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    1. Offbeat Fridays – The thread where offbeat headlines become front page news

      Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like antitrust, redundancies and donation.blood. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone...

      Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like antitrust, redundancies and donation.blood. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was perplexed.

      But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!

      25 votes
    2. Save Point: A game deal roundup for the week of August 18

      Add awesome game deals to this topic as they come up over the course of the week! Alternately, ask about a given game deal if you want the community’s opinions: e.g. “What games from this bundle...

      Add awesome game deals to this topic as they come up over the course of the week!

      Alternately, ask about a given game deal if you want the community’s opinions: e.g. “What games from this bundle are most worth my attention?”

      Rules:

      • No grey market sales
      • No affiliate links

      If posting a sale, it is strongly encouraged that you share why you think the available game/games are worthwhile.


      All previous Save Point topics

      If you don’t want to see threads in this series, add save point to your personal tag filters.

      16 votes
    3. Why do so many recipes call for powdered sugar instead of regular sugar?

      This is a question I've been wondering about for a while as a home baker and amateur food scientist. Why do recipes for whipped, fluffy desert components like whipped cream or buttercream icing...

      This is a question I've been wondering about for a while as a home baker and amateur food scientist. Why do recipes for whipped, fluffy desert components like whipped cream or buttercream icing always seem to call for powdered sugar? If I want to add sugar to a something, why would I also want to add the anti-caking agent (usually starch I think) for powdered sugar as well? Is that starch actually something beneficial for a whipped desert? Because as far as I can tell, the only time powdered sugar makes sense is when it's dusted on top of something or incorporated into a desert that is being mixed by hand and doesn't have the shear of a mixer to dissolve or emulsify the granulated sugar. And I've never had any issues just using regular granulated sugar and honestly prefer it to powdered sugar for icings, whipped cream and the like. If a recipe calls for powdered sugar, but it's being combined with a mixer or beaters I just use regular sugar and the results are great.

      Anyone have any thoughts or experience as to what I'm overlooking? Or is it just a hold over from a time when electric mixers weren't common and you needed a finer sugar to incorporate the sugar by hand?

      18 votes
    4. Midweek Movie Free Talk

      Warning: this post may contain spoilers

      Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

      Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

      11 votes
    5. Weekly Israel-Hamas war megathread - week of August 19

      This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant Israel-Hamas war content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate...

      This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant Israel-Hamas war content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

      Please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

      10 votes
    6. Repurposing an old central AC system

      So this is ultimately a very oddball situation. Some background: I live in a rancher in southern NJ. Fully electrified home. I had recently installed minisplits to replace some electric baseboard...

      So this is ultimately a very oddball situation. Some background:

      I live in a rancher in southern NJ. Fully electrified home.

      I had recently installed minisplits to replace some electric baseboard heaters, covering about 2/3 of my home. This was fortunate, as I believe my blower fan in my central AC unit blew out. The minisplits + 1 window unit have actually been cheaper to operate than the old AC unit, so now I have a vestiegal high-velocity central AC system in my attic.

      Namely, this means a lot of unused flexible, insulated ductwork and some ferro-fluids in my attic that should probably be blocked off and drained, respectively.

      I've been contemplating on how to possibly repurpose some of this stuff to fix one of the biggest blind spots in my home: ventilation and filtering

      My one bathroom exhaust fan vents directly into the attic, which is a moisture hell that needs solved.

      There's no other ductwork in my home, and pretty much the only time fresh air gets in the house is if we crack windows or open doors.

      So the theory is:

      I route the bathroom exhausts into the old air handler coils to help capture the moisture and drain it out, then have it mix with some outside air and recirculate it into the house again.

      Alternatively, routing some of the air between the attic/crawlspace/attached garage for preconditioning outside air as as well.

      Is this insanity, or a remotely plausible idea? I'm fairly handy, and since its sbeing made with vestigial bits in spare time labor cost is much less of an issue than parts.

      8 votes