Spacetrawler, audio version For the blind or visually impaired, January 22, 2020.
Cedra and I were recently talking about this, how to be a good cook, you really just need to be able to follow directions. To be a great or “fine” cook, you need to have that little something more. Anyhow, point being, it’s funny how conversations like that plant themselves in my subconscious and then find their way to Spacetrawler.
This is begging for a reference to the “OK” commercial.
“Guess who just got refurbished? Well, not technically…”
Speaking of cooking, Chris, is Cookrookery dead? I can’t access it anymore. I was trying to look up a recipe we discussed a ways back.
Looks like it might be but it can all be found here under Archive.com.
https://web.archive.org/web/20190603202341/http://cookrookery.com/
Thanks @Felixscout!
Glad to help.
Yay, Felixscout! Huzzah! I was frustrated because on another forum I was trying to reference the “cold pork pie” detective essay. Now I can find it, and the penuche fudge article, and “how to make french onion soup”!
Huzzah!
Thank you, @Felixscout. And no, it’s not dead, just dormant. Writing my web guy to see if he can get it back on line is on my to-do list, it’s just that a million other things have been higher on the list for too long.
De nada.
“How about, it’s just like riding a bike? When you’ve never ridden a bike before?”
The new recipe analogy at least makes it seem like he’s followed recipes before, i.e. performed some sort of surgery before and the new part is the human anatomy/biology, where the battle analogy implies he’s not performed any sort of medical procedure before but he’s just read up on scalpels. I hope it’s the former rather than the latter, or that his instructions are really precise and clear. On the other hand, Joyce came out of modifications just fine, so maybe humans really are simple creatures to work on compared to other beings in the galaxy and just reading the manual will be enough.
Just a note: the right side of the comic (not so with the comments) is cut off a few letters…
Thanks @Meran! Fixed!
“Wuh? Huh, where… where am I? What’s happended?”
“Well, turns out it was more complicated than I computed, but on the up-side, you’ll get an whole new body to experience, vat-grown from scratch, all organs rosy fresh!”
“Aaaauugh! When I get out of here, I’m going to microwave your CPU!”
“Someone needs more Neurobliss ™ – asministering”
I feel like this is NOT the sort of thing you want to hear from your surgeon, especially since you have to live with the results of their work.
Why are the options they want in a mustard squeeze bottle?
@alinfamous, it’s an approxiscan. 🙂
Why, that sounds like a wonderful idea. Approxiscans with condiment dispensers, so that you can always provide the appropriate fixing for all your friends’ dishes.
I imagine there would also be the variety which carefully scans someone, then dispenses something almost, but not entirely, unlike tea.
What could possibly go wrong…
I bet that medical room has a combination of sanitized medical room and just out the factory new car smell.
Cooking isn’t just measurements and time. Truly gifted cooks actually pay attention to proportions more — so much of this to so much of that, put it on the fire until it looks right…. If cooking is applied chemistry, the ability to cook from proportions is the ability to womp up some TNT from aspirin and some vinegar. Requires an intuitive knowledge of how the ingredients get together and what they produce in what amount of time. I don’t have that ability.
But if there are directions…. I would still trust the medi-bot, if for no other reason than its timing is digital. Unwatched pots will not boil; the creme brulee will not foam over. That pretty much leaves the result to still be assessed by human taste and other senses, and that’s where it gets funky. YOUR alligator filets might not be MY alligator filets, never mind the proper proportion of Tony Crachere’s seasoning. Good luck, Chiphu, and bon appétit!
A bomb strong enough to blow out the windows in a home and drop the roof down can literally be made from common household chemicals and a large box of Bisquick. Let me make a trip to any Walmart and a decent hardware store and I can make TATP in a kitchen sink. Have to be careful with the TATP as that stuff is almost as touchy as nitroglycerin, but not as bad as fulminate of silver. Once you have made some fulminate of silver, you can’t do anything with it as it is so touchy.
The freaky thing is, whomever was the genius who thought up the way to cook meth in a 2 liter bottle instead of a chemical lab is quite likely to have the skills to make several different high explosives from common materials.
Have you seen the online instructions for synthesising Psuedo-Ephedrine (nasal decongestant) from readily available Meth? You can still buy Sudafed and similar medicines in the UK but I understand in the US it’s completely banned because it can be used to make Meth. So helpful of someone to post instructions for the reverse synthesis.
Sudafed isn’t banned, but you have to ask at the counter for it, instead of just picking up a box and adding it to your cart. And if you’re buying more than one package they look at you funny, and if you’re in buying Sudafed every day the clerk would call the cops.
TATP is more sensitive than TNT, being subject to heat, impact, AND friction. I wouldn’t advise amateurs (read: non-bomb disposal-training types) to mess with it. You WILL rearrange the kitchen, at the very least. This is the chemical used in November in the terrorist attacks in Paris. Do NOT F with it.
Actually, I’ve seen multiple meth ‘recipes’ online and have been surprised by the variety and variations among them. I imagine this affects potency, too. But since all of them require the use of brake cleaner to purify the drug, which is not merely flammable, but poisonous AND explosive, I don’t recommend messing with them either. If you feel the urge, just bake a batch of brownies, okay, and leave the house and its fixtures where they are. You’ll feel better about it later.
And if you’re feeling REALLY adventurous, throw in a bag of chocolate chips into the brownie better before baking.
All this talk of homemade explosives reminds me of Schlock Mercenary and the “Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries”:
1. Pillage, then burn.
2. A Sergeant in motion outranks a Lieutenant who doesn’t know what’s going on.
3. An ordnance technician at a dead run outranks everybody
TATP is what Richard Reed, the failed airliner shoe bomber, was stomping around on in his shoes.