Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to survive boiling water

taxa.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 131 posts

Re: How to survive boiling water

#101

Post by therouwboat »

neonstatic wrote: post #77
Schiendelman wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard a lot of arguments that sounded, at first glance, like legitimate concerns. But I haven't seen any that weren't rooted in "People are telling me to be scared so my concern must be legitimate," or "I don't know how this works and it sounds new so I'm worried." I think people with followings online got a ton of economic benefit from scaring people, the same as the rest of the news industry. Remember Upton Si…

> I think people with followings online got a ton of economic benefit from scaring people Yes, it was very upsetting at the time and unfortunately remains a constant. I guess one has to go through that at least once to recognize a grifter. > so even in hindsight, none of the concerns seem to have been legitimate. The point was not only that the vaccines were rushed, it was also that there was a tremendous amount of c…

I was in Finland during covid and nobody forced me to take vaccine, but I figured that as healthy middle aged man covid is probably not that bad and if I can handle covid then side effects from vaccine are really nothing.

Re: How to survive boiling water

#102

Post by Aachen »

nrclark wrote: post #67
Aachen wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-native speaker here. I hadn't noticed there are two words for what seems like the same thing. Is there a difference between a water boiler and a water cooker?

oh, no that wasn't a correction - it was a pun because "cooked" in American slang means "broken / destroyed / over". In parent's context, "boiling" is correct. "Boiling" does have a few meanings in English. As a verb, it can either mean "cook in boiling liquid", or it can mean "heat a liquid to its boiling-point". As an adjective, it means "heated to boiling-point". Also "boiling angry" means very, very angry.

Ooh I see, thanks for the explanation and sorry for destroying your pun! ^^'

Re: How to survive boiling water

#103

Post by Aachen »

Eisenstein wrote: post #72
Aachen wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't know pressure is used in sterilisation. Trying to look up why that helps, the Wikipedia article on autoclaves does not explain why but says it uses 1 bar, which would be equivalent to ambient pressure (atmosphere at sea level is ~1.01 bar). Does it maybe mean an additional bar, so twice atmospheric pressure? Wikipedia also says it uses steam, not just hot air, and again doesn't say anything as to why Do you…

I'm pretty sure it is because when there is high pressure the boiling point of water is higher.

How would that help? It never says water, always steam, and it needs to get in all crevices evenly which afaik is easier with a gas than a liquid. If the steam condenses to water (for example due to raising its boiling point above the autoclave's temperature of ~125°C) that'd probably be bad

Apparently at 2 bars, water boils at 120°C. The first temperature mentioned on Wikipedia is 121°C. That's awfully close; but elsewhere the article is quite clear about using higher-than-atmospheric atmospheric pressure. I don't see an explanation that fits all the mentioned facts

Re: How to survive boiling water

#104

Post by tcmart14 »

lithocarpus wrote: post #76
Aachen wrote: post #69

> about 7 out of 10 people in the U.S. were prescribed antibiotics in 2024 according to . This blew my mind so I double checked the source. It links to https://www.cdc.gov/antibiotic-use/hcp/data-research/antibio... which contains some numbers but not the claim. It links to various reports, the latest one (2024 at the time of writing) https://www.cdc.gov/antibiotic-use/media/pdfs/2024-Annual-Re... says at the top of…

There's no way 7 in 10 people were prescribed antibiotics in 2024. This looks like a simple and egregious misinterpretation of the data, which seem to be all too common. I could believe there were 700 prescriptions given in the US per 1000 people in the US population. But many of those would be repeats to the same smaller number of people. I still would say there's way too much antiobiotic use - every time doctors ha…

My wife isn't with me to answer directly, so I am going off memory. She is a nurse. But I am pretty she when telling me about her day at the hospital she also mentions needing to change antibiotic for patients for various reasons. I am guessing that also counts as 1 person, multiple antibiotics. Probably considered "separate" prescriptions.

Re: How to survive boiling water

#105

Post by quickthrowman »

NDlurker wrote: post #88
Aachen wrote: post #69

> about 7 out of 10 people in the U.S. were prescribed antibiotics in 2024 according to . This blew my mind so I double checked the source. It links to https://www.cdc.gov/antibiotic-use/hcp/data-research/antibio... which contains some numbers but not the claim. It links to various reports, the latest one (2024 at the time of writing) https://www.cdc.gov/antibiotic-use/media/pdfs/2024-Annual-Re... says at the top of…

I had 2 or 3 rounds of antibiotics and steroids in 2025 for a stubborn ear infection.

I just finished my second course of antibiotics to treat an ear infection that wasn’t resolved after the first round and I also had a course of antibiotics earlier in the year to treat an infection on my thumb joint on the pad side that caused the worst pain I’ve ever felt.

Three antibiotic prescriptions this year and it’s not even August yet! It had been a number of years since I had taken antibiotics.

Re: How to survive boiling water

#106

Post by joveian »

donkeyboy wrote: post #11

That was a fun read. The author has a really good storytelling style. I dont understand why the cold brew test had fewer bacteria than the steeped teas. If the bacteria are shielded in spores, shouldnt it be expected that they have the same amount of bacteria?

15 minutes is just not very long at all when cold brewing even at room temperature. And this was refrigerated (4C) so I'm sure the flavor would be minimal. You would normally cold brew for at least 8 hours at that temperature. So much less of the tea is ending up in the tested water.

If you look at the pictures of the plates the one with cold brew and where the full tea bag is added to the plate seems to have a good bit more growth than the others (there is a larger image of this one). So it doesn't seem like the spores are necessarily unaffected by the boiling just that some survive (or maybe they all survive but only some decide to start growing?). The thing I find strange is that the tea bag that was directly added without any brewing doesn't seem to have much growth at all. Actually, also that in the one with the tea bag added after cold brewing that has extra robust growth much of that growth seems to happen away from the visible pieces of tea.

I agree that the author has great style and I find it interesting to think about where and how bacteria (and fungi) like to grow.

Re: How to survive boiling water

#107

Post by [deleted] »

lostlogin wrote: post #79
nekusar wrote: post #35

This is kinda disgusting but I think applies to this discussion. Blue cheese. Its living mold. I think it tastes good. BUT.. when I eat it, I notice a few days later that my excrement smells more like blue cheese as well. My guess is that I'm inoculating my own digestive tract with blue cheese molds. Another mishap happened with my cat too. I gave her some beef from our supper. Some of the gorgonzola blue cheese sauc…

Kopi Luwak is coffee that’s been digested by a cat, and it’s very valuable. You might be onto something, have you considered trying the cat blue cheese? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_luwak

[deleted]

Re: How to survive boiling water

#108

Post by Eisenstein »

Aachen wrote: post #103
Eisenstein wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure it is because when there is high pressure the boiling point of water is higher.

How would that help? It never says water, always steam, and it needs to get in all crevices evenly which afaik is easier with a gas than a liquid. If the steam condenses to water (for example due to raising its boiling point above the autoclave's temperature of ~125°C) that'd probably be bad Apparently at 2 bars, water boils at 120°C. The first temperature mentioned on Wikipedia is 121°C. That's awfully close; but el…

> If the steam condenses to water (for example due to raising its boiling point above the autoclave's temperature of ~125°C) that'd probably be bad

If water boils at 100C then steam condenses at 99C. If water boils at 120C then steam condenses at 119C.

> higher-than-atmospheric atmospheric pressure.

What does that mean?

> I don't see an explanation that fits all the mentioned facts

Is it really a difficult concept? If the boiling point rises so does the condensation point.

Re: How to survive boiling water

#109

Post by Eisenstein »

Aachen wrote: post #69

> about 7 out of 10 people in the U.S. were prescribed antibiotics in 2024 according to . This blew my mind so I double checked the source. It links to https://www.cdc.gov/antibiotic-use/hcp/data-research/antibio... which contains some numbers but not the claim. It links to various reports, the latest one (2024 at the time of writing) https://www.cdc.gov/antibiotic-use/media/pdfs/2024-Annual-Re... says at the top of…

Doxycycline is also a prescribed for acne, so there are a lot of teenagers getting 12 prescriptions every year.

Re: How to survive boiling water

#110

Post by micr0bi0l0gist »

Aachen wrote: post #69

> about 7 out of 10 people in the U.S. were prescribed antibiotics in 2024 according to . This blew my mind so I double checked the source. It links to https://www.cdc.gov/antibiotic-use/hcp/data-research/antibio... which contains some numbers but not the claim. It links to various reports, the latest one (2024 at the time of writing) https://www.cdc.gov/antibiotic-use/media/pdfs/2024-Annual-Re... says at the top of…

Author of the article here, thank you for pointing this out out! I added the following correction to my article: "Killing bacteria thus became a major preoccupation of modern life. Its most visible manifestation today might be taking antibiotics (first available in the 1940s): there were ~700 antibiotic prescriptions per 1000 people in 2024 according to CDC data. A close second might be the dizzying array of disinfectant products found in U.S. grocery stores." I added this footnote as well: " Author correction 7/28/26: I reported this initially as “7 in 10 people were prescribed antibiotics,” but a commenter on another site pointed out that the original report data likely reflects a smaller number of people getting repeat prescriptions, so I have reported the raw data from the CDC report instead."
Post reply on HN