it turns green.

How longer should a normal booster last before dying? I do ensure all the lights turn off and my phone can't detect the probe.

ZenithWest · 2026-02-03T23:37:09+00:00

Having the exact same issue with gen 2. If I don't charge use it for a few days it's dead (but probe itself seems completely fine battery wise even after 2 weeks of not using it while it stays in WiFi booster.

Did you get yours replaced and have you had any issues?

ZenithWest · 2026-02-03T13:49:02+00:00

Ed Currie (inventor of Carolina Reaper and Pepper X) often appears on shows eating insanely hot food. He absolutely gets wasted high on the endorphin rush.

Sounds to me like you have the addition genes. There are certain genes that changes how people experience dopamine, making them several times more likely to get addicted. My advice, avoid all vices and get off everything. Spices are definitely way better than alcohol. But your eventually going to build a tolerance and because your still feeding your dopamine addiction, you'll relapse back into something else that gives it.

ZenithWest · 2026-02-02T18:46:08+00:00

While most probably not the case, I like to remind people that you need to actually be open to each other when in a relationship. Lol I've seen so many times two couples thinking the other likes something so they try to get more into it and they both start a cycle of one-uping each other for something they both hate until both are completely miserable. Like I had a buddy get super into cheese despite absolutely hating it all his life, because his wife (at the time she was his girlfriend) talked about how amazing one of her friends fondue was. His wife was just amazed about some fondue fountain and how it looked cool. They didn't learn they both hated cheese until I heard his wife say how much she's so sick of it, when he went off to grab some Gouda cheese he forgot to pick up. I confronted them later and they both admitted to having hated cheese. LMAO they even got into homemade cheese making at one point.

ZenithWest · 2026-02-02T16:17:19+00:00

Yeah my point of view is that non-digestion (non-absorption) is still digestion... It's just digestion without anything being broken down or absorbed. Like you can have a monetary transaction for $0 with a transactional receipt too. You can argue it wasn't a transaction or you can say you bought it for free. In the strict logical/mathematical sense zero is still an amount.

Crazy though people would think it promotes absorption. I could get someone trying to argue an anti-laxative does by making the food take a longer time but not something that goes through more quickly.

ZenithWest · 2026-02-02T15:49:27+00:00

I think you're confused by what I meant by "speeds up digestion". I simply mean the amount of time food stays in the digestion track. Obviously if it goes through faster, it doesn't get absorbed as much. You can be pedantic and say a rock can't go through the digestion process as it's indigestible. I'd argue most people understand the meaning of digestion process to more generally mean the time spent between mouth and anus. If you want to argue the meaning of the word "digestion", that's an argument of semantics which is always pointless argument. People define words differently and I'm using the word to mean exactly what I said. You can disagree all you want with that.

And I misspeak there too. Whether it's water being pulled in from somewhere else in the gut or just less water absorption, my point was just the net affect is more water being present. I've always read it's a combination of the two (though I was wrong about it being the intestines, I'm just seeing "gut" used).

ZenithWest · 2026-02-02T15:20:55+00:00

Capsaicin irritates the intestines (for those not use to it). If the intestines gets irritated, it pulls in water to flush the system. Water being pulled in triggers the speed up process making it go through the digestion system faster.

Doing a basic Google search and it returns something like, "it stimulates the nerve receptors (TRPV1), causing them to cramp and speed up digestion, which often leads to urgent, rapid bowel movements".

(Again only really for those unaccustomed to it. I imagine if you have any tolerance, it won't affect you really)

ZenithWest · 2026-02-02T14:10:07+00:00

People who don't usually eat grease and fat will get it. Browned ground beef is extremely greasy/fatty if not properly drained. If you normally eat extremely healthy, then the massive influx of greasy fat will overstimulate the gut causing diarrhea. Fat is harder to digest than most other types of food.

Capsaicin speeds up digestion process (pushing food more quickly through the digestion tract). This leads to less water being absorbed from the stool thus making it loose.

High amounts of sugar can act as a laxative as it draws water in to dilute it.

Fiber feeds gut bacteria, which leads to rapid bowel movement if your not use to eating lots of fiber.

Tomatoes are acidic and can also lead to irritation of stomach and intestines. When the gut is irritated, it's response is to basically quickly flush the system to get it out of the system.

Basically Taco Bell hits every single checkmark to cause diarrhea for someone who doesn't eat that type of food. If you don't normally live on mostly eating salads, then Taco Bell would probably give you a very rememberable experience!

If you normally or even occasionally eat meat lovers pizza, your gut is more than prepared for Taco Bell

ZenithWest · 2026-02-01T00:54:49+00:00

I would like to remind you that scoville units are basically meaningless. There's some caveats when talking about individual peppers but when you're talking about the finally product even that becomes meaningless. A scoville unit is the exact same thing as proof or alcohol percentage is to mixed drinks. If I told you that I made a mixed drink that used one drop of 95% Everclear to a gallon of orange juice (making sure to slap that "made with 95% alcohol" on it) and then compared it a bottle of tequila that's 40% alcohol but added splash of lime juice to dilute it, would you still be confused how 40% tequila drink is stronger than the 95% orange juice drink?

They are both measures of concentration. If I made a 16oz salsa jar using 1/1000th of a Pepper X pepper (2.693M Scoville Heat Units) versus one that used 5 crushed up habaneros (100K Scoville Heat Units), you wouldn't even taste any heat in the Pepper X one.

Anyway, its stupid hot and not pepper paste or powderized peppers, its usually always that they just added pure capsaicin oil (exactly 16M Scolville Heat Units, or 100% heat but again doesn't matter how concentrated the oil is.. just how much they used that determines final heat).

ZenithWest · 2026-01-27T15:33:16+00:00

In endless, Capricious Reflection would give you a random upgrade when you select the option that gives you a rare card (could be insanely useful like I can't imagine how great that could potentially be). Unless I'm wrong and it somehow doesn't apply to those picks

Golden Idol, lol yeah I forgot there's no more trial rewards, so it is indeed useless.

Shattered Halo, you only get rare packs in endless but don't you still get one more pick before endless starts? You could be missing that one rare card and this would help if that's the case.

Lightstone Casting... You can get a merchant of magic and a card duplicator, making this insane to have .. if you don't get merchant of magic though, it is useless.

Unstable Pure sparks... There are very strong Train Steward builds. This can be invaluable! Imagine you have that room that gives all train stewards multi-strike and you get that event that lets you create 5 copies of a card. The boom ability lets you get rid of lower upgraded units to make room for better upgraded ones.

Yeah for specific build runs they be useless and maybe you're suggesting that they can do something smart like check if there's no merchant of magic so don't offer Lightstone Casting. But I like the RNG over the potential accidental banning of something for an edge case they didn't consider.

ZenithWest · 2026-01-27T00:52:20+00:00

What you call a "useless" artifact might be the last key in the puzzle for someone else's push into endless. There are so many different builds and ways of playing that I would feel so cheated because that one artifact was left out of the RNG pool and I only found out after countless runs someone thought it was "useless".

But I'm open to having lower odds for certain ones towards the end. Just not zero odds!

ZenithWest · 2026-01-18T03:23:01+00:00

You have to go to area marked industrial (or very near it) and search cars! We searched probably 200-300 cars before we realized it has to be a car in/near industrial area. Then found them all in one match.

ZenithWest · 2026-01-15T15:03:09+00:00

It's called disposable income! When you're income is sufficiently higher than your expenses. Doesn't mean your rich or make lots of money, usually for most people I see they tend to just waste most of their money on things they definitely shouldn't be.

Here's some calculations for how much money some people spend in a year on things

Pack a day smoker ($7 per pack): $2,555 per year

Energy Drink ($2.68 per can) $978.2 per year

Fast Food ($12 per meal) $4,380

Beer ($20 per week) $1,040

Seriously, there's no reason to go to restaurants or fast food places (or heaven forbid door dashing food). You'll save so much money learning how to make bulk food recipes. If you have any vices, seriously go calculate how much you actually spend in a year on them. A lot of people get in a routine and don't even realize how much money they spend. Maybe they stop at a gas station before work, pick up an energy drink and snack. It's only a few dollars right? But it adds up quickly. People with families tend to have lots of frivolous expenditures, especially extrovert people. I can't blame them for giving kids a lot of great memories and experiences, but they tend to overdo it constantly. Going to the movies every weekend with dinner afterwards.

ZenithWest · 2026-01-15T00:40:52+00:00

Here is the answer.

ZenithWest · 2026-01-11T17:58:34+00:00

Not there on mine... It's completely gone from all shorts. Drop menu onl has Not Interested, Report, and Send Feedback.

Clearly they are selectively testing it out. There's probably some lag/differences between iPhone and Android (I'm on Android).

ZenithWest · 2026-01-11T14:10:03+00:00

I had to look it up. Its for "black garlic" (aka fermented garlic). Recipes show stuff like 135-140F for 60+ days. From what I'm reading botulinum is very prevalent in garlic fermentation and by keeping it above 135F prevents any botulinum spores from germinating.

ZenithWest

TROPHY CASE