Making your own fake meat

I ate the left over vegetarian chilli con carne last night - yeah, the flavour was good (most spiced dishes taste better as leftovers, don't they?), but thinking about the texture of the vege mince, it did remind me again that it had a bit of a stickiness to it, unfortunately reminding me of what you get if you chew paper. 

This whole texture of fake meat issue is very important to me, and watching Youtubes where they try to make vegan analogues of real meat, it's obviously a prime concern of others too.

Last night, I watched this one and was interested to see it used pea protein isolate, which I think is the main ingredient in the Beyond Burger.   Given that I don't hang out in health food stores, I didn't realise that this product was a powder readily available.  

So here's this guy, trying to make imitation chicken using it and one main other ingredient as a binder:



I think I have worked out why this topic appeals to me - it's a bit like watching a science experiment, and now that my kids are well past doing science experiments at home, I need a substitute.

Fake meat experimentation in my kitchen might be it.

The old invisible ink trick

Spotted this at Gulf News:

Dubai: A customer service employee was sentenced to 10 years in jail for stealing Dh1 million from a customer’s account, a Dubai Court of First Instance heard.

The Egyptian defendant, 42, who is still at large, conned the customer by using magic ink when the latter wrote his name on the cheque to deposit the money in his account. When the name disappeared because of the ink, the defendant put his name on the cheque, cashed the money and escaped.

That lasted a long time

MIT Technology review notes that Facebucks might never happen: 

The company has warned investors that the currency, which it wants to launch next year, may not ever get off the ground.

The news: In its quarterly report, Facebook reminded investors that the proposed currency, called Libra, is “based on new and unproven technology," adding that the legal environment surrounding digital currencies is “uncertain and evolving.” That could cause Libra to be delayed or even blocked, it said.

The backstory: Facebook revealed its ambitions for Libra a month and a half ago. Since then, it has faced skepticism and backlash from government bankers and politicians, who have criticized Facebook’s track record on privacy and warned that its plan to launch a private currency to billions of people could be risky.

Onward: During Facebook’s quarterly earnings call CEO Mark Zuckerberg struck an optimistic tone, affirming that the company will spend “however long it takes” to earn regulators’ approval before launching.

Living under the Moon

From Space.com: 

Living Underground on the Moon: How Lava Tubes Could Aid Lunar Colonization

Finding a lava tube that has lots of ice inside would be fantastic site for a base, I would think. 

And the doctor is always in

Psychoanalyse yourself:

A new study shows that conversation with oneself embodied as Dr. Sigmund Freud works better to improve people's mood, compared to just talking about your problems in a virtual conversation with pre-scripted comments. Researchers claimed that the method could be used by clinicians to help people dealing with minor personal problems.

The explanation as to why this should be is given at the link as follows:

People are often much better at giving useful advice to a friend in trouble than they are in dealing with their own problems. Although we typically have continuous internal dialogue, we are trapped inside our own way of thinking with our own history and point of view, and find it difficult to take an external perspective regarding our own problems. However, with friends, especially someone we know well, it is much easier to understand the bigger picture, and help them find a way through their problems.

A research team of the University of Barcelona (UB), IDIBAPS and Virtual BodyWorks, a spin-off of both institutions and ICREA, has used immersive virtual reality to observe the effects of talking to themselves as if they were another person, using virtual reality.

The technique is complicated, though:

For this technique to work out,researchers scanned the person to obtain an 'avatar' which is a 3D-likeness of the person. In virtual reality, when they look at themselves, at their body parts, or in a mirror, they will see a representation of themselves. When they move their real body, their virtual body will move in the same way and at the same time. Seated across the table is another virtual human, in the case of this experiment, a representation of Dr Sigmund Freud.

The participant can explain their personal problem to Dr Freud, and then switch to being embodied as Freud. Now, embodied as Freud, when they look down towards themselves, or in a mirror, they will see Freud's body rather than their own, and also this body will move in synchrony with their own movements. "They will see and hear their own likeness explaining the problem, and they see their virtual self as if this were another person. Now they themselves have become the 'friend' who is listening and trying to help," said Mel Slater.

 Working in psychology research sounds fun, no? 

A flicker of hope

From Axios:

Carbon emissions from China could peak as soon as 2021, which is nine years before the voluntary deadline in their Paris agreement pledge, a new peer-reviewed study finds.

Why it matters: China is by far the world's largest carbon emitter. The trajectory of its emissions affect whether the world has any chance of meeting the Paris temperature goals — or, more likely, how much they're overshot.

• It adds to separate analyses suggesting China could see a peak well before 2030 if things break right.

Meat substitute scepticism

Someone from the CSIRO casts a deeply sceptical eye over how much potential growth there really is in the "fake meat" industry that excites high market valuations for the companies making these new fake burgers.   He notes the growth in demand for meat as nations get richer as being a major factor offsetting any reductions in livestock that an increasing market for meat substitute products would involve.

You should read the comments too, where the author expands his scepticism about lab grown meat - a topic of which I have been sceptical from day one.

In these discussions about future food, it annoys that I have not been able to track down a person who I once heard on the ABC arguing that lab grown protein derived from microbial sources could readily and cheaply feed the world.   I don't think he was talking about fungus derived protein either - from which we get Quorn.   But who this was, and which exact source for the protein he was talking about, I have not worked out.  I think he had written a book on the topic of future food, but there are a lot of books on that topic around.

One other point:   because I looked at a couple of vegan recipe videos, I keep getting this topic coming up on my Youtube feed now.  It is very clear that the matter of vegans trying to make plant based food look and taste like the meat equivalent is very "hot" at the moment.  There are no end of videos about how to make tofu look and taste (allegedly!) like chicken, fish, or whatever.  And a guy who tried various ways to come up with something that resembles bacon - he ended up recommending strips of daikon, dried out a bit, soaked in his mix of soy and stuff, and fried.   I am not at all convinced it would taste anything like bacon.

So yeah, it seems to me that a lot of people are convinced that getting people to eat more vegetarian or vegan is a matter of making the food at least look like what they like in meat.   I am pretty sure that this must be annoying some more purist vegan types...

When Dick doesn't work

I've been watching The Man in the High Castle, the alternative history series on Prime based on Phillip K Dick's novel of the same name and which (I think) got pretty favourable reviews when it first started.

I've seen 4 (maybe 5?) episodes now, and while I initially enjoyed the novelty of the scenario, I am prepared to abandon it. 

Looking at an imagined Nazi New York and Japanese California (and the desolate bit of the country in the middle) is cool for a while, but the plotting has slowed down and I'm not finding much of a reason to keep following the story.

The main problem is that it's too much of a bleak monotone, and none of the main characters seem particularly charming, or interesting, really.   I did once start reading the novel and couldn't get into it, either:  maybe I was just distracted with other stuff at the time, since I have read and enjoyed quite a bit of Dick's other work, and the novel won many awards, so you would think I would like it.

But, sorry - not finding it engaging enough.

Might be a bit of a pattern here...

About that teenager who shot up the garlic festival in California:

Legan posted two photos on Instagram not long before the attack.

One photo depicted Smokey the Bear in front of a "fire danger" sign, with a caption that said to read the 19th century book "Might is Right," a work that claims race determines behavior and is popular among white nationalists and far-right extremist groups.

About one of the teenage fugitives from the Canadian killings:

For Schmegelsky a dark but depressingly familiar picture began to form—a young man with a tense home life who found solace in online activities and had connections to the far-right. The two have been connected a YouTube account featuring a Nazi insignia, online game accounts using the banner of the Azov battalion (a Ukrainian far-right militia) and had photographs of a Nazi armband and a Hitler Youth knife. Schmegelsky's father, while adamant his son was not a neo-Nazi, did admit to having to drag him out of an army surplus store eight months ago after his son got too excited over the Nazi memorabilia. VICE also viewed photos of Schmegelsky with a gun barrel in his mouth.

An article at Business Insider in January:


All of the extremist killings in the US in 2018 had links to right-wing extremism, according to new report 

And over at Quillette:    but look what happened to Andy Ngo, the poor guy got punched, and some Lefties said he had been provocative.  The Left is appallingly violent!

Update:  also, count me as pretty amused about the long, boring, pointless Quillette piece "Why isn’t Jordan Peterson on This List of the World’s Top Fifty Intellectuals".  Not even worth a link, that one.

The ridiculous Ninja show

So is this three seasons now that the Australian version of Ninja Warrior has had a final in which no one got through the final course in order to have a go at the final climb?  

I saw some of the first season; none of the second; and bits of the third including last night's final, in which Channel 9 had been putting out hints that someone finally completed the whole thing to "win".

Instead, we got contestants who all found the "swinging doors" impossible - not even able to move past the first one in a row of 4 or 5.   This seems to me, and surely many viewers, pretty ridiculous.  As someone on Twitter said, the show might have more credibility if they showed that the obstacle was actually do-able, as they (apparently) have people who test the different segments of the course.

But these swinging doors looked ridiculous - a smooth metal edge giving no grip to two hands, let alone the one hand that would have to remain while trying to grab on to the other.

Do the international versions have this issue as well? - going several seasons before anyone can even try the final?

Planet of the Rats

Japan is going to do some human stem cell in animal experiments that sound a little confusing:

A Japanese stem-cell scientist is the first to receive government support to create animal embryos that contain human cells and transplant them into surrogate animals since a ban on the practice was overturned earlier this year.

Hiromitsu Nakauchi, who leads teams at the University of Tokyo and Stanford University in California, plans to grow human cells in mouse and rat embryos and then transplant those embryos into surrogate animals. Nakauchi's ultimate goal is to produce animals with organs made of human cells that can, eventually, be transplanted into people....

Nakauchi says he plans to proceed slowly, and will not attempt to bring any hybrid embryos to term for some time. Initially, he plans to grow hybrid mouse embryos until 14.5 days, when the animal’s organs are mostly formed and it is almost to term. He will do the same experiments in rats, growing the hybrids to near term, about 15.5 days. Later, Nakauchi plans to apply for government approval to grow hybrid embryos in pigs for up to 70 days.

The reason why some people worry about these experiments:

Some bioethicists are concerned about the possibility that human cells might stray beyond development of the targeted organ, travel to the developing animal’s brain and potentially affect its cognition.

Oh.

Woman with stupid idea has daughter with dubious ideas

NPR reports on the woman who allegedly invented or popularised the very stupid idea of gender reveal parties now saying that she regrets it.  In part, due to have a very "woke" daughter:

"Plot twist! The baby from the original gender reveal party is a girl who wears suits," Karvunidis says. "She says 'she' and 'her' and all of that, but you know she really goes outside gender norms."

The post went viral. Karvunidis says her views on sex and gender have changed, especially when she's talking to her daughter.

"She's telling me 'Mom, there are many genders. Mom, there's many different sexualities and all different types,' and I take her lead on that," Karvunidis says.

She says she does have some regrets and understands these parties aren't beneficial to everyone.

The daughter is about 10 or 11, given that Karvunidis' gender reveal party for her was in 2008.

Singapore and fake news

I just read a good article about Singapore trying to deal with the problem of fake news via legislation and its usual "soft authoritarian" style whereby politicians can order the correction or removal of fake news.

I have great sympathy to the goal, if not the exact means of execution.  

The throbbing sphere of education

So, it's university open day season in Brisbane, and given that I have a daughter approaching the end of high school, we once again went out to a university to listen to a couple of talks and view the facilities.

Yesterday, it was QUT, but we went to the Kelvin Grove campus, which does education and creative industries.  The education building is pretty new, and as with most new university buildings these days, is pretty flash.  Of some particular amusement, though, is the huge feature of a glowing central sphere in the centre of the building, the exact point of which was not made clear.  Some of the changes it undergoes in the projected pattern look vaguely like neurons firing; at other times the convolutions look a bit too much like intestines.  (I assume the former association is intentional; the latter, not so much.)   Here it is in action:



There was mention that people doing something on the interactive screen on the wall would influence what the Sphere of Educational Destiny, or whatever it's called, shows.

Anyway, it's certainly eye catching, and seems ready made to be used in a science fiction film; but I do wonder if it has much point.

As for the open day itself:  as usual, it was full of optimism about the courses; how students can do some of it overseas; and how easily they will find getting a job.   (The teachers course in particular put up a figure of 97% employment for graduates soon after completing the course - I guess they didn't say that all of the jobs were as teachers, but I assume that would be case.)  

They told us that there is a shortage of teachers not only in Australia, but world wide, and that Australian teachers are well regarded internationally.   Apparently, if you stick it living out in a remote community, you can make principal barely a couple of years from graduation.

All very positive vibes, as they usually are at these open days, and modern universities are such nice built environments, I really enjoy the open days.  More than my children do...

Someone needs to invent cooking meat smell

To atone for the eating of a few mouthfuls of raw dead animal a week ago, this last Saturday I was inspired to try cooking with one of the new-ish products that is purely vegetarian but trying to look like meat/mince.  

This one is soy protein based - which is a meat substitute source of protein that has fallen out of favour, it seems.  Remember the days when Textured Vegetable Protein was about the only fake meat in town?   I didn't mind it, really, especially the chunky version for things like chilli.

So, I tried chilli con carne with this product.

I don't know if it was really necessary, but I tried frying it off with onion, and that was the main problem.  I thought it had a most peculiar smell while frying.  Not really food like at all.   My son came into the kitchen and said "I can tell that's not meat you're cooking", and he had good reason to so comment.

I tasted some of it after it was "cooked" (the mince alone, I mean) and it was a pretty underwhelming flavour.  I think the Beyond Burger had inherently more flavour, and a somewhat meat one at that.

The end result chilli was quite OK - this product certain holds a mince meat-like texture quite well, and sufficient chilli and spices means that it is not as if the bland taste of the "meat" is all that noticeable.   I doubt it would taste great as a burger, though.

And they really need to do something about that odd cooking smell.

Some welcome pushback on the Mueller "optics"

I'm happy to see that there has been some pushback against all media's assessment of Mueller's congressional appearance as a disaster.   There's been quite a bit on Twitter by journalists and writers I follow, such as:

And now there is an article at The Atlantic along similar lines: Robert Mueller and the Tyranny of ‘Optics’:

“DAZED AND CONFUSED” was the Drudge Report’s blaring headline. But the Twitter verdict of NBC’s sober-sided Chuck Todd was almost as severe: “On substance, Democrats got what they wanted,” Todd wrote. “But on optics, this was a disaster.”

Optics—the kryptonite of the modern media age, the glimmering, crystalline material that can subsume substance at every treacherous turn. Or as the former Barack Obama speechwriter Jon Lovett rejoined to Todd on Twitter: “When you say ‘on optics, this was a disaster’ it is you saying so that helps make it true. The disaster of the optics is the elevation of optics and the claim by pundits that it was a disaster.”

 

I am not alone

Well, the odd things you sometimes find via Twitter.

Turns out that Hannah Gadsby does get negative reviews, even from high minded reviewers who seem to have approached her work wanting to like it, after all.   This one, about her latest show, is in the New Yorker, and it's pretty strong:

Gadsby, in her work, espouses a kind of puritan-minded radicalism in which someone else is always to blame for how messed up she feels. But isn’t that messed-up feeling life? And what about other lives? What about the millions who have it worse, who are fighting to survive? On Gadsby’s stage, solipsism masquerades as art.

Then there is this review of the ridiculously over-praised Nanette, which is ever fiercer:

Nanette is awful, and it’s time we gave ourselves permission to think and say that out loud. Its few patches of genuine comedy eventually lead to giant yawning holes of intellectual chicanery masquerading as Deep and Profound Thought. Nanette assures viewers, especially straight ones, that queers and women can and must be understood and assimilated by first understanding us as uniquely and literally broken and bashed in. It isn’t comedy that is broken in Nanette, but queer life and feminism. Worse, the breaking of queerness comes about via Gadsby offering straight people in particular the assurance that this is a globally universal experience. Gadsby offers Nanette as a mirror to herself, and her self becomes a stand in for queers and women everywhere. If she had simply discussed her own story, Nanette would simply be an account of one woman’s trauma, but Gadsby takes it much, much further. She frames her story in a very particular, prescriptive, and retrograde vision of sexuality (“homosexuality is not a choice”) and in a denunciation of art that looks like a massive feminist takedown of male artists but is in fact embedded in a vision of the self that allows no place for the fragmented and fragmentary nature of experience and life itself.

Of course, the view of this queer reviewer that "homosexuality is not a choice" is a retrograde vision of sexuality may be controversial, but I'll still go with any review that points out the comedy empress has no clothes.   (So to speak.  No body size joke intended.  Well, not much.)

A problem noted

To say I am no fan of Tarantino is an understatement - and I suspect his legacy is already starting to degrade - so I won't be seeing Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.   But I will still read reviews of it, especially if I can find support for my disdain for him and his oeuvre.  Hence, I was interested to read this in the Slate review:

A revelation about Pitt’s character’s past midway through the movie might change how you respond to the culminating orgy of violence, which, as is often the case in Tarantino films, seems at once like a critique of the vision of masculinity that’s imposed on us by TV and the movies and like a celebration of it. (In fact, a character in the movie—to reveal which one would be to say too much—at one point advances a theory about our culture’s dependence on mediatized mayhem.)

Well, if you ask me, such ambiguity is a problem, not a feature.  You don't critique something by celebrating it.   Back to the rest of the review, confirming that it's not just me that wonders how shallow his motivations seem to be:

In choosing to set a movie on Cielo Drive in the summer of 1969, Tarantino took on a historical event that not only changed how Americans thought about fame, violence, and the counterculture but also ended five innocent lives (seven if you count Tate’s next-door neighbors the LaBiancas, who died in a separate Manson-incited incident the following night). It’s fine to walk out of this movie not quite sure what Tarantino was using his story’s proximity to this real-life tragedy to say; that’s part of the ambiguity inherent in making art. But it’s dispiriting to suspect that part of why he wanted to stage a Manson-adjacent story was because the accoutrements—the period cars and costumes and neon signs, the glowering barefoot hippie girls, the acid-laced cigarettes and glowing movie marquees—were just so cool.

Modern America, noted

OXFORD, Miss. — Three University of Mississippi students have been suspended from their fraternity house and face possible investigation by the Department of Justice after posing with guns in front of a bullet-riddled sign honoring slain civil rights icon Emmett Till.

One of the students posted a photo to his private Instagram account in March showing the trio in front of a roadside plaque commemorating the site where Till’s body was recovered from the Tallahatchie River. The 14-year-old black youth was tortured and murdered in August 1955. An all-white, all-male jury acquitted two white men accused of the slaying.

The South remains a worry.

Here's the story.

Hot in Paris

Météo-France said the mercury at its Paris-Montsouris station in the French capital surpassed the previous high of 40.4C, set in July 1947, soon after 1pm and continued to climb, reaching 42.6C soon after 4pm.

“And it could climb even higher,” the service said, noting that 43C in the shade “is the average maximum temperature in Baghdad, Iraq in July”. David Salas y Mélia, a climatologist, said the heatwave was one “of quite exceptional intensity”.

That's hot, anywhere; but especially in a city that has not been well fitted out with airconditioning.  (And adding lots of airconditioning can make a city hotter too.)

When are the decrepit dopes of Catallaxy going to admit they are wrong, JC?  Needs to start at the top - with Sinclair Davidson's apology to society.