[off topic] Given your background,I was wondering if you could offer some clarification if I'd read some Bs or just misunderstood. Long ago I had read something in a petrochemical book, maybe I got wrong, but one little section I skimmed over seemed to point out a modern refinery cracking plant could use vegetable input stock with I think was a caveat in regard to cleaning or addition by-products. Is this feasible or done, or was I reading a fluffy passage that wasn't fact checked properly?
Yes, Hydroprocessing units at refineries can either co-process vegetable oil with hydrocarbons or run 100% on vegetable oil after some modifications.
Vegetable oils are tri-glycerides. These molecules can be cracked into three long chain paraffins and a propane molecule by reacting them with hydrogen at high temperature and pressure over a catalyst. This makes a raw diesel fuel that then needs to be isomerized to lower the cloud point (basically when it begins to freeze). The end result is a drop in replacement for fossil diesel fuel that burns smoother and cleaner.
Two refineries in the SF Bay Area have converted from fossil fuel operation to manufacturing this renewable diesel.
Fun fact: over 70% of diesel sold in California is now renewable or bio diesel. Both types start with tri glycerides - either vegetable oil, waste cooking oil or animal fats.
Started my career working in AI for a company that had a couple large refineries (I didnt dare refer to what we were doing as statistics because those guys had all been fired a decade before after attempting to perform some back magic they called six sigma), pipelines, a fleet of ethanol plants (at the time) and a couple biodiesel bets, including one that attempted to convert corn oil into biodiesel.
I was blessed to have a leader who wanted us to spend a lot of time on the field, working turnarounds doing, whatever I could to be helpful, etc. to learn the business and build relationships.
Working around the refineries, especially during turnaround, was a crash course in constraint theory and economics.
Good times.
At any rate, all of that was to qualify that most people would not believe how much time and money has been wasted trying to find innovative new ways to serve and capitalize on the CA biodiesel market.
Thank you so much for that. I had tried searches various times and got little information.
Bio fuel is what most people think of when it comes to renewable - though by way of proper refinery processes, none of the issues or perceived issues would exist especially for more modern fuel injection pumps.
I am wondering which social media company will eventually get to be first or if the powers that be will simply select a sample of under 16s from each and issue fines at some point down the road. It's simply too good a cash cow not to milk to revenue raise
The companies in question are not hapless, the reason they were singled out was for the relentless scraping of pii, or at very least assigning and matching certain age groups with various advertisers. I guess it'll be another thing that will have them stunned when the government finally moves onto the next phase.
Those the media call scientists, only label them so when it's convenient. "Scientists" are also wary of coffee, red meat -- etcetera.
Like coffee not all Roundup is the same, different brands can have different complexes of Glyphosate, different wetter agents and adjutants.
As best any organisational body that has any sort of authority can state in regard to glyphosate is may -- there are a number of wetter compounds that ARE. At least one type of wetter does not make news because how hysterical some people can be with similar compounds, sister or distant cousin to the offending compound, which is used in cosmetics. [It's apparently a big important industry that any half smart rag or news media isn't game enough to bite on those ever common compounds.]
No doubt the people at the national park do not want any minor grass fire to stuff up new sapling plantings as well as reduce the fuel load around the remaining trees. But bare ground is prone to erosion, so no doubt those in charge are hopefully managing that aspect as well.
I have friends in forestry in Northern California and they do not think this is necessary, they attribute this to the administration being paid off by Bayer.
Given how bad fires have been in recent years, management might be getting rather anxious - safe is better than sorry.
Not being in the USA I do not know is Bayer still holds a patent regarding Roundup sales in the USA as any meaningful patent regarding herbicide use as a weed killer - Monsanto's global patent finished back in 1999 - 2000. [1]
In the US there are patents [2] for other side properties Glyphosate might hold but frankly the product is IMO non competitive with other substances in use the same field. Of course any patent might be irrelevant - I do forget about US's import tariffs and the Chinese made roundup is probably prohibitively costly there.
I also note Bayer has pulled back from the residential market in 2023 [3] as a means to limit liability exposure - I would read anywhere the public could expected to have exposure.
Monsanto after the patent expired had simply planned expansion of production (large factory built in South America iirc) to be the main manufacturer, where it was not economical for smaller players to enter production. However like every commodity where someone has a monopoly, within a couple of years they tried to wring as much as they could from farmers, well from those in international markets like Australia at least. The excuse I heard given to farmers here was crude oil prices going up ... it didn't readily explain a tripling of cost though. The Chinese then began their own significant production effort and ever since Monsanto tried every trick in the legal book to see off competition here.
Keep in mind the three big global herbicide companies have already moved on (iirc around 2015 it fully matured) from round up ready seeds (they've set up a rather intertwined patents) to newfangled but of course expensive alternative herbicides that on reading require more effort and precision to achieve the end purpose.
Buy a cradle / bracket for the bike pump, and a pump will live there - most of the low air issue is solved.
A lot depends what sort of roads are available really.
In Australia in my locale there are some simple things a rider should consider:
Tyre profile - rougher roads, a higher profile and width of tyre will save a visit to the bicycle shop (or DIY) to straighten out a buckled wheel. Tram lines and such are not kind.
Use car stem and avoid tubeless tyres as one never knows when the air pump might just give out and most motorists that have a pump, won't carry an adapter for a french style valve. Tubeless relies on good rim seal and an unfortunate stick or other into the bead can scupper any idea of reinflation, not a problem a few blocks from home, a lesson miles from home in the dark on a lonely bike track.
Consider puncture proof tubes as some gravel used on roads, when it is loose is quite sharp and will save doing a tube repair on the way. Also the thicker tubes do seem to stay up longer.
Any time the powers want to do something to help out Fat Cats and top end companies with something they don't like happening, any action thrust out, the excuse it's always "for the children" or "think of the children."
Make no mistake social media as it was with scraping so hard kids bled, was bad for children. Facebook ignored the lessons learned from the 90s with TMI (too much information) and in fact some people who used a lot of yahoo mailing groups from that time might still recall the big sweep that occurred. It came to pass that some people still ignored Facebook rules and used pseudonyms - you know just in case and in Australia this became a big big thing back a few years ago with a different govt running the show here with a prominent pro Trump (sycophantic) leader ruling the roost. maube hours after Trump got roasted by an anonymous comment, the crew in Australia were pushing to require ID to access the internet ... a person was appointed to address anonymous accounts ... and in the end after the govt changed she was also tasked to oversee social media.
One might think that age limiting a site it would force ID checks, however other smarter people know that most social media sites, especially the ones there were scraping hard and targeting young teens dieting and other BS young teens seem to susceptible to, have the capacity to guess fairly accurately if the account holder is a youngster. Right now these companies are saying nah these algorithms are dumb and the govt can't do a thing ... right up to the point when the present govt decides to start fining for every account that should not be there and or just offering bounties to the average Joe Jill public [and not businesses or those tooled up with A.I. help] There's a phase in time going now at the moment -- none of the big tools out there have figured out how bureaucracy works in Australia.
When replying should I care content such as what in the above comment is something facebook fanboys will find it very upsetting ... should I write with more sensitivity and feeling in mind ... or would it not matter - the truth would still hurt.
Not allow is not the right phrase. I know from surfing a few tractor forums a few years back, in regard to JD in the US, third party repairs do happen, parts brought from JD and the mechanic or shop verified the repair as complete - but not fully operational until a JD tech travelled out and ran their unlocking tool over the machine.
Australia - I can't tell you as in my locale there was a move away from JD so no new JD's much - so the businesses selling them exclusively declined as well. The local farms are now even moving away from older New Hollands that got briefly popular when they first hit the scene but many are with never ending issues where they saved money - like using aluminium alloy for high pressure hydraulic pump gear and shaft - oh they do bend ... :rolls eyes:
What's a new JD look like these days. Aussie's do things a bit different, other parts of the world people might gnash teeth and complain - we just don't fucking go there any more and bitch quietly. I though tend towards the more hostile reaction with subtle jabs their company / business is on a downward path and bitch loudly to any poor sod unable to find an exit quick enough.
There was a time where John deere themselves provided various models workshop manuals online but times changed to where they got really precious. I think their parts breakdown for all of their tractor models as of 5 years ago was still online.
Some years ago I was stunned to read (tractor forum) a US based farmer lamenting even though JD parts used, they'd had a third party service their tractor, and verified via diagnostics ... and basically had to wait for a JD tech to travel out and unlock their tractor so it could work. I'd assume that's the sort of behaviour that did John Deere in - travel and unlocking fees ffs.
I used to like JD, I've got one though 70s vintage.
Earlier thread on the same tractors but article with less focus on John Deere BS. [1]
The problem for farmers isn't actually just the idea of one company that's decided to make $$$$ on servicing even for unlocking a repair that's even been carried out for by a third party - it's just many newer tractors have not been suitably robust or farmers are finding the specialised parts come at premium prices or those in countries that are a bit remote to tractor production, international delivery times are not exactly thrilling. It's not just electrics, but electronics is the more notable short coming.
The biggest issue in an agricultural setting is robustness - wiring is one element that is prone to being pulled out transiting a rough paddock or pasture or chewed via mice and rats. After wiring is the quality of switches available for hostile environments - in my locale tractor owners had come to accept every so often they'd be replacing a switch every so often.
More likely you and others are encountering a common browser pirate as I have termed them - sites don't typically load from one site, but call a bunch of other web resources, and some come free but at a cost like heavily intrusive scripts for the site's users ... last time I ventured what many would view as a paranoid or misguided response was at a popular large forum which died back in 2017 [1] when they introduced a new feature - unfortunately one of the minor resources was script intensive and simply adding it to the deny list sorted it out. Understandably many who frequented the forum were way smarter than I and critical, but proof was in the pudding so to speak.
The easiest way to identify most of them, is a means to track every address and see where the loading process stalls at and if not essential, add into the deny / host file. This usually works but some sites will have a hissy fit when they don't get confirmation from some minor resource hasn't had a successful scrape and then refuses to load at all, or loads and blanks out the page. A few are pretty crafty like that - it doesn't solve everything and sometimes there is a price. I have banned one AI driven script a couple of years ago, that immediately afterwards it was like flicking a switch and feeling like a fifth of the net wasn't available any more - I can live with that though.
[1] tehparadox RIP 2017, of which in years afterwards many new versions popped up but were not viewed as valid as far as a couple of the old staff I knew from tehparadox
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