There's white smoke on St. Peter's Square (at 18:08 local time). Given the time it's probably been the fourth round of voting that yielded a positive result. You can watch the vatican media livestream here with english commentary and here without any commentary.

Thought I'd post this as a text post to keep it updated with relevant information (e.g. who it is) over the next hour or so.

The swiss guard has arrived on the square shortly after 18:30. If the previous two conclaves are anything to go by it'll be another 30 minutes or so until Cardinal Mamberti will step onto the balcony to announce the new pope's name.

Update 19:13: Mamberti has entered the balcony and is making his announcement (rewatch here):

Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum; habemus Papam:

Eminentissimum ac reverendissimum dominum, dominum Robertum Franciscum, Sanctæ Romanæ Ecclesiæ Cardinalem Prevost, qui sibi nomen imposui Leonem XIV.

Pope Leo XIV, formerly Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, is a US American by birth, but moved to Peru later on and became bishop there, making him the second pope from America and first ever US American to hold the title. He's generally viewed as a compromise candidate between progressives and conservatives within the catholic church as far as I know. He was created (as a cardinal) by pope francis and was responsible for personell management under him.

Update 19:23: Pope Leo XIV has entered the balcony and is making his first public statement (rewatch original here or with english subtitles here).

Update 19:40: After speaking for more than 10 minutes (a lot longer than his predrcessors during their first appearance) he's now issued the traditional blessing 'urbi et orbi' and has left the balcony.

I used to make soap and body products, and I really enjoyed it. I loved making nice-smelling things that people really liked. We were really on the verge of online sales, so we went to markets and sold that way. Didn't end up taking off just because we really didn't get the sales base. Online would have helped.

I was talking recently to my wife about making her some gatorade-type hydration beverage with electrolytes. Because we're trying to save money where we can.

I was looking up what goes into most electrolyte products, and pricing them out. What's annoying is that it would be around $75 to get what I needed. But that would give me around 1000 ½L servings, give or take.

And with that, I went down the rabbit hole of "Why not see if I can package some up and sell?"

At the most basic level, it would probably cost around $1.50 to create a 100-serving jar, which I could probably label and sell for something like $10 - which sounds like huge profit, but I think is probably around a reasonable level. Which would mean around 10¢ per serving to my customers.

As I've been expanding on the idea, I feel I could offer mutiple versions:

• The basic one that has no flavor or sweetner, just the electrolytes
• Flavored cersions with sugar for energy, artificial sweetener for folks like me who don't want the sugar but might want the electrolyes
• Custom blends on demand, i.e. since I have to limit my salt and potassium but could benefit from the magnesium and calcium, I might have a flavored artificial-sweetner one with just two electrolytes. I could have main flavors with color (as it makes them taste better, yay silly brains) but offer no-color blends for those that preferred

Paired with an online shop, I think it might be enough to be interesting to people - being able to offer more flavors than the norm. And things I'm not sure some have though of - being able to add this to a protein shake, so flavors relevant to that might be interesting (i.e. getting to play with some "dessert" flavours that would be weird in a drink).

I've got a ton of research to do - and to see how I could start hopefully under cottage food laws with less registrations and fees.

But I'm curious to know if this sounds interesting, what ideas you have, and most importantly, if you've run your own small hobby style business in any relevant sort of way, what advice and ideas you might have to help me as I look at this possibility.

Basically, I'm trying to keep afloat here, and I'm not picking up business clients as quickly as I need, and I think doing this would not only be fun, but perhaps profitable as well.

After talking about it a few months ago my copy of the game finally arrived. @MimicSquid and I met up in San Francisco today and finally got to play Hide&Seek. It was a good time and it was neat to have a better sense of how the game plays instead of just watching it on Nebula. We're planning on playing again in the not too distant future, so if anyone would like to join in on the next one, please let one of us know (we both thought that it would play better with at least three players).

Bottom line: I live in Western Pennsylvania in the US. I may shortly need to replace my aging Honda Ridgeline. I need a mid-sized truck/van/SUV that can be a good "road trip" car for a family of three that chronically overpacks.

What car do you like? What car buying or car selling wisdom do you have in the post-pandemic car market?