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Mother of All Grease Fires (1994)

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Re: Mother of All Grease Fires (1994)

#31

Post by GJim »

jandrese wrote: post #6
amluto wrote: post #2

Another stupid part of this: used cooking grease has positive market value! Quite a few companies, even in expensive places like Palo Alto, will happily supply you, for free, with barrels and such to hold your grease, and they'll come empty them when they're full, and I think you can even often negotiate to get paid to give these companies your grease. It gets recycled into various non-tasty but still useful commodit…

In the old days people would convert diesel trucks and cars to run on "biodiesel" which was lightly processed used cooking oil. You could tell who did that because their cars always smelled like french fries.

> "biodiesel" which was lightly processed used cooking oil

No.

Biodiesel is fuel made directly from vegetable matter; typically it needs a ""special"" engine to run, or is blended in a low ratio with ordinary diesel (B7 in the UK and EU).

Processed cooking oil is made into HVO.

This can be used as a direct 1:1 replacement for ordinary diesel without engine modifications. Very green! Unsurprisingly, HVO has a higher price than biodiesel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrotreated_vegetable_oil

HVO is easily available in the UK and is typically bought by bus companies and delivery companies seeking to improve their green footprint.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=HVO+supliers+UK&ia=web

Re: Mother of All Grease Fires (1994)

#32

Post by ralferoo »

bertylicious wrote: post #27
rmunn wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many eco-warrior types, not every single one but many, have... how to put this gently... not thought things all the way through. To name just one example I can think of: protesting an oil pipeline being constructed and/or extended. Well, what will happen if the pipeline doesn't go in? People will still want gasoline — protesting the pipeline isn't going to do anything about people's desire to drive their cars around…

What is an "eco warrior"? It sounds similar to the alt-right term "social justice warrior". Is this on purpose?

The term eco warrior, in the UK at least, long predates social justice warrior. As the peer reply says, it's long been applied to members of Greenpeace and I think I first heard the term in the late 80s or 90s. As they said, maybe it was because of their ship Rainbow Warrior which was sunk by the French government in 1985 and prompted Greenpeace to continue the name with future boats.

I don't think it particularly had a negative connotation until recently though, to me at least it was always just someone who had strong opinions about protecting the environment, and Greenpeace always had quite a lot of support from the general population and they weren't actively disrupting the lives of ordinary citizens in the way Just Stop Oil do for instance.

Re: Mother of All Grease Fires (1994)

#33

Post by adiabatichottub »

GJim wrote: post #31
jandrese wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the old days people would convert diesel trucks and cars to run on "biodiesel" which was lightly processed used cooking oil. You could tell who did that because their cars always smelled like french fries.

> "biodiesel" which was lightly processed used cooking oil No. Biodiesel is fuel made directly from vegetable matter; typically it needs a ""special"" engine to run, or is blended in a low ratio with ordinary diesel (B7 in the UK and EU). Processed cooking oil is made into HVO. This can be used as a direct 1:1 replacement for ordinary diesel without engine modifications. Very green! Unsurprisingly, HVO has a higher p…

In the early 2000s I traveled thousands of miles in an old school bus fueled by waste vegetable oil (WVO). The system was very simple, the bus had an extra fuel tank with a heat exchanger to the engine coolant, a couple fuel filters, and some hand-operated valves in the engine compartment. You start on diesel, warm up and switch to WVO. Before shutting down you would switch back to diesel to purge the system. You also pack a box of extra filters because they'd need frequent replacement. It was a somewhat popular conversation in some circles. Old Mercedes Benz diesel sedans were a common choice.

Re: Mother of All Grease Fires (1994)

#34

Post by xtiansimon »

wvbdmp wrote: post #11

Fun fact: I learned yesterday that that expression was popularized in English only as recently as 1991 by none other than Sadam Hussein when he referred to the Gulf War as “the mother of all battles”. At least that’s the story. Apparently it was a bit of a meme in the early nineties, so this post may be referencing it more or less directly. Hussein was of course referencing the Quran.

During p45 they dropped the MOAB on Afghanistan. The name got stuck in my head.

I was making a lot of Jupyter Notebooks at the time. I would create several versions while narrowing down an algorithm or constructing the principle proof of concept code. When I finally arrived at an essential solution, I would make a single cell file that would write to disc. I named the file *-MOAF, Mother of All Files.

Some things don’t change.

https://archive.ph/Oxcsr

Re: Mother of All Grease Fires (1994)

#35

Post by TomMasz »

Having worked in food service, I learned that restaurants are low-margin businesses that will cut every corner they can. Paying to have their grease taken care of when there's a convenient drain out back is a non-starter. It wouldn't be surprising if they also never cleaned their ventilation hoods or the grease trap in the drains. When you see a mention of a restaurant fire (that isn't arson), it's likely because of dirty hoods.

Re: Mother of All Grease Fires (1994)

#36

Post by DoneWithAllThat »

Animats wrote: post #25

Oh, that incident. That was back when Altavista, the first search engine, was in downtown Palo Alto. Brian Reid was behind that. It was intended as a demo for the DEC Alpha CPU. They wanted to show that a large number of little machines could do a big job, which was a radical idea at the time. They were leasing an old telco building, on Bryant St. behind the Walgreens on University Avenue. The telco had moved to a la…

Oh man PAIX brings back memories. Most people have no idea how few true convergence points the Internet had back then or how crucial PAIX was to virtually the entire Internet at that point.

Re: Mother of All Grease Fires (1994)

#37

Post by [deleted] »

TomMasz wrote: post #35

Having worked in food service, I learned that restaurants are low-margin businesses that will cut every corner they can. Paying to have their grease taken care of when there's a convenient drain out back is a non-starter. It wouldn't be surprising if they also never cleaned their ventilation hoods or the grease trap in the drains. When you see a mention of a restaurant fire (that isn't arson), it's likely because of…

[deleted]

Re: Mother of All Grease Fires (1994)

#38

Post by 8bitsrule »

rmunn wrote: post #10
ralferoo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK, all the used oil from MacDonalds is converted into biodiesel. I often walk past the plan where they do this and there's usually a lorry waiting to be allowed in through the gates. A few years back there was some eco-warrior protest outside trying to stop the lorries going in. Not really sure what they were trying to achieve with that as it seemed counter to their aims.

Many eco-warrior types, not every single one but many, have... how to put this gently... not thought things all the way through. To name just one example I can think of: protesting an oil pipeline being constructed and/or extended. Well, what will happen if the pipeline doesn't go in? People will still want gasoline — protesting the pipeline isn't going to do anything about people's desire to drive their cars around…

You may not have learned much about them, or thought through the potential costs of a pipeline being built through your property. Some of those 'eco-warrior types' are not protesting a pipeline, they are protesting the potential irreversable damages to their communities if a neglected or mismanaged pipeline springs a leak (and many, many have), or catches fire, or explodes. Many of them have already seen more than one result of cavalier energy company facilities that have ruined community water and food supplies. What will happen to their community if the pipeline doesn't go in? NOTHING.

Re: Mother of All Grease Fires (1994)

#39

Post by pixl97 »

brookst wrote: post #20
skyberrys wrote: post #4

Love how many people were called over to provide expert advice on figuring out why diners couldn't enjoy the lovely outdoor seating without an adult on their nostrils.

Without a what ?

Evidently in the 90s facesitting was a popular pasttime in Palo Alto.

Re: Mother of All Grease Fires (1994)

#40

Post by quickthrowman »

Firehawke wrote: post #21
wvbdmp wrote: post #11

Fun fact: I learned yesterday that that expression was popularized in English only as recently as 1991 by none other than Sadam Hussein when he referred to the Gulf War as “the mother of all battles”. At least that’s the story. Apparently it was a bit of a meme in the early nineties, so this post may be referencing it more or less directly. Hussein was of course referencing the Quran.

Yep. "Mother of all X" memes weren't even remotely uncommon for a handful of years during and after Operation Desert Storm. The Iraqi Minister of Information, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, also gave rise to "There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!" and the like. Almost none of those memes are remembered outside of those who were alive and watching the nightly news at the time, but there were some pre-internet m…

> Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, also gave rise to "There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!" and the like.

If you don’t recognize that name, “Baghdad Bob” was the popular nickname he was given back in the 00s.

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