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Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

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Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#241

Post by schneems »

left-struck wrote: post #233
TitaRusell wrote: post #167

The real story here is how a corporation can just pack up and leave it's mess for the government to clean up. With public money. Recently in my city they discovered that a laundromat had polluted the ground water. The owners are long gone. Unfortunately chemicals are forever. The municipality tried to send the bill to the current owners but that is not real justice either.

Listen, I hate shitty corporations too, but if you read the article it’s the government who shut down the business because of mold growth in the factory. Anyway, just saying there’s some nuance here. Like maybe if a government shuts down a business like this there needs to be some negotiation and an exit plan.

Far more companies just go belly up and leave whatever is left lying around. If we are lucky the land or whatever supports someone else tearing it down.

In software we build without considering how to sunset or deprecate. But perhaps we would build differently if we did so.

Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#242

Post by Daneel_ »

roncesvalles wrote: post #210
xp84 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obligatory https://xkcd.com/2501/ "The average North American probably only knows about Ackee and Saltfish, and Curry Goat!" "And Oxtail Stew, of course." "Of course!" Does one need to know a variety of dishes from each of the 193 UN-recognized states' cuisines to not be uncultured? If not, which ones are OK to be ignorant of? Clearly Jamaica's a must-have, but I'd like the full list so I can remediate the issue at o…

>Does one need to know a variety of dishes from each of the 193 UN-recognized states' cuisines to not be uncultured? No, but you should know the top 5 dishes of the 10-15 most popular cuisines of the world, at least. That's only about 50-75 dishes; many individual restaurants have bigger menus than that. >Ackee and Saltfish, and Curry Goat! And Oxtail Stew, Yes... I would expect one to know these. At least that oxtai…

I'm from Australia where we really don't have any 'national dishes', so we just eat a wide variety of everyone else's dishes. I've never heard of ackee, saltfish, oxtail stew, or Jamaican beef patties. Does that make me uncultured? I'd argue not. Do you know what a schnitty is? Or a sausage sambo? Everyone here does, but I certainly don't expect the rest of the world to know about them because 'of course' they're everywhere and significant.

Everyone's perspective is from their local area, so please don't expect everyone globally to know about your local food, no matter how broadly you think it's known.

Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#243

Post by dataflow »

arjie wrote: post #231
gruez wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Not being from Toronto, never in a million years would I even think of that as a visitor. >I grew up in another country where Jamaican patties were popular [...] Have you considered the possibility that Jamaican patties aren't universally popular and the fact that the two of you came from cities with a significant Jamaican diaspora doesn't invalidate the experience of the person who probably came from a city that d…

All of that may be true and yet it seems overly prescriptive for a state authority to determine the name of food. After all, a cheesesteak is not a steak but a sandwich. Regional variations on names are quite reasonable. On the other hand, Canadians are a prescriptive culture. In Montreal, for instance, they are very strict about street signs and so on. Perhaps it is just how things are done by that people.

> After all, a cheesesteak is not a steak but a sandwich.

I don't know if you're not seeing the obvious or deliberately ignoring it, but the rather-salient differences between those are that (a) "cheesesteak" being one word rather than two tells you it might be a different thing, and (b) "cheesesteak" (or even "cheese steak" by itself) do not carry a single universal meaning different from the rest. You know, unlike "beef patty", where even Googling it now doesn't show Jamaica in the top result.

If you want something to compare against, this is like banning people businesses from calling soymilk just "milk". Nobody minds if you sell soymilk or Jamaican beef patties. They're just asking you not to actively hijack terms that carry significantly different meaning to millions/billions of other people. It's not that hard and it's not some sort of totalitarian flex to have rules like this. With HN being what it is, they'd probably call banning that anti-veganism.

Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#244

Post by mythrwy »

inigyou wrote: post #192
mythrwy wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A little salt in compost is fine. Too much is an issue. They actually sell salt based soil amendments for areas that have been depleted of minerals. (Sea-90 is one brand). It's very lightly applied. It could be composted and that would kill the smell, it's just getting the ratios right and you might need an additional nitrogen source, but Canada has a lot of wood chips for the carbon.

I thought fish was full of nitrogen compounds and that's why it smells so bad

It is yes. I failed to make the point clear.

The process may need an additional nitrogen source depending on salt content of the fish sauce. Because the required N per volume of wood chips so it composts hotly may result in too much salt for the process if only fish sauce is used. In which case it could be diluted in an additional (low salt) nitrogen source.

I don't know how much salt fish sauce actually has, just it could be diluted and composted anyway if it's too much raw.

Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#245

Post by dataflow »

cwillu wrote: post #226
beedeebeedee wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m from New Haven and if you went into a place and asked for a beef patty you would get a Jamaican beef patty, not a burger. It may not be everywhere, but pretty much every city I’ve lived in that is the case

If you ask for a beef patty here, the server will look confused, and then bring you a hamburger patty on a plate

Anecdote: I asked for the "mushroom burger" on their menu at an airport years ago -- I didn't want meat and it had nothing indicting meat in the listed ingredients that I checked -- and they brought me a hamburger beef patty with mushrooms on top. Imagine both of our surprises when they brought me the plate and I was like uhm I think that's another table's order? Well it turns out, at least to that restaurant (idk about the rest of the locality), that was considered a mushroom burger. Elsewhere in the same country (and even Googling it now), a mushroom burger means a vegetarian burger with a portobello mushroom or such as the "patty". Like how a salmon burger means the patty is made of salmon, or a veggie burger means the patty is made of veggies.

I sat there looking dumb and the waiter thought (like everyone here) that I was some idiot who didn't know what a burger was. Now I'm not suggesting they need to regulate what "mushroom burger" means across the locality too, but I couldn't have been the first one to get caught off-guard by this, and the whole incident never needed to happen either. At least in an airport where people from all over stop by, I seriously wouldn't think that only a racist or anti-meatatarian/anti-vegetarian dictatorship would impose some common-sense rules to prevent confusion or food/time wastage arising from cuisine-"unculturedness".

Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#246

Post by dataflow »

overfeed wrote: post #114
dataflow wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not being from Toronto, never in a million years would I even think of that as a visitor.

How many visitors do you think would go to a restaurant intending to order a (hamburger) beef patty? The potential for confusion is overstated.

You might be surprised, I had a similar kind of confusion myself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49164552

Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#247

Post by marak830 »

left-struck wrote: post #233
TitaRusell wrote: post #167

The real story here is how a corporation can just pack up and leave it's mess for the government to clean up. With public money. Recently in my city they discovered that a laundromat had polluted the ground water. The owners are long gone. Unfortunately chemicals are forever. The municipality tried to send the bill to the current owners but that is not real justice either.

Listen, I hate shitty corporations too, but if you read the article it’s the government who shut down the business because of mold growth in the factory. Anyway, just saying there’s some nuance here. Like maybe if a government shuts down a business like this there needs to be some negotiation and an exit plan.

"The value on the market [was] about three million dollars, but they would not let us sell it. And for that reason, we just [left] it there.”"

I think that's the point OP is pointing out, for better or worse (for what it's worth I believe "He suggests that a prior conflict with the CFIA over product labeling motivated them to close the factory before the inspection began" may be correct).

A company should have plans for cleaning up their product before just walking away and leaving other people to clean up their mess.

Maybe it's rather naive of me, but that's what I believe.

Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#248

Post by ta988 »

dataflow wrote: post #245
cwillu wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ask for a beef patty here, the server will look confused, and then bring you a hamburger patty on a plate

Anecdote: I asked for the "mushroom burger" on their menu at an airport years ago -- I didn't want meat and it had nothing indicting meat in the listed ingredients that I checked -- and they brought me a hamburger beef patty with mushrooms on top. Imagine both of our surprises when they brought me the plate and I was like uhm I think that's another table's order? Well it turns out, at least to that restaurant (idk ab…

I once ordered a vegetarian burger in some kind of trivia bar of a big american city. It came with bacon... When I asked they said: "but nobody ever complained about having bacon in it". there are alternate realities out there. Even in the deepest small town I had never seen that.

Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#249

Post by gguingff »

Daneel_ wrote: post #242
roncesvalles wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Does one need to know a variety of dishes from each of the 193 UN-recognized states' cuisines to not be uncultured? No, but you should know the top 5 dishes of the 10-15 most popular cuisines of the world, at least. That's only about 50-75 dishes; many individual restaurants have bigger menus than that. >Ackee and Saltfish, and Curry Goat! And Oxtail Stew, Yes... I would expect one to know these. At least that oxtai…

I'm from Australia where we really don't have any 'national dishes', so we just eat a wide variety of everyone else's dishes. I've never heard of ackee, saltfish, oxtail stew, or Jamaican beef patties. Does that make me uncultured? I'd argue not. Do you know what a schnitty is? Or a sausage sambo? Everyone here does, but I certainly don't expect the rest of the world to know about them because 'of course' they're eve…

As an american i'm quite certain the Australian national dish is made with marmite as opposed to the misconception that kangaroo is unseasoned

Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#250

Post by robocat »

dataflow wrote: post #245
cwillu wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ask for a beef patty here, the server will look confused, and then bring you a hamburger patty on a plate

Anecdote: I asked for the "mushroom burger" on their menu at an airport years ago -- I didn't want meat and it had nothing indicting meat in the listed ingredients that I checked -- and they brought me a hamburger beef patty with mushrooms on top. Imagine both of our surprises when they brought me the plate and I was like uhm I think that's another table's order? Well it turns out, at least to that restaurant (idk ab…

A mushroom burger is a normal order at a takeaway in New Zealand: the usual beef burger, but with added mushroom.

Note that there is often a rather restricted choice for vegetarian or vegan food (unless you pick your place carefully).

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