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    Annoying New York Times articles

    How does that compare to the diesel cost?

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      Annoying New York Times articles

      Back of the envelope estimate? About a quarter to a third of the cost I'd think. When he's in town, he gets almost all of his oil for free. The stockpiling in his back yard is a bit unsightly, though.

      [Just checked a newspaper article on him. It was about 1/8 the cost of diesel, and it was Nova Scotia and not NB]

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        Annoying New York Times articles

        The City of Berkeley at one time was fueling all (or at least a lot) of their garbage trucks with old vegetable grease. (Maybe they still are?) They smelled like French fries as they drove past.

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          Annoying New York Times articles

          They had to stop that because of bacteria buildup.

          Responding to the engine failure of two city trucks last year, city leaders in January scrapped its two-year-old program to power its fleet of nearly 200 trucks entirely on a derivative of vegetable oil.
          I think that they are using a blend of bio-diesel and low sulfur diesel now.

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            Annoying New York Times articles

            There was a New Yorker story recently about cooking grease theft. I never knew it was such a cutthroat field, but I guess it makes sense:

            http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/11/18/hot-grease

            There isn’t enough grease to solve the energy crisis, but it does put a dent in the problem—and grease that’s converted isn’t dumped in landfills. To encourage biofuel production, governments have enacted incentives. According to a federal law passed in 2007, thirty-six billion gallons of biofuel must be blended into transportation fuel by 2022. There is also a dollar-a-gallon subsidy for refineries that mix renewable fuel into their products. This year, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, in partnership with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, started a daily transatlantic flight powered by fuel that is twenty-five per cent converted fryer oil, collected at Cajun restaurants in Louisiana.

            The increased demand has made the price of used cooking oil skyrocket. A decade ago, used grease traded on the Chicago commodities exchange for less than eight cents a pound. Now it can go for more than four times that price, providing criminals with a potent incentive to get at spent oil before renderers do. Thieves use bolt cutters to remove locks on container lids, or cut through steel with blowtorches; they use vacuum hoses to suck grease into tanker trucks. A thief driving down a strip-mall alleyway can collect four thousand dollars’ worth in half an hour. “It’s right up there next to Rolexes,” Stuewe told me. Dar Pro, he says, loses millions of dollars to theft each year.

            Like other big renderers, Dar Pro has turned to security firms to protect its grease. In 2011, Stuewe hired Total Compliance Associates, a Manhattan-based firm headed by Stuart GraBois, a former U.S. assistant district attorney, and Mike Ferrandino, a former F.B.I. supervisor. When I visited the firm’s offices, in a Times Square high-rise, GraBois, an elegantly dressed, white-haired man, admitted that he was nonplussed when he got the call from Dar Pro. “I thought, Grease?” he said, laughing. “I didn’t want to say, ‘Who cares?’—but grease? Then you find out what a huge business it is, and how much they’re losing.”

            In the past two years, GraBois and Ferrandino have pursued more than a hundred grease cases, using classic crime-busting techniques: surveillance and stakeouts, undercover operations, stings, hidden cameras. They still struggle to persuade law-enforcement officials to take grease theft seriously, but GraBois insisted that they’re making headway. “You speak to a prosecutor a year ago,” he said, “and it’s ‘What are you calling me about?’ Now I think it’s reached a point where they’re believing that it’s real.”

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              Annoying New York Times articles

              That was a fascinating article about an industry I never knew existed.

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                Annoying New York Times articles

                Since reading it I've noticed locked cages with grease containers behind restaurants. I'm sure they were always there, I just never paid attention.

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                  Annoying New York Times articles

                  There was a documentary on grease theft. Here's a photo of one of the theives in action.

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                    Annoying New York Times articles

                    That's an episode that I haven't seen in a long time, but I missed it when the FXX marathon was on.

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                      Annoying New York Times articles

                      Ginger Yellow wrote:
                      The article isn't too annoying on the surface. It just takes it as a given that artisanal salt is a thing and talks glowingly about how well-run and "sustainable" the company is now that it uses vegetable grease ovens instead of woodfired ones. But it should have probed that a bit more. Did the owners believe (or convince their customers) that water boiled over wood fire leaves a better precipitate than water boiled over, for example, a gas-fire?
                      I would have thought the vegetable grease boilers were about recycling waste rather than changing the taste of the salt.
                      Sorry, I should have been more clear.

                      Yes, the switch from wood to grease was for environmental purposes, but I was questioning why they would have chosen wood to begin with. It's obviously not environmentally friendly, it's labor intensive, and probably not cost-effective. It strikes me that they probably used wood-fired entirely as a "artisanal" affectation.

                      Wood fired ovens arguably make better pizza (not really sure about that, tbh) and are good for grilling and barbecue, but if you're just boiling water, heat is heat. Noting from the fuel source ought to be ending up in the final product.

                      I looked up "how to make your own sea salt." The answer is. Get a bunch of sea water. Strain it through cheese cloth to get rid of bits of sand, etc. Boil it down until it's the consistency of wet sand (don't want to scorch the salt) and then let it dry out in a big dish. Lots of comments about the risk of pollution.

                      And yet I'm still not clear why sea salt is supposed to be better than just plain salt.

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                        Annoying New York Times articles

                        Not the NYT, but a damn annoying article lamenting that though Zadie Smith wrote an article about a billboard slogan, the piece itself was not an example of branded content:

                        http://contently.com/strategist/2014/10/09/this-zadie-smith-essay-isnt-a-native-ad-for-corona-but-what-if-it-was/

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                          Annoying New York Times articles

                          I got a few paragraphs in and was overwhelmed by a desire to end the human race.

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                            Annoying New York Times articles

                            Charging for ice.
                            http://www.eater.com/2014/10/20/7020437/new-restaurant-charges-diners-fancy-ice

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                              Annoying New York Times articles

                              Note what happened to the clowns that tried this in New York.

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                                Annoying New York Times articles

                                You'd think The Darby's experience would have a chilling effect.

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                                  Annoying New York Times articles

                                  And that Second State is skating on thin ice.

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                                    Annoying New York Times articles

                                    As one of our resident food and drink snobs, I'd like to point out that I sometimes quite like the giant-ice-cube thing that's something of a fashion in the cocktail bars these days. Particularly in a drink like an old fashioned, where the slow dilution changes the flavour as it melts.

                                    But I want to throttle all bar-tenders who have a "hand cut ice" thing going on. Hand cut ice is even less useful than fancy salt (where at least the different crystal shapes can give different textures). There's no benefit. All it does it present the establishment at the forefront of wankery. And usually adds another couple of minutes to the wait for the drink. When it already takes far, far too long for cocktails to come to the table (a particular bugbear of mine, if you want a proper first world problem).

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                                      Annoying New York Times articles

                                      Why would anyone want to cut ice when the technology for making it in any size and shape imaginable is well-established?

                                      I bought a thing to make big ice cubes in my own freezer, for the reason you explain. It's silicone. Cost a few dollars.

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                                        Annoying New York Times articles

                                        Because the current incarnation of "cocktail culture" is all about ostentatious presentation rather than actual mixed drinks.

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                                          Annoying New York Times articles

                                          A quick catch up from me:

                                          Reed - I guess using water from the sea and boiling it down is considered better than the destruction from mining it. Complete guess though.

                                          While I completely understand the ice-sphere for whiskey (cools, but doesn't dilute), I am way out of whack with American whiskey approaches. They get all bent out of shape when I ask for some room temperature water. I don't really care myself, but given their created theatre I like to make them uncomfortable with the Scottish bar approach to a single malt.

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                                            Annoying New York Times articles

                                            As Ursus says, the current culture is about "craft cocktails" which implies that they are lovingly crafted. As most people have begun to realise again that cocktails are broadly 3 or 4 liquids shaken until cold, there's not a lot of crafting going on.

                                            So bars are trying to get another "artisanal" edge by having artisan ice-carvers artisanally making smaller, bespoke, artisanal icecubes from bigger, not yet artisan ice blocks. It's utter bollocks.

                                            Note: I'm not completely disparaging the cocktail barman's craft. A good barman can ask what flavours you like and make good choices for you or invent a drink for you. That's a very nice experience to have. But when you order a normal, regular, run of the mill cocktail (or something they have on the bar's cocktail menu), it takes almost no effort from the barman and should be on your table in about a minute.

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                                              Annoying New York Times articles

                                              Any place that refers to their bartenders as mixologists should be avoided.

                                              I remember Eater having a spoof trendy cocktail menu, but I can't find it now.

                                              But regarding ice, I do think that fountain drinks taste better when the ice is the small pea-sized balls of ice, and not the bigger ice cubes that you normally see.

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                                                Annoying New York Times articles

                                                Well, what's a posh cocktail experience without hand crafted ice cubes frozen from pure mountain spring water bottled at source and served in diamond cut art deco crystal glass with organic naturally colored marichismo cherry and hand picked fair trade twist of orange, stirred not shaken, with a custom designed designer swizzel stick?

                                                Bah! If your cocktail is not served with an honest to goodness swizzel stick then you're being sold short of the full on authentic cocktail experience.

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                                                  Annoying New York Times articles

                                                  Hello thread, it's been a minute. Of course, it's a real estate article that brings me back:

                                                  Everybody knows TV togetherness is good for a few laughs and convenient for scriptwriters. But even in today’s heated real estate market, some New Yorkers choose to move into the same building as their pals, creating enclaves where it is perfectly appropriate to show up for a get-together in pajamas and slippers.

                                                  The concept is firmly rooted in history: Immigrants have long rebuilt communities by populating buildings and neighborhoods with extended families.
                                                  ...
                                                  On a Saturday night last March, Catie Abrams realized that she might be able to live in the same building as her boyfriend, two of her college friends and their boyfriends. The three couples had gathered at the Hog Pit, a Flatiron restaurant and bar, to watch a college basketball game. Ms. Abrams and her boyfriend, William McKee, had just returned from a day spent traipsing through the rain looking at rentals.

                                                  After visiting a few buildings, they had happened upon 388 Bridge, a new luxury tower in Downtown Brooklyn named for its street address, with numerous rentals available. Ms. Abrams could hardly contain her excitement as she passed out floor plans to the group.

                                                  “I said, ‘You guys have to live in this building,’” recalled Ms. Abrams, who is 27 and a hedge fund analyst. “I think everybody was excited.”

                                                  All three couples were planning to move out of their Manhattan apartments by summer, and although the idea of Brooklyn was appealing — they could potentially get more space for the money — it was also unnerving. None of them had lived in Brooklyn before. Each worried that if the others did not follow, he or she could end up living in an unfamiliar borough without friends nearby.

                                                  “One of the issues that people my age have about moving to Brooklyn is that you think that the second you live there, you are moving to a foreign country and will never see anyone again,” said Woody Wright, 27, who grew up on East 58th Street and, at the time of the Hog Pit gathering, was planning to move in with his girlfriend, Britaania Poppie, who is 26 and works in finance.

                                                  Ms. Abrams’s enthusiasm proved infectious. By August, all three couples had moved into one-bedroom apartments at 388 Bridge, paying around $3,200 a month in rent for apartments on the 23rd, 24th and 25th floors.


                                                  Let me just make sure this doesn't get overlooked:

                                                  “One of the issues that people my age have about moving to Brooklyn is that you think that the second you live there, you are moving to a foreign country and will never see anyone again,” said Woody Wright, 27, who grew up on East 58th Street and, at the time of the Hog Pit gathering, was planning to move in with his girlfriend, Britaania Poppie, who is 26 and works in finance.

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                                                    Annoying New York Times articles

                                                    a new luxury tower in Downtown Brooklyn named for its street address

                                                    Ha! That's awesome. I live at 417 Acacia Boulevard (*), a house named for its street address.

                                                    * - the number and name have actually been changed, just in case any of you are weird stalkers.

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