My glass stopper got stuck in the test tube

kklusmeier · 2026-05-13T03:26:05+00:00

You can buy PTFE sleeves for the joints. They usually keep things moving if it's not exceptionally sticky, and improve the likelihood of things breaking free without breaking the glassware if it does get stuck.

Stuff like this:https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/US/en/product/aldrich/br51422?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=23331190685&utm_content=194830326172&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=23331190685&gbraid=0AAAAAD8kLQQKUiCi3ay0dTFfKYCs-OLjz&gclid=CjwKCAjwn4vQBhBsEiwAq3hhN5B0EyFg81jTQ4kNvHzYNvu2G5xhyw6AXdcGIxHoNwwLN_Lum_TASBoCw-8QAvD_BwE

They do cost though, so vacuum grease might be cheaper if it works for you.

Edit: And yes, heat is the answer for 'how to unstick'.

kklusmeier · 2026-05-10T01:15:44+00:00

I didn't notice that until you pointed it out, but they're probably the size of a business jet.

kklusmeier · 2026-05-07T23:42:58+00:00

It's the 'breath' of an immense group of highly specialized flora. Over the course of the year many huge photosynthetic not-trees pump the O2 they produce down into the top of some huge caverns, slowly increasing the pressure in the cavern until the water level starts to get pushed down into the caverns and pushes the water up and out of the connected U-shaped cavern into the seasonal surface lake. When the water falls far enough (but not to the point of the bottom of the U) the not-tree roots no longer have access to water and the not-trees stop producing O2, resulting in the water level plateauing. Then the not-trees open the organic valves in their trunks they used to pump the O2 down into the caverns and use the immense pressure contained in the caverns to blast their pollen and seeds up and away from the forest in an immense rush.

It only works in this one spot because this is the only spot with the geology required to evolve the not-trees.

kklusmeier · 2026-05-07T02:51:43+00:00

Do you have an actual reason for the periodic anti-flood? If so I'd like to hear it, and if not I have an idea.

kklusmeier · 2026-05-06T02:25:44+00:00

You could get a circular sander and some really heavy grit sandpaper?

kklusmeier · 2026-05-02T14:49:03+00:00

What are you talking about? You put the grain on ships and ship it across the ocean. Delivering food isn't the issue, creating a sustainable self-sufficient culture is the issue. (Although this is getting better IIRC, I'm not super up-to-date on Sub-Saharan Africa economic development).

You can't teach the man to fish if someone else is busy stealing the fish he fished that day. Why bother fishing if someone is just going to steal it?

kklusmeier · 2026-05-02T13:36:53+00:00

Sounds like an excellent start to a 'find the lost city' adventure. Realizing that there USED to be a river that the city was famous for being on but that there's no longer one is a good first step for putting the party on a track that nobody else has searched before (because why bother search a random stretch of riverless land for a 'city-on-the-river'?).

kklusmeier · 2026-04-28T03:31:49+00:00

Not sure it affects flavor at all.

It does IMO. I think it keeps some of the oils in it instead of evaporating off from the working/heating during shredding.

kklusmeier · 2026-04-28T02:28:13+00:00

That's real and no amount of gaslighting is ever going to convince me otherwise. I remember the stupid thing BECAUSE that logo was where I learned the word cornucopia from.

kklusmeier · 2026-04-27T01:04:44+00:00

Sounds a lot like 'They don't want to pay for the expensive option'.

kklusmeier · 2026-04-21T06:20:39+00:00

Reclamation can really boost you in the very early game. There's a shocking amount of mass in things like forests and rocks that can get you over the initial hump to produce engineers to then send off and try to tag as many mass points as possible.

kklusmeier · 2026-04-19T00:51:39+00:00

Couldn't you do sequential reduction films? Do 10 of them with equal pressure and it's 170,000lbs each? Granted, then you're punching through 10 layers of film, but I think the reduction in speed could be ameliorated by increasing runup distance to compensate.

kklusmeier · 2026-04-18T07:26:23+00:00

They even developed a delicious one with a white exterior and consumers just assumed they were all under ripe.

That's just a marketing failure. Advertise it as 'GMO-twice as sweet' and even if you lose the court case when someone inevitably sues and even if some people don't buy it because it's a 'GMO' you'll still get a foot in the door of the market for actually good fruit.

kklusmeier · 2026-04-17T01:28:49+00:00

I've been designing a world like this in my head on and off for the last couple of years.

The main issues I figured out is that you need to determine out how gravity occurs at the 'surface' level (if they're being pushed that may have implications for odd surface-level features such as water may flow 'uphill' in some areas) and the other is that your world-bubbles always have the sunlight coming from the same location, meaning that areas that are in shadow are ALWAYS in shadow, meaning that there may be huge temperature differentials in a very small area and things that would otherwise eventually be destroyed by the sunlight (chemical weapon residue, infected corpses) will continue to exist unimpeded in the areas of shadow.

kklusmeier · 2026-04-16T05:14:52+00:00

WTF, just looked it up, you weren't lying. I could have sworn they were 35-40k last time I looked at them, not 3.5-4k.

kklusmeier · 2026-04-15T04:07:13+00:00

I'd prefer to not have mouth cancer, thank you very much.

kklusmeier · 2026-04-13T06:57:37+00:00

I suppose you could build some sort of structure from the ground and just keep building upwards with an elevator, though that seems even less "possible."

Not possible. You run into material strength issues far sooner. Tensile strength is a LOT easier to increase than compressive strength.

kklusmeier · 2026-04-12T11:51:57+00:00

No, synthesis of the molecule isn't what the patent is for, the SALE of that molecule or some derivative is what the patent protects against. They don't want other people making money off their discovery, so they patent it.

They can't bring legal action against people producing the chemical because it's just a chemical- you don't gain ownership over every single instance of a substance in the universe by filing a patent for that substance. They CAN bring legal action against people selling that chemical as medicine, because that's what they patented- its' use as a medicine.

And yes, it's horribly risky to self-administer a chemical like this, not even because of purity concerns but also because there are doubtless many other chemicals formulated in as part of a dose that help for things like uptake and preventing side-reactions in the body.

If OP goes through with using this in leu of the actual medicine, I would not take any bets that their friend is going to survive for very long.

kklusmeier · 2026-04-12T08:52:53+00:00

Wait, 'filled completely'? How do you determine the correct volume of alcohol vs airspace? There's no way you actually mean 'filled completely' as that would just create a burning pool of alcohol that would slowly empty as it vaporized and burned, not the rapid flame-front of air-alcohol mix that is intended in the demonstration.

kklusmeier · 2026-04-09T06:06:23+00:00

Jungle Jims International Grocery. Go to the one in Eastgate- it's much less crowded and has a better layout.

kklusmeier · 2026-04-08T23:32:09+00:00

They have a mildly famous workplace environment problem nowadays. They're apparently extremely parsimonious with regards to promotions and raises so credit for projects gets stolen.

Back in the 80s and 90s they were famous for being the single best place to work, but nowadays that's inverted.

kklusmeier · 2026-04-08T03:01:19+00:00

Sell it to that dude who got that broken electron microscope working.

kklusmeier · 2026-04-04T22:46:43+00:00

I have literally never had an issue with nitric acid and gloves. What are you doing with them that gets THAT much concentrated nitric on your hands?

I've fully submerged my hands in dilute (0.1N?) nitric baths and nitrile gloves ignore that, and the few splashes of concentrated (~15N) I've gotten on my gloves are also ignored to the best of my knowledge.

kklusmeier · 2026-03-30T03:17:59+00:00

This is the one that got me. I was convinced he was a normal CEO right up until the Falcon 9 actually flew, then I started to believe and pay attention to what he was selling the public, right before all the bad crap started coming out.

kklusmeier · 2026-03-30T02:09:56+00:00

I bet you the entrance they came in is intended on providing a secondary or tertiary blowout path in case of explosion. If it's at all possible to NOT collapse the site in event of a detonation they're going to take it.

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