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[Ares Land]

Zompist is right. Cooking is much more complex than we necessarily realise. We need to be wary of falling into the McNamara fallacy. I expect replicator food would likely be even worse than baby food. No wonder you need to choo-choo babies into eating those pots.

Surprisingly, babies really like the things. There sense of taste works differently, and they don't object to bland and mushy. (Though they love overripe cheese too, given the chance!)

Looking at this from a story telling perspective instead... I think a setting where replicator food isn't quite as good as the real thing, and where starship crews start to complain about it after a while is a lot more interesting.

[rotting bones]

Looking at this from a story telling perspective instead... I think a setting where replicator food isn't quite as good as the real thing, and where starship crews start to complain about it after a while is a lot more interesting.

That doesn't sound like appropriate behavior for explorers charting deep space. Replicator food has got to be better than hardtack and grog, right?

TBH all this talk of subtle differences between flavor profiles is making my head spin. I can barely taste the difference between meat and coffee.

[MacAnDàil]

Zompist is right. Cooking is much more complex than we necessarily realise. We need to be wary of falling into the McNamara fallacy. I expect replicator food would likely be even worse than baby food. No wonder you need to choo-choo babies into eating those pots.

Surprisingly, babies really like the things. There sense of taste works differently, and they don't object to bland and mushy. (Though they love overripe cheese too, given the chance!)

On what do you base this? While it is certainly plausible that babies' taste generally differs from that of adults, I think babies' taste varies within itself as well. I doubt baby me would have eaten much overripe cheese. I barely ate any cheese whatsoever before the past two years. There can be both prenatal and postnatal effects on food taste preferences https://journals.lww.com/jpgn/Fulltext/ ... ter.5.aspx so the preferences of a specific baby may be influenced by behaviour before birth, such as by the mother's diet e.g. babies eat more milk when it's garlic-flavoured https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ju ... havior.pdf

I do admit my previous statement regarding baby food may have been overly categorical however.

[Ares Land]

On what do you base this? While it is certainly plausible that babies' taste generally differs from that of adults, I think babies' taste varies within itself as well. I doubt baby me would have eaten much overripe cheese. I barely ate any cheese whatsoever before the past two years. There can be both prenatal and postnatal effects on food taste preferences https://journals.lww.com/jpgn/Fulltext/ ... ter.5.aspx so the preferences of a specific baby may be influenced by behaviour before birth, such as by the mother's diet e.g. babies eat more milk when it's garlic-flavoured https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ju ... havior.pdf

I do admit my previous statement regarding baby food may have been overly categorical however.

Oh, yeah, babies are all different. I can't remember where I read that bit about babies' sense of taste -- I can confirm it by personal experience though.

[masako]

44

[rotting bones]

https://www.morningbrew.com/emerging-te ... oss-europe

[Nachtswalbe]

Here is a essay from Whores of Yore about why humans try to but cannot be monogamous:
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/humans-why- ... 1637314175

[Moose-tache]

Food: "Hi, I'm a food! I contain 43 exabytes of information!"

Tongue: "Hey Boss, we got a food here. It's uh... squishy I guess? And my chart that detects five molecules says there's sucrose in it. I What's App'ed you a jpg of a pdf about it. It's like, ten kb."

People in this thread: "Mmm! Taste those exabytes of information! I love that the golgi apparatus of that one muscle cell is slightly to the left of where the golgi apparatus usually is. No one could ever hope to replicate the way that one section of cell wall slopes to the side!"

[rotting bones]

Food: "Hi, I'm a food! I contain 43 exabytes of information!"

Tongue: "Hey Boss, we got a food here. It's uh... squishy I guess? And my chart that detects five molecules says there's sucrose in it. I What's App'ed you a jpg of a pdf about it. It's like, ten kb."

People in this thread: "Mmm! Taste those exabytes of information! I love that the golgi apparatus of that one muscle cell is slightly to the left of where the golgi apparatus usually is. No one could ever hope to replicate the way that one section of cell wall slopes to the side!"

I don't know if we are skeptical for no reason. Zompist presented evidence that molecules can affect biochemical reactions in trace amounts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maillard_reaction All I asked is that you present evidence for your position too.

[bradrn]

It’s not that simple, because most taste is actually detected through the nose, not the tongue. And the nose really is sensitive — and complex, too. For instance, to take just one example, there’s a number of compounds which actually have a stronger odour when they’re diluted (e.g. thioacetone). But I thought this discussion already ended a while ago.

[Moose-tache]

One thing I know for sure, the human tongue is not equipped to detect the level of saltiness of people in this thread when you suggest that they aren't capable of tasting both the position and velocity of individual electrons.

[rotting bones]

TBH that sounds like we're hardly salty at all, not that we're too salty.

[doctor shark]

It’s not that simple, because most taste is actually detected through the nose, not the tongue. And the nose really is sensitive — and complex, too. For instance, to take just one example, there’s a number of compounds which actually have a stronger odour when they’re diluted (e.g. thioacetone). But I thought this discussion already ended a while ago.

As soon as you see "thio-", you know to stay far, far away if possible. Some of my previous coworkers worked with thiols (cross-linking agents), and they were... well, to say "unpleasant" would be an understatement. Their thiol work was enough to convince the university to invest money in improving the fume hoods.

Granted, I've had my own misadventures with strong-smelling compounds, like synthesizing oil of wintergreen in Orgasmic Organic Chemistry II lab. The smell dissipated quickly, but... good lord.

[Raphael]

Unrelated: I'm a bit surprised right now.

You see, I just ordered the Middle East Construction Kit. It's apparently not available on amazon.de yet, so I bought it directly on amazon.com . (My desire to get it as quickly as possible, and the uncertainty about whether it will ever be available on amazon.de , were stronger than my desire to safe money.)

That's a first for me; until now, whenever I wanted to buy something from Amazon (which I generally try to avoid these days, but that's a different matter), I bought from amazon.de . Turns out I had to give them new payment information - amazon.com doesn't accept German bank transfers, so I had to use my debit card. No problem; there's still enough money on it.

Now here's what surprises me: when they asked for my credit / debit card information, they only asked for the named on the card, the card number, and the expiration date. They did not ask for the CVC number. At all. Is that normal?

[rotting bones]

In the past, Amazon has refused to accept my CVC, and then refused to work; probably because I was using a weird Indian credit card and they didn't have my CVC. It was supposed to work internationally, and usually did. Amazon has always worked with American debit cards.

[Raphael]

Thank you. Interesting. For the record, I've now found it on amazon.de , so I've ordered it there and cancelled the US order.

[zompist]

Thank you. Interesting. For the record, I've now found it on amazon.de , so I've ordered it there and cancelled the US order.

Yay!

FWIW, I approved the proof yesterday night, so they're frighteningly efficient these days. Earlier, with the LCK, it would take days or weeks for the foreign versions of amazon to get the book.

[Man in Space]

FWIW, I approved the proof yesterday night, so they're frighteningly efficient these days. Earlier, with the LCK, it would take days or weeks for the foreign versions of amazon to get the book.

Oh, I missed this news! I've been looking forward to its release.

I apologize if this has been asked elsewhere; I couldn't find out with a quick search—is a Kindle edition planned?

[zompist]

I apologize if this has been asked elsewhere; I couldn't find out with a quick search—is a Kindle edition planned?

Yes, working on it now.

(Are people forgetting that zompist.com exists, as well as zompist.wordpress.com? In any case the book description is at http://www.zompist.com/meck.html ).

[Man in Space]

Are people forgetting that zompist.com exists, as well as zompist.wordpress.com?

In my case—yes. It honestly didn't cross my mind to check there, but then again, normally about 80% of my browsing is confined to here, the Other Place, schlaugh, Reddit, and the august Dr. Wik E. Pedia.