- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Summary
Oscar-winning actor Gene Hackman, 95, his wife Betsy Arakawa, and their dog were found dead in their New Mexico home, authorities confirmed Thursday.
Foul play is not suspected, but an investigation is ongoing.
Hackman, a revered actor known for The French Connection and Unforgiven, retired from Hollywood two decades ago and spent his later years writing novels.
He lived in New Mexico since the 1980s, remaining largely out of the public eye. His death comes just days before this year’s Academy Awards.
Gas is nice for some things, but for heating a brand new heat pump is best.
Actually, the one thing that gas is good for is cooking, but induction is far better. So yeah. No real need for gas to the home.
Only if your kitchen is adequately vented, but most that I’ve seen are not.
A modern gas furnace or water heater will have a flue, and if the system has been installed properly then exhaust gasses, including CO, will get sucked out of the house.
Most gas ovens/ranges are unvented - they just spew combustion products, including CO, directly into the home. Its so bad that the 1st generation of CO detectors had to be retired because they were constantly going off when people would cook dinner. Modern CO detectors will only go off if CO levels remain elevated for hours.
Cooking with gas in a home that lacks a large hood fan that’s ducted to the outdoors is a terrible idea.
Adding on to what @[email protected] said. The main reason that cooking with gas indoors is a very bad idea, is “natural gas” isn’t just methane. The oil companies just pull the gas, and whatever may be with it, out of the ground, refine it somewhat to remove some things, like water that would rust their gas lines, and send it down the pipes.
They don’t process it further, however, leaving nasty stuff like benzene in it, as one summary hilariously put it, “Ultra-pure methane isn’t necessary for home use. The gas needs to be clean enough for safe combustion and pipeline transport, but further refinement isn’t economically justified.”
So they clean it enough that their infrastructure doesn’t degrade, but not enough to be safe to humans.
If you’ve ever cleaned the igniter or parts of the combustion chamber of a NG product, even one with hyper-efficient burners, it’s a wonder they filter it all, given how much crap builds up.
Bonus points as well: to maintain pressure regulation, every gas meter will vent methane periodically (as well as other places in the distribution network), so they’re venting a greenhouse gas that is worse than carbon dioxide, collectively in tiny amounts, from millions of homes.
Gas has been used in homes since the early 1800s, its time has passed, and it should go away.
Induction isn’t far better for cooking. It’s better for cooking on a flat surface of the appropriate (small) size. It’s bad for cooking with large pans (especially cast iron). It’s bad for cooking with curved surfaces (such as woks). It’s also bad for cooking with non-ferrous materials such as copper and aluminum (it doesn’t work at all for these), so high end copper French saucepans are off the table.
Yes I’m aware of the existence of induction wok hobs. They’re neat but they only work well with a wok of the correct size and shape (otherwise the wok either wobbles around or doesn’t fit) and they’re not very powerful with North American 120V mains power. They also come with a crappy nonstick PFAS wok so you end up buying a separate carbon steel wok anyway.
And none of these will work with a large wok!
I use a big Lodge cast iron pan on my induction stove, and it works fine.
Woks are a trick, though. They were designed with the idea that a flame would flow around them, and that’s just how it is.