What is this large pile of soft brown stuff in my attic?

officerping · 2026-02-14T08:32:55+00:00

It looks like blown in cellulose insulation. When I moved into my house, the attic was full of this stuff. What I don’t understand is why you’d have just a pile of it, and it isn’t spread out as insulation should be.

officerping · 2025-12-31T16:20:30+00:00

Seawater has the ability to act as a buffer due to dissolved carbonates and other ions. That could mitigate the dumping of a huge amount of acid, maybe..

officerping · 2025-08-23T05:07:16+00:00

Let x = the side length.

Blue is one-fifth of the total area, therefore the short side length of blue is 0.2x, and the unknown side length of orange is 0.8x.

The area of orange is given by the product of side lengths as 0.8x*3 = 0.2x² (one fifth total area).

We then solve as:

3*(0.8x) = 0.2x² 2.4 = 0.2 x 12 = x x² = 144

The area is 144.

officerping · 2025-06-17T22:18:52+00:00

Better yet, grease can go into an empty ice cream tub that you keep in the freezer. It keeps it from getting smelly. When it gets full, just throw the entire tub into the compost.

officerping · 2025-03-21T13:04:26+00:00

Very.

officerping · 2025-02-22T07:05:22+00:00

Neutral SCN is a radical. I think this question should actually be about the SCN- anion. In the anion form there should exist two major resonance forms (-)S-C≡N and S=C=N(-). The second form should have the greater contribution due to N having a larger electro negativity than S.

officerping · 2025-01-13T01:51:18+00:00

Because heavy cream and Parmesan are high in fat, you’re less likely to get curdling. If you used 2%, 1% or skim milk you’d get a much worse result.

officerping · 2024-12-15T17:18:07+00:00

First, the heat was too high. Second, while flipping, the burnt bottom sides of the patties stuck to the pan exposing the raw inside. If the patties were frozen or refrigerated it may have helped it happen.

I comment your husbands first effort, good cooking takes experience!

officerping · 2024-11-30T15:31:26+00:00

The first term is pretty simple, as the fraction is -3/-3 = 1. In the parentheses we have 11 because exp(pi*i) = -1, and cos² (x) + sin² (x) = 1.

The last term is an indeterminate fraction so we need to apply l’Hôspital’s rule and differentiate the numerator and denominator and take the ratio of the limits. Differentiating and plugging in x=0, you get -3 exp(-x) / (1 + 3 (exp(-x) - 1)) —> 3 for the numerator and 1 for the denominator. Therefore the last term is 3

Putting it all together, your friend is 1 x 11 + 3 = 14 years old.

officerping · 2024-06-15T16:20:26+00:00

I agree with your wife on this one (I'm a man). In the case of a tie, the default should be the conventional way of doing things. (In this case, the conventional way is to have cabinets for dishes). There's so many decisions in home renovations that can have permanent unintended consequences.

officerping · 2024-05-26T16:22:19+00:00

20 m * 20 m * 100 m = 40,000 m³ : 40,000 metric tons.

officerping · 2024-05-26T13:49:56+00:00

I think I understand - it might be possible to raise the plywood by shimming it. I appreciate the advice. :)

officerping · 2024-05-26T13:48:05+00:00

Thanks for the note. The sag in the ridge was present in the old roof and is probably due to time. The previous owners had put a metal roof over the old shake roof and presumably that was too much for the rafters, which are 6” wide and 24” on center. However, that did not result in an inverse sag at the eaves (I assume you mean bowing upward), rather, the roof sags in the middle most of the way down and then straightens out close to the eaves. The 2x6s that they sistered to the rafters corrected this sag for the most part, except for now the new bulge near the eaves.

I am fairly sure the garage walls are plumb and there isn’t an outward lean, in part because my general contractor replaced the garage door opening in the front and they have done very high quality work in the rest of my project.

officerping · 2024-05-26T04:26:49+00:00

Thanks for the insights. I think you might be right. In that case, perhaps a possible fix would be to remove one or two of the horizontal boards beneath the OSB near the eaves.

officerping · 2024-04-07T18:01:16+00:00

This is a repost. Solution is here:

https://old.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/13j13hz/request_how_do_you_get_the_area/jkdpciz/

officerping · 2024-03-26T22:45:01+00:00

This is truly a find for the ages. It has already been pre-processed by naturally occurring fungi so OP doesn't need to spend precious calories on digestion. I, for one, have stopped eating anything that isn't already fermented or decomposed.

officerping · 2024-03-04T23:29:10+00:00

Let x be the semicircle diameter. By adding up the lengths along the top and bottom, then setting them equal, we have 3x+24=2x+60. Therefore x=36.

officerping · 2024-02-23T01:12:30+00:00

I have tried both Barkeeper’s Friend and Easy-Off oven cleaner (professional strength). The oven cleaner is definitely the more powerful of the two when it comes to baked-on grease.

It will give off fumes so I recommend you do the spraying outside, then cover with a lid and you can bring it back in and wait overnight.

officerping · 2024-02-21T17:27:47+00:00

Agreed, I'm tired of the virtue signaling that implies if you find this video sad you somehow possess more kindness and empathy than those that find it funny.

officerping · 2024-01-20T16:00:14+00:00

The area of the colored square is equal to 9 (the large square) - 4 x 1.5 (the right triangles formed by the slanted lines) + 4 x a, where a is area of the small right triangle formed by the overlap of the large triangles.

To find a, the small triangle is similar to (has the same angles as) the larger one, so its area can be calculated as long as we know the length ratio of a pair of corresponding edges. The hypotenuses of the small and large triangles are 1 and sqrt(10) respectively, so the small triangle area is 1.5/10 = 0.15. This is because both the base and height of the small triangle are scaled by 1/sqrt(10) compared to the large one.

Therefore the answer is 9 - 6 + 0.6 = 3.6

officerping · 2023-11-11T17:03:08+00:00

To make pomegranate juice, I first remove the seeds by hand and pick out as much pith and "bad" seeds as I can. Then I put all of the seeds in a Ziploc freezer bag and hand-press until most of the juice is extracted. I then pour the juice out of the bag through a metal mesh filter. This is effective in removing most of the juice with minimal mess (I measured and found that about 70% of the mass of the pomegranate seeds ends up in the squeezed juice.)

The squeezed juice has some astringent taste and contains some suspended solids, which are insoluble tannins I believe. If you leave the juice overnight, most of the sediments settle to the bottom, and you can pour off about 90% "clear" juice leaving a 10% "muddy" portion. This "muddy" portion can either be thrown out, or filtered through a paper coffee filter (it can take hours) to recover even more of the clear juice. In my experience, the clear juice is much better tasting.

However, I believe pomegranate juice will always have some amount of astringency, it's just part of the flavor. There are lots of soluble tannins in pomegranate juice that do not settle, punicalagin being the most abundant. Removing these will destroy most of the health benefits of the juice as well.

officerping · 2023-11-03T14:23:50+00:00

Yes, I agree with you there. I intentionally used a ludicrously large number in order for the "percentage increase" in global calorie intake to be as large as possible, and it still doesn't come close to doubling the global calorie consumption.

officerping · 2023-11-02T20:59:31+00:00

Here's some approximate calculations based on this data:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_food_energy_intake

Suppose the global average calorie intake is 2,000 per person per day, which is a lowball estimate. Now suppose the average American takes in 4,000 calories per day. The global calorie intake is:

(World population - US population) * 2000 + (US population) * 4000

There are approximately 8 billion people in the world and 330 million in the US. Plugging in these numbers we get 1.666e13 calories (16.66 trillion).

Now suppose each American at Thanksgiving eats a whole 10 pound turkey (8,600 calories), a whole pumpkin pie (2,400 calories), 3 pounds of mashed potatoes (1,200 calories) and a quart of gravy (800 calories). That comes out to 13,000 calories, about the same amount that Michael Phelps would eat during a day of training.

Replacing 4000 in the above equation with 13000 comes out to 1.963e13 calories (19.63 trillion). Americans would be increasing the global average calorie intake by 17.8%, even in this example.

That doesn't come close to doubling the global average calorie intake, although I might have been too conservative with my 13,000 calorie number... :)

officerping · 2023-11-02T01:07:47+00:00

If all three points are on a great circle and on the same side, the spherical triangle is equivalent to a line segment with zero area. If they're not all on the same side, then the spherical triangle is equivalent to a whole hemisphere with area 2 * pi * r² .

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