A few weeks back I bought what I thought was a large pack of bacon at CostCo. Turns out it was pork belly, the basic meat used to make bacon.  I tried to slice some up like bacon and fry it, but if just tasted like pork chops.  Not bad, but not bacon.

I wondered how hard it would be to convert this pork belly into bacon.  A quick Google turned up more than you might want to know.  Two good sources of information were Jess Pyles’ How to make and cure smoky bacon also of use was Michael Symons’ Homemade Bacon recipe page.

I had all the ingredients except something called curing salt. This is a special salt used to cure meats which contains some extra chemicals (nitrates or nitrites or maybe both).  I was tempted to dive right in and just use plain salt, but decided to play it safe and send off for some at Amazon (Pink Curing Salt #1 (Premium Prague Powder) 2.5 lb Bag by Wishful).

I took the dry rub part from Jess Pyles’ (Symon used honey and it seemed to hard to mix — maybe I will try that some other time).

• 3 tablespoons kosher salt
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• 2 tablespoons pepper
• 2 teaspoons paprika
• 1 teaspoon pink curing salt (aka Prague Powder #1)

I rubbed this on and put it in a Ziploc bag in the fridge for about a week, turning it over every day.  After about a week, I rinsed it off, placed it on a rack and let it dry for a day in the fridge.  There are all sorts of variations on this in different recipes, but this is what I used.

After this the bacon was ready to be sliced and fried.  It was good, but my family was especially enthusiastic.  Already started my second batch.

In the days and weeks after Hurricane Katrina, I tried to keep up on the news.  I found myself reading the often extensive reader comments after many news stories.  Many were filled with misinformation that bordered on the ridiculous.  At first I thought I would try following up these posts with factual information, usually with links. I remember spending about an hour a day doing this.  There was a lot at stake. One recurring theme was that New Orleans shouldn’t be rebuilt, because it was on the coast and below sea level.  Neither is true (New Orleans is on the Mississippi River almost a hundred miles from the Gulf oF Mexico, and it is mostly above sea level).  New Orleans had also been around at that site for about 300 years.

After a few weeks it occurred to me that it was often the same people, posting the same nonsense over and over, sometimes from different accounts.  I wonder who these people were.  Cranks with too much time on their hands?  Maybe.  Increasingly I came to believe they were being paid, but I couldn’t figure out why or by who.

Some of this has since been clarified, with cyber operations from places like North Korea and Russia.  A good, cheap way to disrupt a society.  Just a modern form of good old fashioned propaganda.

Today I ran across this comment (the only one — also a tip off that something is afoot).  The original article was about the cancelling of the 2020 Tokyo Marathon due to the Corona virus.  The link to the article and the text of the comment are reproduced below.  Sadly not much point in reading comments any more.

The 2020 Tokyo Marathon is Cancelled Due to Coronavirus (Only Elites Will Run)

The comment:

Coronavirus is god’s judgement and humans are foolish to not embrace it. All muslims and christians that change their daily routine based on coronavirus are saying they believe in science more than god. They are fake. A true Muslim or christian woruld embrace the coronavirus and know that god will take care of him if he just surrenders fully to the coronavirus. No barriers, no doubts, nothing. Let god help you. Embrace the coronavirus.

A good look at how much wealth inequality there is in the US today.  From The Verge.

Jeff Bezos bought the most expensive property in LA with an eighth of a percent of his net worth

If you make $60,000 a year, that’s like spending $75 on a house

More pics from the trip to Tempe.

Had some snacks at the hotel on the trip to Tempe.  Was looking for a way to close the open bags.  If only there were some sort of clip.  Then I saw the answer (literally) staring me in the face.

Andrew Yang has been warning about this sort of thing.

Some photos from a trip to ASU in Tempe, AZ

I have often wondered about these sorts of hacks.  Funny, but kinda scary too.

Man Uses 99 Smartphones to Fool Google Maps and Create a Fake Traffic Jam

got 99 problems, but actual traffic ain’t one.

From the Atlantic:

How Capitalism Broke Young Adulthood

Boomers have socialism. Why not Millennials?

My daughter was looking at hotels in Cancun, and they were cheap. Really cheap.  I remembered and article I read about a seaweed bloom, and also remembered a jellyfish problem in Florida from a few years back.  Both related to environmental pollution.  Turns out there has been a huge problem with seaweed in the gulf and it’s beaches.

Tourism in Cancun is way down, even with the Mexican governments attempts to remediate the problem and the Tourism industry’s attempt to brush it aside.  When you think about the problems of large scale pollution you think about toxic events or even weather disasters, but these sorts of environmental problems seem to be the more frequent and costly ones.

This is being connected to bad agricultural practices in South America, much like the Dead Zone coming from the Mississippi River every year.  I hold out hope that now that big money is being lost by large corporations, something may change.  Fron FSU:

Massive Seaweed Bloom Affects Florida’s Beaches

From the Boston Globe:

Cancun has a nasty seaweed problem, and tourists are staying away