Story Notes: The Soup Must Flow · 12:03pm Feb 4th, 2020
Preread by hawthornbunny, Bugsydor, and Halcyon42!
Soup.
The idea came about from a conversation on Discord mostly between Saddlesoap Opera, PatchworkPoldergeist, Freglz, and myself. I redacted out all the names, just so nobody gets outed as a shill for Big Soup:
Update: Soup is pretty good, yum.
Lies.
B(
Your anti soup propaganda is not welcome!Stop telling lies, then.
Honesty gets people disappeared
Big Soup has agents everywhere
...
I bet the nutritious, healthy boost from a batch of yummy soup helped me get there!
>8C
If it wasn't for SOUP you would have finished six months ago...That is pure conjecture!
Sounds like someone's a scab for Big Soup
I'm worried for your mental health, the both of you
Anxiety, huh? Classic soup deficiency.
THE SOUP MUST FLOW
Shortly thereafter I had the idea of soup pumping stations, and, well. . . .
Langoustine Bisque is named for soup: a cream soup with Norway lobsters*.
Vichyssoise is also named for soup: a creamy potato and leek soup served with chives.
Dots is of course named for one of the telegraph symbol, dots. The other half is dashes (but not Rainbow Dashes)
Stone Vapor is a type of boiler.
Annubar is a type of flow meter
Clapper and Flapper are both types of valves.
Swage is a type of pipe fitting.
_________________________________
*Lobsters, as we all know, are related to crabs, and crabs are the natural enemy of some ponies, and as we also know there’s an old bit of wisdom that says “keep your friends close and kill and eat your enemies.”
Facts about pipelines!
Pipelines carry lots of liquids over long distances. Also beer in Bruges.
For a long distance pipeline, there will often be pumping stations, since one station at the beginning of the pipe isn’t gonna be able to cut it. How they’re arranged will largely depend on geography and the contents of the pipe; either way, it’s a safe bet that if you’ve got a pipeline running up a mountain you’ll have a station at the bottom of it since it’s easier to push liquids up then it is to suck them up (physics, yo!)
Most pipelines also have valves, which can be shut in case of a leak, or used to change the flow from one location to another. While there are often remote valve locations, there are typically also switching valves at pumping stations.
Tank farms are a collection of storage tanks, either to hold excess flow from the line or to hold product for nearby distribution. Once again, a system of valves is used to direct product into the appropriate tank.
Nowadays, a lot of the operation is automatic, of course, but it wasn’t always. Even with automated systems (or computer-assisted), disasters can and do occur; there are various ways you can screw up a pipeline by putting in too much stuff or not enough stuff or stuff at the wrong temperature and pressure.
I was also inspired by a video I’d watched about the Abbey Mills pumping station for the London Sewer, which is nicknamed “The Cathedral of Sewage” due to its ornate design.
More facts!
Historically, towns did grow up around water stops. Steam locomotives could only run so far before they needed more water, and usually they had to stop to get it (several railroads did develop systems to re-water locomotives on the fly). Where trains have to stop for any length of time, well there’s an opportunity for a smart businesspony. Or a place to build a town. Likewise, while this story doesn’t go into depth on railroad operations, the base of a steep grade is where trains might stop to have a helper added (to get them up the mountain) or where the brake retainers might be knocked back off (after they’ve come down the mountain).
A Blackburne shilling is a chess move. It begins e4 e5 Nf3 Nc6 Bc4 Nd4?! . . . which I’m just quoting from Wikipedia. the basic idea seems to be setting a trap ending ideally with a smothered mate--where the king is trapped by his own men and mated by a rook. At least if I’m understanding the chess lingo correctly. 
Walking beam pumps are a common design for large pumps, since they can be scaled up practically indefinitely. Anybody who’s ever seen a bobbing oil pump has seen a walking beam pump. Here’s a picture of a large Victorian one at the Crossness Pumping Station (also London Sewer):
In industrial use, pipes often have flanges which are bolted from the outside. This is in part because a large pipe is heavy, and screwing it into place isn’t practical. In some cases, for maintenance, emergencies, and so forth, blanking plates--sheets of steel with the appropriate bolt pattern--can be screwed on.
In the case of things that don’t mix with water (such as petroleum), water is often used as a buffer between different shipments. For example, a shipment of gasoline might be followed with a water buffer and then diesel fuel.
Pipebashers and Misfitters are both unkind slang terms for pipefitters.
Telegraph Tickers are those little machines you often see in period shows that print out a thin strip of paper. Those were most commonly used for stock prices, but of course could be used for printing out anything you wanted.
While I can’t say for sure if informal messages up and down a pipeline to work around an issue without having to resort to paperwork is something that has been done (or is done), I can say with confidence that we did that sometimes when I drove wrecker. We had guaranteed response times to police calls, so the dispatchers kept an ear to the police radios and estimated when trucks might be needed, often routing them in the general direction of a potential incoming call. We also had some unofficial lots were we could temporarily dump cars if needed; one particularly nasty night, we scattered tows all over the greater Kalamazoo area for hours as we replied to a constant string of police calls . . . after the board calmed down, it took us another several hours to get all the cars we’d dropped in the wrong place to where they should have actually gone.
For working ponies, there’s always an incentive to hide things from the bosses (who don’t really understand how the job works anyway), and it’s been my experience that blue-collar workers will always band together to get things done without having to explain to the brass what they did or how they did it.
A kilderkin is a volume of liquid, traditionally ale or beer. It equals half a barrel or two firkins; currently 18 ale or beer galllons (83L). When the UK adopted the imperial system after 1803, it was redefined as 18 imperial gallons, or 81.9L, or 2.89 cubic feet.
Now for what you’ve all really been waiting for: more soup facts!
Snert is a chunky Dutch pea soup, eaten in the winter.
Cazuela’s a chunky Spanish soup with clear broth, rice, potato, squash or pumpkin, corn, and optionally chicken or beef.
Split pea is dried peas and stuff. The Wikipedia article lists its national origin as “ancient.” 
Fufu is a thick Nigerian soup accompaniment, often made with plantain and cassava. Viscosity can be adjusted.
Rasam is an Indian broth.
Hot and Sour is an Asian soup with ingredients that make it both spicy and sour
Kusksu is a Maltese soup made from broad beans, pasta beads, and fresh gbejniet (which translates roughly to ‘cheeselet’).
Salmorejo is a cold Spanish tomato soup with garlic and bread crumbs.
Zuppa pavese is a broth with chunks from Italy into which fried bread and poached eggs are placed.
Miyeok guk is a chunky Korean seaweed soup
Maccu is a chunky Italian soup made of fava beans
Gazpacho is a chilled Spanish soup made of pureed tomato and vegetables.
This only touches at the vast number of soups which are available for all your soup-related needs!
One free internet to the first person to correctly identify the pony on the coverart without cheating and just clicking the source link and reading the tags.
I mean, I’ll never know if you did, but that’s cheating.
This post has been soupalicious.
More about flanged pipe: it has the benefit of being able to remove a section from the middle of the run without disturbing the rest. Also, a length of pipe with a flange at each end is called a spool.
I swear I'm going to have to drag you on a tour here someday, between the little museum at the train station, the Steam Museum and probably the Canadian Warplane Heritage museum (aside from the fact that nearly aircraft is flight worthy, thus even cooler they also have a few antique cars that you might find interesting) I'm sure I could make a day out of it, more if you wait for some cool event locally.
Yeah, pushing is easier than pulling in general.
"True" smothered mate has to be done with a knight, because the King is completely surrounded and therefore nothing else can attack him.
5197254
Isn't that Silver Spanner, your OC? Or your practically-an-OC background pony that you use repeatedly and nobody else cares about?
Biscuit dear, everypony knows Silver Spanner, especially your loyal readers since you did multiple stories with her.
I always thought the access tunnel in the field next to home was the Thirlmere Aqueduct, butdidnt know the map routes. Thirlmere Aqueduct
Mainly because I didnt exactly know about the Hawsewater Aqueduct which it turned out to be.Haweswater Aqueduct
And of course, the Aqueducts pass all sorts of history, myth and legend.
Sabden Treacle Mines
I think the most extreme pipeline though I think used to be down Runcorn way, between two chemical works, under the road. It carried raw, unprocessed, hot, rough super saturated Oleum.
There might be possible, given pushing materials to extremes, if the limits are possible that were mentioned, of actually making Magma pipelines for the Dragon fields. In Equestria, the materials needed are a lot easier to aquire?
Smothered mates involve a knight giving check. A king surrounded by pieces of its own color can only be attacked by a knight.
The mate for the Blackburne Shilling Gambit looks like this:
http://www.eudesign.com/chessops/bsga-mat.htm
The knight on f3 delivers check, and the bishop on e2 can't take it because it is pinned.
As someone who works in a Victorian Pumping Station with not one, but two, great big beam engines, this story brought a continual smile to my face.
It is also a nearby pub where I go to roleplay most weekends.
Wait, chilled? You mean it's meant to be served cold?
Huh, so that's why everyone was looking at that Rimmer fellow funny. Ah well, I'm sure it wasn't important or anything!
5197261
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5197263
Yeah, I probably should have mentioned that (I kinda thought it went without saying, to be honest).
Not only that, but it’s sometimes used to refer to any short length of pipe used to join two others--a spool piece.
At least, that’s what the NTSB called a section of non-standard gas pipe used for a repair in one of their pipeline accident reports. I could find which one it was if you were curious.
5197264
Maybe once the icebergs have retreated and the polar bears aren’t on patrol any more.
Seriously, though, it does sound like we could make a fun weekend of it.
5197275
Well, I guess that makes sense.
Yup. Practically OC is a better description, since she does appear in multiple episodes of the show. I don’t think she’s ever doing anything other than standing around and looking cool, though.
5197292
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5197303
<shoves money under couch cushion>
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
5197383
There’s a lot of fascinating infrastructure that ordinary mortals have a hard time getting information about. My buddy and I managed to score some steam tunnel plans and some wastewater plans back in the day and explored what we could, although our enthusiasm was dampened one night when we opened a sewer access manhole by mistake.
That’s one you hope doesn’t spring a leak.
You certainly couldn’t do it practically with any mundane materials I know of. Well, maybe titanium, but you’d need a lot of it. Magic, though, it might be possible. You’d just want to make sure that there was no way the stuff could harden in the line, because if it did, getting the lava back out would be nearly impossible.
I think for molten steel they use open runs a lot. Short runs, obviously.
5197429
That makes sense.
I was wondering about that (doesn’t help that I don’t really know the Chess terminology), since I figured if a knight was close enough to get the king when he’s still surrounded, a pawn could take him. But if that would keep the king in check--if that spot’s protected like in the diagram you provided--it’s game over.
5197501
Most excellent! I hope I did the description of the inside of such a station justice.
5197506
That’s a proper pub name.
Also, I’ve never roleplayed in a pub. That actually sounds fantastic.
5197586
Yes, apparently so.
Presuming he’s the guy on Red Dwarf who asked for it heated up? (Someone posted a link on the story with that clip, anyway)
Saw Silver Spanner in the feature box. Thought 'oh hey, someone [besides the Admiral] used Silver Spanner in a story.' lol
5197604
Yeah. From what I remember, It's sort of like spiced, chilled V8, It goes nicely with guacamole and, now that you mention it, it's been far too long since I've had some.
"I was also inspired by a video I’d watched about the Abbey Mills pumping station for the London Sewer, which is nicknamed “The Cathedral of Sewage” due to its ornate design."
Ah, so not a coincidence I was reminded of that, then. :D
...Ah, though actually, I think the one I was thinking of before may have Crossness, not Abbey Mills. Oh well; still fits. :D
And nice; thanks. :)
Though I am still wondering about that flow direction terminology...
5197597
For the Magma tubes, could always use the brick lining they used for Blast Furnaces?
Unless you have a Lot of Tungsten available?
As for clearing out the clags, well, at least some dragons should enjoy fresh basalt deposits? Thats why I think Sludge wouldve been one of a whole line of scavanger dragons, living in city sewers instead of alligators etc?
5197591
Sadly, they're crossbreeding with grizzlies to ensure you stay unsafe.
5197700
So it’s basically salsa meant to be eaten without tortilla chips or oreos?
5197684
And the funny part is, she isn’t even in the story. It was just the best coverart I could find.
5197743
Nope, you were thinking about the right thing!
I’d have to watch the YT videos again; don’t remember if Abbey Mills still has the walking beams (probably does, but I don’t know).
There’s also a great video I found of some other pumping station in London where they’re using a small (relatively speaking) engine to start the huge steam engine that does the pumping work. There’s nothing like starting a little engine so you’ve got enough power to start the big engine.
I will look into that, I promise.
5197756
I hadn’t even thought of firebrick, even knowing that back in the day, lots of tunnels were brick-lined.
I personally don’t think that the ponies have the tech to make tungsten pipes (I’m legit not sure that humans do), but I could be persuaded otherwise.
Honestly, if there had been more to show that the ponies and dragons got along earlier in the show . . . it’s long been my headcanon that ponies trade gems to dragons in turn for purified metals, but at least in the setting of most of my stories, that’s not a wide practice. Like, they get enough for the rails and a few other things where they really need good metal and can’t easily make it themselves, but imagine if there were lots of long-term relationships with dragons. Like, they could be building things out of liquid rock, molding it like clay as it hardened. Glass could be made by a dragon with his hands actually in the molten material. In one of Arkansaw Pinkerton’s stories, Apple Bloom was using Spike as a torch as she shaped wrought iron.
There are so many things you could do. Got an oil well fire? Send in a dragon with a cork to stop it. Need to fix your boiler while it’s still stupid hot? Send in a dragon. Need to cleanse things with fire? Dragon.
5197836
Darn it.
5198176
I'm not sure I'd characterize it that way, but it does share influences with salsa in the same way that you can make chunky pasta sauce, lasagne, chili, or pizza toppings with very similar ingredient lists.
(Most notably, the gazpacho I've eaten hasn't had hot spices and wasn't as thick as salsa.)
There are various ways it can be made and the stuff we made was essentially just the red gazpacho soup base (apparently, gazpacho predates access to tomatoes in Spain, hence "red gazpacho") without the cubes of stale bread that are traditionally included or the hot sauce or chopped but un-puréed vegetables in many common modern recipes.
Here's one recipe, with photos for all the steps. (I don't eat processed sugar, so I'd probably just omit the vinegar and sugar and enjoy the more acidic taste the tomatoes give on their own.)
Note that the recipe I linked actually uses tomato juice or V8 as a shortcut. An example recipe that starts from raw tomatoes is available on the Wikipedia page for gazpacho.
5198183
Well, nearly right, at least. :D
Right sort of thing. :)
...I might have found that video while looking for ones of Abbey Mills (I didn't find one in my quick bit of searching confirming either way) and Crossness (which I remembered did have the beams, on a program it occurred to me was made a while ago):
https://youtu.be/Zlp1aG1VJRI?t=81
If not (and that one does seem to have been more getting the big engine into a starting position), I still found it a neat video. :D
But in general, aye; I remember seeing that in at least one video before. :D
No problem, but thanks. :)
5198186
Hm, neat ideas for dragon utilization. :)
5198192
I think I’ll stick with my salsa comparison, even if it’s wrong
It seems appropriately ‘dumb American’ enough.
From what I learned about tomatoes in a somewhat recent watching of a video on catsup, that was something that the Mediterranean cultures adopted rather quickly, whilst the English still believed that tomatoes were poison. Like, in Italy, they were thinking, “what can we do with these?” and in England, they were like, “poison.”
I personally have mixed feelings on tomatoes; there’s some ways I like them and some ways I don’t. Much like apples, which I hate in practically any cooked form.
V8 is best when mixed in equal parts with vodka.
In all seriousness, though, there’s something to be said about recipes that use commonly-available ingredients (heck, you can buy V8 at a lot of gas stations) rather than really weird stuff nobody but professional chefs have ever heard of.
5198286
That wasn’t the one I saw. I’d imagine that it was Tom Scott or Tim Traveller or something along those lines, but I don’t really remember. Like, I wasn’t looking for the sake of finding inspiration for a setting; rather it was just something that came up on my feed and looked interesting. I’m not 100% sure it was Abbey Mills, but it was certainly something in the London Sewer System.
I do know which video it was with the big pumping engine starting, though, ‘cause that’s saved in one of my playlists:
That’s something that I think the show writers didn’t explore as much as they could have; all the different species have different abilities, and many of them could be used commercially.
Another idea I’ve had, explaining why cameras generally aren’t pony-friendly, is that they weren’t invented by ponies. I haven’t made a decision on who actually invented them, but I think that they were popularized by minotaurs (because I think that minotaurs are often travelling salesmen).
5198687
Ah, thanks. :)
[watches video]
Oh, nice! Thanks! :)
Aye, there wasn't much of that, was there?
That seems plausible, at least. I can imagine them also doing photography for hire, too; after all, they're already there, they already have the cameras, and if somepony's willing to pay them to take a picture, that's still money coming in and interest being built.
“The Soup Must Flow,” and “The Roads Must Roll.” If you put them together, I think you get Rolling Stone Soup.
5198685
The problem is that none of the gazpacho I've had has been more than superficially salsa-like. Salsa is too hot to be something you'd drink a bowl of and, unless you get picante salsa, the typical store-bought brands like Tostitos are too chunky. Gazpacho as I know it is more a fancy, foreign version of tomato soup.
Interesting. Thanks for that.
Also, was it Ketchup: A History by The History Guy? It showed up in my YouTube recommendations and I've been meaning to get around to watching it.
I think Ketchup and fried green tomatoes are the only forms I've tried and not liked. (Ketchup is too sweet.)
As for cooked apples, that's something we'll have to disagree on. I think unsweetened applesauce is a good snack, I bake apple-cinnamon muffins once a month on average, and, while I almost never find it made with maple syrup rather than cane sugar, I love apple pie.
Fresh tomatoes aren't exactly esoteric, but I agree in principle.
5198753
Entirely possible, and perhaps how the camera industry got started. After all, some minotaur who sucks at taking pictures but still wants to make money is gonna figure out he can sell the things. Or that it’s in the film where the real money’s to be made--sell them your camera, and they’ll have to buy your film.
5198849
Which sound delicious, even if you’ve got to chase it down.
5199343
I’ve never had it, so it’s much easier to make an assumption about what it’s like.
It was indeed!
I’ve never had fried green tomatoes.
I do like applesauce. Apple pie, apple cobbler, and so forth, I really don’t like at all.
Although depending on where you live . . . like, since the local grocery store closed, if I don’t grow my own, I gotta go about fifteen miles to get a fresh tomato. I can get V8 juice at the Dollar General and several gas stations in town.
5200860
Ahh, right. That American "food desertification" thing.
I live in the countryside, equidistant from three cities, where the nearest source of produce is a former IGA in a village 6.8km (Google Maps distance as the roads run) away, but because of their prices and having reasons to "go into town" frequently anyway, we normally do our shopping ~40km (a ~26-minute drive one way) away in the largest of the three nearby cities.
5200873
Yup.
I live in the country as well, and am reasonably equidistant from three large (for Michigan) cities. Like you, I often have reason to be in one or another of them, and tend to do my shopping then if I can--for example, I often work on the weekends in Lansing, and it’s not too much bother to stop at a Meijer on my way out of town to do weekly shopping. For impulse purchases, though, I’m certainly not going to drive an hour plus round-trip to get an ingredient or two.
Incidentally, for the same reason, I pay for a library card. My closest library is in the next county over, across the street from where I work, and it’s worth it to pay $50 a year to be able to check books out there rather than drive 12 miles to the nearest library in my county.
5200877
Fair enough. My approach tends to be that I'm not even going to go a few minutes to the pricey former IGA. I just plan around what we remembered to get and always keep extra non-perishables.
I'm lucky in that respect. My township has arrangements with all libraries I'm aware of within a 30 minute radius of me so I don't have to pay any out-of-town fees and I have no need to range father.
5200887
Not that long ago, I happened to run into Zyrian at my local Dollar General, when I was on my way to purchase toilet paper. He pointed out that it was cheaper and better-quality at a big box store, to which I agreed, but I’d forgotten to buy it on my last shopping trip and wasn’t going to wait a week to get more.
There is a certain difference in shopping mentality between those who live close to a store and those who don’t, and the amount to keep on hand ‘just in case’ gets higher the further from resupply a person is.
That would be nice, but not the way things work here. However, on the plus side, my property taxes are about half what they would be if I lived on the other side of the county line, so I can’t really complain. Yeah, it costs me $50 a year for a convenient library, but I’m not paying $2,000 in taxes I would be if I lived a few hundred feet further north.
The library system I’m paying into has a whole bunch of libraries (I think it’s about fifteen), and I can pick up and return anything they have at any of their libraries from my local branch, which is also really nice. We’ve also got MELCat, which is a system whereby I can request a book from any library in the state who has it, although it usually takes a while to actually get it. Still, I’ve gotten some out-of-print books that some obscure library in the middle of nowhere still has in circulation, so that’s nice.
5200855
Aye, I can see it going either way. :)
5200967
Fair enough. That definitely makes sense.
I haven't needed an interlibrary loan (the term they use here) so I'm not sure how we do that.
Reminds me of this:
"the perennial political deadlock over allowing tomatoes in the Northeastern Chowder Viaduct"
https://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_tunnel.htm