Cast iron is extremely forgiving of improper treatment. And even if it eventually rusts, you can fix it. I’ve been using cast iron as my primary skillets since pandemic. I know I don’t treat them like I should, but they’re not yet rusted, still have an easy to clean surface that food doesn’t stick to. I’ll probably have to reseason eventually but if that’s not until I’d normally have to replace non-stick, I’m way ahead without putting in any extra work

Edit: sure, standard three cast iron skillets, and cast iron Dutch oven. I also have a set of stainless pans, and some induction ready non-stick for company

Speak for yourself: I don’t intend to keep mine nearly as long. “Buy it for life” is not usually multiple centuries

May be a little expensive but they sell batteries to run a home, usually in connection with solar but doesn’t have to be. You should be able to handle a power outage for a day or two (and after that is when it’s great have solar to recharge them).

For a house in town it’s likely expensive but you also are less likely to have long outages. For a rural house it may be cheaper than the alternative of propane

I don’t know what you consider good quality stainless but my 5 layer stainless pans are almost as heavy as my cast iron

Really not. See the lye comments.

I generally wash with dish soap and a chainmail scrubber, then dry with a paper towel. If I remember I might spread a tiny amount of oil.

Yeah I could do better but the point is I’ve done almost nothing to care for them in years.

• You can use metal flippers.
• you can scour
• you can sandblast
• you can stack them inside each other without eating teflon flakes

And most importantly they can last a lifetime. I got frustrated replacing non-stick pans every decade or so, now I expect not ever to do that again

That was one of my objections to replacing kitchen appliances for all too long. I’m not even going to consider all the same brand. But they’ve added enough “styling elements” that it’s tougher to fill a kitchen with similar appliances from different manufacturers

The problem is it’s not really people’s choice. Companies have gotten very good at disguising quality tradoffs and marketing has got very good at muddying the waters.

Since this is about tools, I’ll bring up Craftsman as an example. For many years, it was a quality brand accessible to homeowners. But as they changed to be cheaper they still marketed themselves as a quality brand and they seemed like the same price. It was only after the brand value was destroyed, that it became clear how “cheap” the tools had become and people were able to make a legitimate decision to move on

Similar but I don’t leave comments.

• if someone is sufficiently trolling or argumentative, or blatantly misinforming I’ll downvote.
• if a comment adds value to the discussion, I’ll upvote it, even if I disagree with it
• if it’s a response to my post, be more generous

The east coast. When I lived in New York, I thought we could do better on our own. Now that I’m near Boston, I know New England could. But you know what? We really have a lot in common all the way down to DC, and the DC suburbs of Virginia.

Acela is not just a transportation system connecting us all, but a result of our shared values, wanting a better connection. We’re a huge percentage of the population and the economy. We’re mostly “donor” states instead of “takers” so our economy would be solid. We’re mostly “blue” except New Hampshire and Pennsyltucky, seeing the value of good education, caring about our citizens quality of life. And yes we’re mostly the parts of the country built out long ago so have in common many traditional town centers and relatively fewer car centered hellscapes. Many parts of the east coast have been derided as “European”: let’s embrace that

He was murdered and the criminal who made that decision admitted to the crime publicly (after cowardly trying to blame those he commanded)

The problem is it’s very expensive. Solar installers charge tens of thousands of dollars and has a long history of scams. They take the place of the old trope about scammy used car salesmen. They’ve created leases and PPAs in an attempt to make the initial cost easier but only succeeded in being scammy

It doesn’t help that we have tariffs and other barriers to low cost solar panel imports, yet insufficient support for domestic manufacturing to be competitive.

The math is hard. Everyone wants to know the payback threshold from the huge install cost up front but it’s not straightforward.

When I looked into solar I found

• lots of scammers, poor service
• I calculated a payback of 12 years from install cost given free energy, which is longer than I’m likely to own this house. But they claim 7?
• I only have sufficient unshaded roof for half my usage
• is it poor service or scamminess that it’s so difficult to get them to explain that?

A big part of it is being realistic about how often that would come up.

Especially for those with their own house, charging overnight at home (like you do with your phone) is more convenient. It is so nice never having to go to a local gas station!

Forget looking for discounts like Costco, charging from home is half (for me) the cost of gasoline. Everyone likes saving money

The only time this doesn’t work is road trips, where I need to stop for 20 minutes every 4-5 hours of driving. If I’m eating a meal, it’s going to take longer than that anyway.

So

• 90+% of the time an EV is more convenient and much cheaper
• on road trips where I would have stopped to eat, it’s equally convenient
• on road trips where I’m stopping more than I would otherwise and for slightly longer ……. That’s actually very rare

Edit: looking at my charging stats, it’s only been twice in the last year. One of those was a 1,200 mile road trip that did wonders to overcome my range anxiety

most Americans don’t want an EV with batteries at their current state.

That’s a risky assumption given how driven by propaganda this is. The reality is current state of batteries is perfectly fine for most Americans. What if they realize that? It does partly depend on charger availability, which is being rapidly built out despite the efforts of the current administration to block that. What happens as Americans realize how many new chargers are near them?

Speaking of my town just outside Boston ……

The food is just like the British: we have great Indian food

I’ve been through river cleanups everywhere I ve lived. There’s always something toxic that corps got away with dumping for so many years and then just left it. Government on the hook for so many billions of dollars cleaning up the mess. Where’s that sense of personal/corporate responsibility we hear so much about?

“War” usually implies a cause and an opponent. This is just chaotic, and against everyone

Plus methane is a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2, even with the shorter lifetime. We seem entirely unable to reduce methane leaks or even measure them against natural gas usage.

But from a consumer perspective.

• where I live, electricity is much more expensive than natural gas, maybe double the cost per unit of energy
• and I pay even more for 75% renewables
• I just got a heat pump installed for my addition. So far temps have gotten just a bit under freezing and it has no problems keeping up

But that adds up to a reality where the cost threshold is mid-40°F’s. While it may be an argument in favor of solar, I don’t have enough unshaded roof to generate more than half my usage

Mine actually does have a replaceable battery but not a standard one.

The thing is even where things are maintainable, you get to the point where maintenance exceeds replacement cost, where multiple things need attention at once. There’s always the trigger point, but the accumulation affects the weight

Rational … hahahahahahahahahhehehe hoo hohoho hah haha hah hah hahahahahah aha haha. Sorry, where were we again?