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U. K. 240v vs. 120v in the U. S., twice the voltage == twice the amperage (EDIT: oops, wattage, for the same amps) == half the time to boiling. I will note that doubling the voltage will still not make it "instant". For that I think you need liquid oxygen[0].

[0] https://improbable.com/2018/10/26/a-look-back-at-george-gobl...


Twice the voltage == half the amperage for the same wattage. Are UK kettles higher wattage?

US circuits are about 15 amps; UK ones similar - but twice the volts.

So a US kettle is about 1500 watts, a UK one 3000.

You can get commercial water boilers in the US if you need.


or just use an insta-hot tap which is infinitely faster than an electric kettle. or a plain old kettle on an induction cooktop which will also be faster than a single purpose electric kettle.

Actually yes, around double the wattage. It's one of the things English people notice when they move to the US (true!).

3000 glorious watts

You can also simply keep water near boiling.

All the time? That's very inefficient, especially when running your boiler outside heating season and without a vacuum flask.

The actual solution is to boil small quantities of water. I can boil one cup in 90 seconds or so, even with the 120v handicap.


Or boil a larger quantity and fill it into a thermos. Perfectly fine for instant coffee throughout the day. (And without the coffee stains in the thermos.)

Sure, but efficiency wasn't the goal here. Anyway I use hot water enough (~6-10 times daily) that I don't mind spending extra for it

That’s begging the question, you have to first establish the need for protein at every meal. And I’m not even going to begin to address that digression.

There is basically no downsides to eating too much protein and there are a lot of potential problems if you eat too little.

Of course, you can carefully design other meals to be more protein-heavy, just because of your weird idea of a having an (almost)no-protein meal.

But it is much easier to make it a habit to include at least one high protein food in every meal.


So there’s a kind of filter in your kidneys that handles protein. Over a lifetime that gets worn out. Once it is perforated by too much protein, or if there was a problem with it, very bad things start to happen.

Having too much protein, especially the amount pushed by certain industries here in the United States, is maybe not healthy, no.


Err.. what? Kidney damage, inflammation, constipation, bloating, nutrient deficiency, potential heart problems, kidney stones. There's lots of downside of eating too much protein.

https://www.health.com/too-much-protein-side-effects-1189485...


You just googled or asked a chatbot to find you an article and haven't actually read it, have you?

#1 literally says

> For people with healthy kidneys, higher protein intake is generally safe.

#2 addresses the issues of some specific diets ("very-low-carb or ketogenic diets") that "may be low in fiber-rich carbohydrates". I did not advocate for "very-low-carb or ketogenic diets". Also, it doesn't say anything about potential harms of protein itself.

#3 "It Can Crowd Out Other Nutrients"

Again, no mention of supposed "harms of too much protein", only harms of "too little everything else". I never suggested to go crazy and stop eating other foods.

#4 deals with "type of protein" that "may be just as important as the amount of protein" and is irrelevant to your argument.

#5

> A very high-protein diet, particularly one high in animal foods, can increase the risk of kidney stones, especially for people with a history of these conditions or those who don’t drink enough water.

Well, just drink enough water then. Also, I was talking about generally healthy people. I am not qualified to discuss diet choices of people "with a history of these conditions".

#6 "Protein Bars and Powders Can Backfire"

I never suggested any of this. Also, this doesn't address supposed harms of protein itself, so it is irrelevant again.


No, I'm interested in nutrition, I backed up the risks with a link. Complex carbs and simple carbs are not the same (your original dismissal). Fiber is important for everyone, there's studies that show too little fiber is the cause of a lot of nutrition issues (possibly including IBS, which is a strange relation). Too much protein is not healthy and has risks (despite your unbacked claim). Protein rich unprocessed food is fine, it'll come with fiber.

> I backed up the risks with a link.

The problem is that your link doesn't really backs up your claims. #1 and #5 deal exclusively with people with various kidney conditions. #2, #3, #4 and #6 deal with issues that are only tangentially related to consuming too much protein.

All research that claims that eating too much protein is harmful is either about people with kidney disease or explores really far-fetched theoretical scenarios.

While harms of consuming too little protein are obvious and self-evident. Every tissue of your body constantly regenerates itself. Generating new tissue is impossible without protein, because protein is what it is made of.

> your unbacked claim

Sure, let's have some links: https://www.uclahealth.org/news/article/are-you-getting-enou...

> “We find most adults are not quite getting enough protein,” says Michael Garcia, MD, a UCLA Health clinical nutritionist.

> When you eat that protein also matters — the protein your body needs must be spread throughout the day. “We’re able to store certain nutrients, but we can't do the same thing with protein,” Dr. Garcia says. “And our bodies can only use so much protein in a sitting and a day.”

> “The recommended amount is really the absolute minimum we need to not fall into a deficient state.”

According to a link[0] provided by another commenter[1] in another subthread of this thread, maximum protein intake is about 2.5 times higher than the recommended protein intake (which is really just "the absolute minimum we need to not fall into a deficient state").

And since most people, who don't consciously control their diets, are very likely to eat closer to the lower bound, I think that telling people to "just eat more protein" is more likely to bring them health benefits than telling people to "just eat less protein"

Which is what TFA effectively does: it tells people about "underrated benefits" of replacing one meal a day by a meal that barely has any protein, which is equivalent to telling people to "just eat less protein".

I think that this article is potentially harmful to people who don't know any better, and I'm very surprised that the issue of reducing protein intake is neither addressed by TFA nor by other commenters. And that my attempt at addressing it receives so much pushback.

[0] https://www.health.harvard.edu/diet-and-nutrition/when-it-co...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47654617


On a similar note, I wondered if my week Mac still called the main volume “Macintosh HD”. Yup. When is the last time Apple marketed their computers as “Macintosh”? And when’s the last time they sold one with a “hard drive”?

Short answer: probably not. Discussion from almost ten years ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14472265

There is the Internet Archive, but the scans aren’t great:

https://archive.org/details/omni-archive/Best_of_OMNI_1_1980...


USPS would still need to check each stop for outgoing mail.

No they don’t, that’s what the red flag on the mailbox is for. Everywhere I’ve lived, if you don’t put the flag up and there’s no incoming mail for you, they don’t stop.


$8, and that all stops for ten years: https://www.dmachoice.org/static/consumer_choice_tools.php

I’ve done it (several times, ‘cuz ten years), you’ll notice an almost immediate reduction in junk mail.


Sounds like a racketeering operation (not saying it doesn't work).

Smells fishy indeed by it's just $8 per 10 years...

Also I'm sure that if a bill were ever passed to stop junk mail by default, it would be utilizing the infrastructure built by this service


It indeed has a fishy smell to it. But as I thought through it, if it were free then some bozo would spam an entire address database and then we can't have nice things anymore. The ten year expiration is sketchy, but I guess someone is hoping you'll let it expire (I've never received a "renewal notice", as it were.) And, yeah, "nice mailbox, shame if it got filled with shit you didn't ask for."

OTOH, for less than a dollar a year, I can go find other clouds to shake my fist at.


“March is often a big month for snowstorms,” Schumacher said. “Instead of getting snow we would normally expect we got this unprecedented, way-off-the-scale warmth.” (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/01/snowmelt-ame...)

Beside that, the measurements are of how much moisture is left to melt off:

It’s not just the amount of snow left on mountaintops that’s concerning experts, but the amount of moisture still frozen within them. “Snow water equivalent” (SWE), a measurement of what could melt off to supply natural and manmade systems, is exceptionally low.


I was expecting the Dell to be some 7 lb. all-battery monster, but no, it weighs in at a claimed 3.4 lbs.

Variable refresh rate obviously plays a role, if you don’t mind reading web pages at 1Hz.


In general the biggest battery you'll see is 99.9Wh, which is barely over a pound. Since it's nice to be able to take your laptop on a plane.

And yet Sea-Tac on Tuesday morning didn’t look bad, and with TSA Precheck Touchless, it was a few minutes.

Apparently Sea-Tac has a very low TSA absentee rate:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/sea-tac-bucks-national-...


SeaTac handles this with augmentation from the port. They do an excellent job and have not been impacted by any of the recent shut downs.

"U.S. intelligence agencies may now face legal hurdles in directly targeting and collecting personal data on Valencia González because of his place of birth. That risks hindering a significant tactical partnership that has developed between Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and Washington that is making increasing use of information provided by U.S. military, law enforcement and intelligence agencies."


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