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The Last Egg

brr.fyi

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Re: The Last Egg

#171

Post by zerobrainwash »

detaro wrote: post #151
zerobrainwash wrote: post #150

Does anyone know how to get a foot in the door for jobs in places like this? Not necessarily Antarctica, could be Greenland or other remote, harsh places. I am a regular software engineer from the EU, would be over the moon to pursue something like this

Long-term stays is going to be a lot harder than shorter visits. Need/option for such travel tends to be explicitly called out in job descriptions by scientific agencies/institutes running such things. If you're not at it from a scientific angle, expect it to be technician roles (and thus adjust year salary expectations accordingly)

What about short-term stays? Is it usually only as a visitor, or there might be volunteering opportunities?

Re: The Last Egg

#172

Post by ciabattabread »

Paul_S wrote: post #165

Why can't they keep chicken??? Chicken need water and layers pellets (which store fine). You get fresh eggs every day and free manure to use in your greenhouse! I really don't understand why they don't do it.

Well, there's bird flu...

Re: The Last Egg

#173

Post by idlewords »

lmm wrote: post #122
idlewords wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the South Pole? A 2011 midwinter airdrop of emergency medical supplies was treated as a big deal; when did it become routine?

It was routine up until IIRC 1996-1999 (which lines up with when they switched over from Navy to National Guard operation).

You sure we don't have an austral winter/calendar winter misunderstanding here?

Re: The Last Egg

#174

Post by [deleted] »

WJW wrote: post #107
MiguelVieira wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa I had no idea: "To reduce the cost and increase the efficiency and reliability of transporting fuel and materials to South Pole Station, USAP established an overland traverse route from McMurdo Station to the South Pole. The traverse route is approximately 1,030 miles long and took several years of route-finding to prove and to mitigate areas with crevassing. This route is traveled by the South Pole Traverse (SP…

I am perversely drawn to applying to this job, even though I know it is at least 500% more shitty than what I currently do.

[deleted]

Re: The Last Egg

#175

Post by globular-toast »

bitdivision wrote: post #31
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #7

Weird they don't stock UHT milk. I buy milk for 6 months and keep it in my pantry. I honestly can't tell the difference between modern UHT milk and mass-produced "fresh" milk (at 2% anyway). They could in theory ship in UHT milk instead of fresh, and stock enough extra to last a few more months in winter. It would be fun to make your own cheese down there as a hobby! Eating by the seasons is also pretty interesting,…

I'm surprised you can't tell the difference between UHT and regular milk. I've tried a few brands in the UK, and there's a clear difference in tea / coffee, and it's particularly marked if you're drinking milk on its own. Maybe the UK is lagging behind on UHT? Or I'm just buying the wrong brand.

I live in the UK and always thought UHT milk was horrible. Recently I spent some time in Spain where all the milk is UHT (presumably because of the climate). At some point I realised I couldn't tell the difference, or at least it wasn't horrible. However, I was only consuming it heated up, like in a café con leche. Maybe that's why GP can't taste the difference?

Re: The Last Egg

#176

Post by CatWChainsaw »

JohnMakin wrote: post #16

And people think we're gonna colonize mars. We can't even colonize the south pole, a much more hospitable environment.

Bah, we'll just melt the place and make it hospitable. You know, at the expense of everywhere else. Good practice for colonizing Venus though. :)

Re: The Last Egg

#177

Post by teh_klev »

brr-fyi wrote: post #167
teh_klev wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fairly certain the air will be conditioned and inside humidity kept to an acceptable standard.

Indoor air is heated but not humidified. Relative humidity outside is high, but the temperature is very cold, so the absolute amount of water in the air is very low. Bring that same air indoors, heat it up by ~150 degrees Fahrenheit, and the resulting relative humidity is very low. Hard to measure at such low numbers. I have a handful of cheap consumer-grade sensors with me, and they all report "0%" or "lower limit"…

Much appreciated for expanding on the humidity thing.

> Static buildup is a real issue. It's muscle memory now for me to ground myself before touching any electronics. There's makeshift grounding points (metal tape, metal frames, etc) everywhere. I'm still not used to the little shocks every time.

I did wonder about that, and so it is a thing you need to learn to live with. As I'd mentioned in a comment below, I had the misfortune of working in a newly built data centre where the HVAC was still being commissioned/tuned that caused the humidity to drop severely in the rack zones. It was a right pain in the fingers being zapped frequently as we moved racks and other non-electronic infrastructure into place. But it was also comedic as well as you could regularly hear quiet yelps and expletives from others in the team as they too were being zapped :)

Re: The Last Egg

#178

Post by crazygringo »

reillyse wrote: post #120
crazygringo wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you just talking about normal milk in Ireland like this? https://www.tesco.ie/groceries/en-IE/products/250005606 It's essentially identical to whole milk in the US. Nutritionally, compositionally, and flavor-wise. I really can't imagine what you're talking about "tasting like water" unless you switched to skim milk or 2% in the US without realizing it?

Nope. American milk is pasteurized to a much higher temp. It lasts way longer. Irish goes off in days, US milk will last a month in the fridge. The extra pasteurization effects the taste and flavor.

I can't find any evidence to support that.

High-Temperature, Short-Time (HSTS) Pasteurization appears to be the standard in both Ireland [1] and the US [2] -- 71.7°C / 161°F for 15 seconds.

And I can tell you from personal experience that US milk goes bad in days as well, and has for decades. I don't know where you're getting the idea that it lasts a month in the fridge.

There are real differences in some foods between the US and Europe, e.g. American eggs are washed while European ones aren't. But fresh milk from the supermarket appears to be very much identical.

[1] https://ndc.ie/accordion/what-is-pasteurisation/

[2] https://www.usdairy.com/news-articles/why-is-milk-pasteurize...

Re: The Last Egg

#179

Post by abawany »

bitdivision wrote: post #31
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #7

Weird they don't stock UHT milk. I buy milk for 6 months and keep it in my pantry. I honestly can't tell the difference between modern UHT milk and mass-produced "fresh" milk (at 2% anyway). They could in theory ship in UHT milk instead of fresh, and stock enough extra to last a few more months in winter. It would be fun to make your own cheese down there as a hobby! Eating by the seasons is also pretty interesting,…

I'm surprised you can't tell the difference between UHT and regular milk. I've tried a few brands in the UK, and there's a clear difference in tea / coffee, and it's particularly marked if you're drinking milk on its own. Maybe the UK is lagging behind on UHT? Or I'm just buying the wrong brand.

I've tried UHT-processed milk in other countries and agree with you that the flavor is bizarre; usually the stuff is sold in TetraPak containers ime. But in the US, I can't tell the difference in flavor compared to non-UHT milk - Horizon was the first brand I noticed that sells mostly UHT milk products but nowadays, most grocery store-brand milk is UHT processed and it seems fine.

Re: The Last Egg

#180

Post by Paul_S »

ciabattabread wrote: post #172
Paul_S wrote: post #165

Why can't they keep chicken??? Chicken need water and layers pellets (which store fine). You get fresh eggs every day and free manure to use in your greenhouse! I really don't understand why they don't do it.

Well, there's bird flu...

Not if they hatch them from eggs there isn't. And it's not like they're going to keep them outdoors.
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