exchemist

Many are dissolved by organic solvents. There's a simple compatibility chart here that gives you an idea of what various polymers resist and what they are attacked by: https://www.calpaclab.com/chemical-compatibility-charts/

On the Obamas' bed, if I remember correctly.

Quite funny that he's hoping to be put in handcuffs, thinking it will rile up the MAGA blackshirts and make him a martyr. I think he's delusional. More interesting will be whether this lack of reaction makes the craven Republican party realise he's not the vote-winner they assume.

I started on the first one, was underwhelmed by its careful language and lack of conclusions, and didn't go any further.

You don't really encourage other people to take this seriously by linking a YouTube video, with a silly opening shot of little green men landing in a clearing in a forest. This stuff has been going on since the 1950s, with zero progress to show for it. Wake me up when somebody actually discovers something.

Seems at the protest rally Trump called, the journalists outnumbered the protesters 5:1 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-arrested-today-indict-stormy-daniels-manhattan-b2304990.html

Yes I was a bit baffled by this idea. It may simply be that cooking masks a bit of cork taint. But if it's really bad then I imagine one has to tip it down the drain.

Szplugg.

In any mass <-> volume conversion you always need to take into account density. The density of water happens to be 1g/ml, strictly speaking at 4C but close enough for most purposes at most temperatures. I spent my career in the oil industry, where we handled a variety of oils all with different densities. This made it very important to use the correct figure when using volumetric meters, drum filling scales etc. and also to correct for the way density changes with temperature. Liquids tend to expand with rising temperature, so the density decreases. Many organic solvents have densities considerably below 1g/ml. For instance n-hexane has a density of 0.66g/ml at 25C. Others are considerably denser than water, e.g. carbon tetrachloride has a density of about 1.5g/ml.

I've heard that one can use a corked wine for cooking, as the cooking allegedly gets rid of the cork taint, but this seems to be disputed.

Ask your parents.

You got a wine based 100% on merlot from France? I wonder where that came from. But don't believe the best wine is sold abroad. That might be true of the most exclusive "trophy" wines that millionaires buy: that market is fully international of course. But for ordinary mortals, wine from much the same selection of producers is available in France and the UK. I normally stock up with a bit from the local Carrefours when we go to Brittany each summer. The rest I get chiefly from the Wine Soc., that pillar of the bourgeois professional classes in the UK. 😄

I don't think I've ever drunk wine from 100% merlot. My wife was very French and had been brought up chiefly on Bx, mainly left bank, so usually blends: Cab Sauv/Merlot/Cab Fr/P Verdot. Right bank (St. Emilion, Pomerol) usually doesn't have Cab Sauv and for that reason is thought to mature earlier. Merlot ripens more easily I think and is less tannic, hence easier on some palates that find a lot of tannin too astringent. I have to confess the wines I really enjoy best these days are based on Nebbiolo: Barolo, Barbaresco, Langhe Nebbiolo, Valtellina, Gattinara etc. But I'm very slowly working my way through all the Bx. that was bought when my wife was alive and before I had a dicky ticker. Definitely a 1st world problem.

Merlot is blended with Cabernet Franc in St. Emilion. I don’t think you find it on its own much in Europe.

OK, I've had enough of you now. You are going on the Ignore list.

Whut? So an overseas part of the Netherlands then. This is what the French do. I've been to Martinique and to la Reunion, both of which are France d'outre-mer. And I've been once on business to Surinam, which is independent but fairly Dutch. I remember I flew back (KLM to Schiphol, of course) on the Queen's birthday and all the stewardesses wore orange ribbons.

Well Dutch cheese is generally nothing special. There's a lot of it, but it's almost all just variations on one variety, so far as I can see: the Gouda type, in those huge wheels. When we lived in The Hague we did find a boerenkaas that had good flavour but even that was just similar to a good Cheddar or a Comté, so nothing very special. Everything is from cow's milk. They make one blue cheese in the whole of the Netherlands and that is a recent introduction. As for the beer, my impression was most of the good stuff came from Belgium. But I expect there are some good little breweries if one seeks them out. Where are you? Surinam?

Amarone is powerful stuff. I used to find it a bit dehydrating. I've never been bothered headaches from wine, but I have always had a large glass of water to hand when there is wine on the table. Nowadays my intake is restricted, especially in the evening, due to a tendency for getting A Fib at night.

Blind tastings are very common in the wine world, and often reveal surprises that put previously little known producers on the map.They can also expose lazy winemaking by those who trade on previous reputation.

Oh yes I agree it's better to drink wine with food generally speaking. My story is simply to show that a wide group of people, with different experience and tastes, can come to a common judgement about the relative merits of different wines, and that that judgement correlates with the judgement of those who get to determine the price. This ought not to be surprising, as there are centuries of experience and expertise devoted to making good wine. These French and Italian vignerons have been doing it for generations. It's not just for fun or to bullshit the public. It wasn't from me but your point, whatever it was supposed to be, was unclear to say the least.

Are you stupid? I've just told you we did not know what the wine was until after we had commented on it.

..or even "that which I don't understand".

Proof? Proof is for logicians. But evidence? That I can give you. OK, when I was at Shell a group of us got invited to a wine tasting evening at Berry Bros. We were a complete mixture, some with some knowledge of wine, others not. We had a lot of fun learning the difference in taste between Beaujolais (Gamay) , Pinot Noir from different places etc. At the end they gave us one more to taste, without telling us what it was. Everyone - and I mean everyone - went quiet and said it this something really special, way ahead of anything else. They then revealed it was a £100/bbl mature Bordeaux. People can tell. It's not just bullshit. It's a bit like my late wife, who expressed no interest in cars. However once in a while she'd comment: "Ooh , that's a nice car", to which my reply would be: "That's a Rolls-Royce" or "That's a Jaguar".

Speak for yourself.

The same is true of written Arabic, at least for some vowels, presumably owing to their common root.