Puddle Temperature Alarm

June 7th, 2022
cooking, ideas
I cook pancakes for my kids most mornings, and the griddle takes a little while to heat up. If you look around for articles on how to know when your pan is hot enough you'll see people suggest dropping in a little water and seeing how it behaves. The problem is, this requires you to be paying attention and guessing when it is about right to test. I'm trying to do a lot of different things in the morning, and don't want to allocate so much attention here. Instead, I put the water in at the beginning:

Once the pan heats up, the water starts to sizzle: the temperature is almost high enough:

The noise acts like an alarm, reminding me to stop unloading the dishwasher or whatever and continue with the pancakes.

Comment via: facebook, lesswrong, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

You will not be a member of the permanent underclass

I see some people worrying about being in the “permanent underclass.” AI will be better than humans at everything, and automate all the jobs, and then no one will be able to earn money through their work.

via Thing of Things April 5, 2026

Microfictions

A few microfictions, very much inspired by Quiet Pine Trees. I hope to add more over time. No LLMs.

via Evan Fields March 27, 2026

Daycares and the Brown School

As someone in Somerville I notice that there are quite high prices regarding childcare. The average family in Somerville pays $1,100 to $3,500 for daycare per month, and I want to make the costs more affordable. I have also noticed that housing is quite …

via Lily Wise's Blog Posts March 22, 2026

more     (via openring)