Test Kitchen
Test Kitchen
Admiral Biscuit
2650 S Hub Drive in Independence, Missouri, was a typical-looking strip mall. A Subway anchored one end; the other had a salon which did not do manes or tails. There was also a dry cleaner’s and a liquor store—the liquor store in particular had no issue selling to ponies.
Like most places in an American city, it was easily accessible by automobile and sort of accessible by bus. Routes 302 and 24 picked up by the train station, and route 306 went to the strip mall; the only way to get from one bus to the next was at a transfer station near the farmer’s market. On days it wasn’t open, there were other stores around: visiting ponies got drawn at least once to the Direct Casket Outlet, which offered a full range of funeral merchandise at discount prices.
Compared to the buses, some of the caskets were positively luxurious.
There were also Ubers and Lyfts and regular taxis and even executive cars available, and it was a flyable distance from the train station for the pegasi. For ground-bound ponies, walking was a poor option. Sidewalks, where they existed, were generally in bad condition. The only advantage to walking was that a quarter-mile deviation off the direct route went past a Taco Bell. The downside with the deviation was having to cross Route 291 twice, which was wide and had little triangular concrete islands where a pony who wasn’t fast enough would have to wait for the signal to change in her favor again as cars and trucks zoomed by on three sides.
In short, the location wasn’t great.
The rent wasn’t all that cheap, either, but it was the best place they could find on short notice that was reasonably close to a train station and which could handle the electrical needs of a commercial kitchen.
Outside, they had a repurposed bar-b-que truck and trailer to meet their wood stove needs. The rental agent had threatened to tear up their lease if they tried to install wood stoves inside the building, but had grudgingly allowed them to have a food truck on the premises so long as it stayed far enough away that sparks didn’t pose a danger of fire. A bit of searching classified ads had gotten them an antique Chevy P-30 with a flat tire on the left inside dual and a seized motor, along with a trailer in far better condition.
Cinnamon Breeze occasionally washed and waxed the truck, while Flowerdew sometimes took out her frustrations on the engine. Nopony was sure if she intended to fix it or completely disassemble it out of spite, and nopony dared ask. One of their closets was filled with a collection of all the parts she’d taken off; thus far none of them had gone back on the engine.
Their kitchen predated S.C.S. Livery, and for months they’d been diligently working to reverse-engineer tacos, burritos, and gorditas. The nearby Taco Bell had gotten used to the strangeness of ponies sometimes ordering just a single ingredient on the side, without ever wondering why they might do so.
As the espionage efforts cranked up, the recipes got more focused. No longer were they trying to guess ingredients or cooking methods, although none of their research thus far had gone to waste. They’d correctly guessed that human food would be cooked on human machines and outfitted their kitchen with a host of human gadgets, experimenting on them before trying to replicate those results with pony-appropriate appliances.
Opinions varied on the ideal endgame. Getting an actual Taco Bell franchise with all its appliances, recipes, and ingredient supplies was one option; Starlight Glimmer was negotiating that. Learning enough to make a faux Taco Bell had been S.C.S. Livery’s main focus, which had shifted their own goals to making Taco Bell food available to anypony with a well-equipped kitchen. Flowerdew envisioned a day where every single eatery the length and breadth of Equestria could offer one or more Taco Bell menu items if they wanted to, which meant that they needed to figure out how to make it, then modify it to be made on non-human equipment.
Firenza, their saucier, had her muzzle in a pan of creamy jalapeño sauce. She liked scratching tally marks on the pot after each attempt and would retire it once she finally got it right. Baja sauce was dozens of quartets in, and she was getting close. A quarter of red pepper, two cloves of garlic, a quarter sweet onion, half a jalapeño, sour cream, cumin, vinegar, and a final mystery ingredient she still hadn’t quite figured out. It was likely an oil, but she hadn’t figured out what kind or how much.
Each reasonably-close batch got put in little cups for blind samples, along with the real deal, and everypony else in the test kitchen tried them. The best samples were then offered to friends and lovers, while ones that weren’t quite right but still tasted pretty good were earmarked for further experimentation later.
Each sacred saucepan sat atop a journal, its pages tallying her culinary journey. Unlike her usual signature recipes, she didn’t write the instructions in personal code. Remarks—her own, and in the case of a recipe good enough to share, taste-testers’—filled in the bottom of the pages.
Firenza had a cupboard for her works, and although Flowerdew occasionally eyed it as a future storage spot for engine parts, so far it had stayed sacrosanct.
•••
“We need anything that’s not on the list from GFS?” Cinnamon had just finished copying down the current shopping list on a more easily transported sheet of paper, and her clicky pen was floating idly in her aura.
“I could use one of those frozen chocolate cream pies they have. Those are tasty.”
“They’re completely fake,” Flowerdew objected. “They don’t even have any butter in them like a proper chocolate cream pie would. You could make a better pie yourself.”
Firenza shook her head. “No, I can’t. I never had any luck with pies. They always come out too runny or burned . . . besides, sometimes I don’t feel like cooking something for myself after I’ve spent all day cooking, especially if it’s not something I’m good at.” She glanced around the room to ensure there were no prying ears. “A lot of nights, I go home and just eat pasture grasses ‘cause I don’t feel like cooking anything.”
“I wouldn’t cook as much if—” Cinnamon shrugged. “I should ask Harper, maybe she doesn’t like cooking at home and just does it because she thinks it makes me happy.”
“Wouldn’t that be funny if neither of you wanted to cook at home but both did because you thought your partner liked it?”
“It’s fun bonding . . . haven’t either of you wanted to cook to impress a marefriend or stallionfriend?”
“That’s how I know I’m bad at making pies. Before we started dating, I’d always just bought them from the bakery, but I thought he’d think it was funny that I was a chef and couldn’t make a pie on my own.”
“You still together?”
Firenza shook her head. “Kinda glad in hindsight, I don’t think I would have applied for this job if we had been. Either of you leave somepony behind?”
Cinnamon shook her head, while Flowerdew nodded.
“Not that unusual for us to be apart. Royal Guard.”
“Really?”
“I worked in the palace, apprenticing to one of the head chefs, I got dragged around everywhere Princess Celestia went, and there was a lot of experimentation behind the scenes, so I was kind of a natural fit for this.”
“Didn’t you get lonely?”
“There’s a whole panoply of staff that goes on formal trips, and embassy postings . . . sometimes I wonder how other ponies handle the constant sameness in their life. I like going places and trying new things. Plus, the longer we’re apart, the sweeter the reunion.”
“I didn’t know you had a romantic side.”
Flowerdew stuck out her tongue and blew a raspberry.
•••
The next morning, the cheesemelter arrived by Fed-Ex, unaccompanied by Pozole—he’d headed off to Bow, New Hampshire in search of a fryer and a rethermalizer—and the three mares eagerly unpackaged it and then set about assembling it. Flowerdew, who had the most experience with tools, got the honor.
They made her wash her hooves and tools before she started: she’d been pulling the gears off the front of the step van’s engine when the Fed-Ex truck arrived.
Their kitchen had plenty of work space to set it up on, and the controls were simple. They’d already read through Chapaulin’s notes on what it was used for and how it was used. If they’d completely cracked the mysteries of a Mexican Pizza, they could have cooked one.
However, they had not. Dozens of experiments had given them a close approximation of a Mexican Pizza, and now that they had one, it was time to run it through the cheese melter to see if that made it better or not.
“Wish that Starlight could just negotiate us an already set-up Taco Bell.” Flowerdew’s perfect world would have them sharing a parking lot with a pony-run Taco Bell, where they’d have access to all the ingredients and machines and could do a more scientific experimentation process.
CInnamon shrugged. “We’ve got lots of notes from Chapulin and that’s all we really need.”
“Either way we’re gonna be modifying recipes,” Firenza reminded her. “Back in Equestria it isn’t going to be as easy as buying all the equipment and plugging it into the magic receptacle. Human energy doesn’t work on a proper monopolar source, it uses Pixiis. We got them to buy us the equipment so we could compare our methods, not to be lazy and just modify it to work on charge crystals.”
Flowerdew had flipped through the manual as the other two had examined the cheese melter and debated what to prepare in it first. “This one doesn’t need Pixiis to work, they’re just there for the timer and the onboard heater. It works on steam, and that’s practically foal stuff.”
•••
By the evening, the cheesemaker had been fully set up and they’d put it through its paces, cooking several almost-authentic Mexican Pizzas, Crunchwraps, and Cheesy Gordita Crunches. Each one had been tasted, picked apart, and compared to other methods of cooking the food.
“Remind me, we need to see if Chapulin can tell us what the actual size of all the scoops are,” Flowerdew said. “Since humans don’t color-code all their scoops the same.”
“She did give some measurements in her first reports.” Cinnamon turned her head towards the stack of notebooks and file folders in the office section of their test kitchen—a stainless steel prep table that they weren’t currently using. “But human measurements are dumb. How many grams are in an ounce? It’s not intuitive.”
“Have you got good enough reach with that horn of yours to grab the scoops out of a Taco Bell? That would be an easy way to solve the problem.”
Firenza shook her head. “Steal a chef’s tools, and she’ll kick you half to death. Besides, the actual amount of any of the ingredients is up to the diner anyway. The app lets you order extra or less of anything so you can customize your food the way you want it. It’s not like with the sauces where you can’t just toss extra guacamoles in—you can make a burrito with more beans or less beans or even no beans if you don’t like beans. I think we’re okay with just estimating the quantity of the fillings . . . but if you want a really accurate number, the boffins at S.C.S. bought everything on the menu and measured out all the ingredients. That’s in one of the early reports.”
“Is that the one I never read?” Flowerdew asked.
“One of the ones you never read,” Firenza reminded her.
“I don’t like reading instructions. It hampers creativity.”
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That's more of a guy attitude.
Voice of Experience
When cleaning car scunge off yourself, the drying towel is your most successful tool. This is why God blessed us with paper towels.
A., this was a DELIGHTFUL surprise to see update!
B., hilarious timing, given I'm going to be getting taco bell tomorrow to celebrate the end of the work week.
C. "Steal a chef’s tools, and she’ll kick you half to death." - You're DAMN right, no matter the species! You do not screw with a chef's tools!
Why Taco Bell as opposed to any of the other chain restaurants?
11593317
Blame Sonata
This is in the group
Admiral Biscuit's Fleet
The Unlikely To Be Completed Any Time Soon folder.
Remind me again why they're having so much trouble just negotiating a franchise, seeing how Equestria would be a new and large market to break into? The Watsonian reason, that is.
I love the passive aggressiveness right out of the gate.
11593388
My guess? They got nervous when they heard what happened to Burger King.
Chevy P-30 - I didn't realize that Chevy did trucks
No comment.
Oh, neat!
More adorable pony industrial espionage is very welcome!
Now more than ever, I want to sit in on some pony physics courses.
Lovely to see more of the most noble act of industrial sabotage known to man or pony. Looking forward to more… and contemplating having Taco Bell for lunch.
That's not a real thing, and you can't convince me otherwise.
Excellent industrial espionage. Glad to see it develop further!
So mana is monopolar, huh? Neat!
11593635
11593921
I suspect they are thinking DC energy vs AC energy. DC is a more natural thing (for a given value of natural ie chemical actions, lightning etc) while AC was initially a very much mechanical thing.
Pixiis, eh? AvE reference?
11593302
Are mares in Equestria not the guys? Just look at Ms. Rainbow Dash and her 'let's rush in without thinking' attitude.
Or brake cleaner, which not only gets off the stubborn dirt but also finds all the little cuts you didn't know you had.
11593308
Did you get Taco Bell? Was it yummy?
Thank you!
Yeah, same goes for mechanics and other professionals who have their own tools.
11593317
Because, John Spartan, in the future all restaurants are Taco Bell. They won the franchise wars.
It's a running joke in my PoE fics, inspired by the movie Demolition Man (referenced above); the more serious in-universe explanation is that in the first books of Earth that ponies saw, Taco Bell was the restaurant illustrating fast-food restaurants, which made it take on an almost mythical quality for the ponies.
As well it should; their sauce packets have inspirational messages, and nopony knows how to make tightly-wrapped burritos. They're also the only restaurant to serve they mysterious fourthmeal.
11593358
. . . that's fair
11593388
While 11593466 does raise a good point (and there's also what happened to Budweiser and their Clydesdales to consider), there would also be all sorts of other considerations in negotiating a franchise that's literally on a different planet—while it probably can be done, it'll take a while to work out all the details and ponies want Taco Bell now. If negotiations are unsuccessful or take too long, it might not matter if the ponies have cracked all the secrets and can make their own Taco Bell food.
Admittedly, if Taco Bell figures out that the ponies are happily industrially-espionaging their brand, it might make negotiations for genuine Equestrian franchises more difficult, but so long as everypony keeps her head down and just does her job, they'll never know.
11593397
The salon: "Uh, we don't do equines, have you tried a groomer?
The liquor store: "If you buy five bottles of wine, you get a sixth for free!"
11593466
Negotiating franchises and brands in a new world is tricky, yo. Gotta do lots of never-before-done market research before committing, lest you find out that the king of minotaurs isn't too happy about burgers, or that the ponies aren't cool with Budweiser saying that they own the Clydesdales.
If Taco Bell were being really clever (and maybe they are), they'd know that ponies love Taco Bell, and they'd also know that they're being spied on. They'd let the ponies set up their faux franchises in Equestria, see how those were doing, and then step in with an offer to move in and also adopt all those existing franchises as the real deal, maybe even work with the ponies to develop new tacos and other Tex-Mex food that can be enjoyed by humans and ponies alike.
Fold in Mountain Dew as well, and you'd really have something; the Equestria special box, complete with an exclusive-to-Taco-Bell Celestial Blast Mountain Dew: "like sunshine in a bottle."
11593475
They did, and the P-30 was such a successful product that Utilimaster bought the entire production line and still produces them. When you picture a step van, it's probably a P-30; they were to step vans what Ford was to van vans with the Econoline (and in Europe [and now the US] the Transit.)
P-30s were also the chassis to countless short buses and motor homes. And while they came from the factory with all of GM's current-year engine offerings, if you wanted enough of them on one order, they'd put in whatever engine you desired; I've got an ex-Frito Lay P-30 with a Cummins in it.
cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/879533986303606834/1111827223415103568/da13cri-db518ed8-3cdf-457f-af24-d2ff5415a4d4.jpg
She's not wrong.
11593558
Only with ponies can you say that they do industrial espionage adorably. And everything else, if we're being honest. Who wouldn't want to give trade secrets to this pony?
derpicdn.net/img/2017/11/15/1586807/large.png
(Or anypony else)
11593635
It would be mind-melting in the best way.
I remember a years-ago unfinished fic where a human spaceship engineer remarked that the ponies had built the electrical system on their (wooden) space ship with non-conductive materials.
The good news is that the monopolar (DC) and pixiis (AC) are understandable to us electrical systems. Pixiis are, of course, named in honor of Hyppolyte Pixii, one of the early pioneers of AC generation. No, I'm not making that up, he was a real person who really existed.
I can't promise swift updates, but I can promise that if you have Taco Bell for lunch you won't regret it. Your co-workers might, but that's a small price to pay
11593834
You know the old trope, "I can't but he can?"
Pitco has an entire article about why you should have a Pitco Rethermalizer. They're used to reheat food which has already been cooked and hold it at a set temperature, and they take great pains to explain how their tech is different from Sous Vide. A rethermalizer offers menu flexibility, reduced food waste, increased food safety, minimized kitchen labor and training, and has size options to fit your production needs. Maybe a Solstice Rethermalizer L12-092 is the right option for you!
Or if you want to stick with a Taco Bell approved rethermalizer, the TB-SRTG14 offers SolsticeTM burner technology, marine-grade stainless steel, double-walled hinge covers, and a single 3/4" gas connection. It efficiently rethermalizes taco meat, spicy chicken, and steak, along with other standard pre-cooked YUM! freezer-to-rethermalizer food products.
And yes, I'm just quoting spec sheets. It's all online, it's amazing what you can find!
11594024
If nothing else, there's probably going to be Questions about "where are they getting the beef?" (likely have to import & that will require ponies willing and trained to do inspections) + cows at least probably have Views about that. If an equivalent to PETA didn't already exist, the idea probably got traction REAL quick.
11593921
Thank you!
At least the mana the ponies have access to is, it flows in one direction from the source to the pony (or pony-invented crystal-powered cheesemelter, I guess).
It's possible greater efficiencies could be realized with dipolar mana (pixii-power), but pony tech hasn't advanced to that level just yet. I'm sure they're working on it; they almost certainly know things like lightning can work in both directions, so why not mana, too?
[for a more modern-earth based explainer, monopolar = direct current; dipolar/pixiis = alternating current]
11593967
You are correct!
Yes, it was.
And then I did research, and while I'm almost sure that AvE is referring to 'pixies' as in the magical fey sense, there was in fact a man named Hyppolyte Pixii—which is one heck of a great name—who was an early inventor of an AC generator.
AvE's a smart guy, and he might very well know that. Or it might be a happy coincidence.
So they're definitely getting real close. Just fine-tuning the last ingredients.
¡Ponies have Science!:
Firenza is a scientist. I wonder whether they worked out the complete algorithm. On Earth, the Philosopher Carl Popper work out our scientific algorithm:
Grams and ounces were not meant to work together. Although the metric system is arbitrary (a meter is 1/10,000,000th the distance from the north pole to the equator), the units are interrelated (a iter is a cubic decimeter) and universal. If the scientists creating it would not be landlubbers and privateers, it would be universal:
Sailers then and now use the nautical mile because it is 1 arcminute along the equator, which is extremely useful for navigation. If the kilometer would be 1 nautical mile, it would be an instant success with sailors.
The United States of America, the 1st country with decimal currency, wanted to go metric in the closing days of the 18th century, but English privateers captured the ship with the weights and measures.
11594017
I in fact DID get Taco Bell! And it was *delicious!*. Extra tomatoes and lettuce on three soft taco supremes~
11594056
See, as a sci-fi fan, "monopolar" suggested something entirely different... which would certainly break a lot of Earth physicists' brains, if it turned out that the ponies were casually generating and manipulating those in mass quantities!
I have to ask... what are Pixiis that "human energy" uses it? Is that their name for the U.S. electrical grid? And what "magic receptacle" does Equestria use? They have electricity, too! Hydroelectric power at the very least; and steam power, as Flowerdew pointed out.
Cute. :)
Unsurprisingly. :D
How often do you think it happens a pony wants to get his mane/tail done, gets rejected, becomes frustrated and goes for some liquor instead?
Knowing ponies she will at one point try to destroy it for good.
By doing that however she accidentally repaired it, making it run again.
Upon discovering this her frustration is complete, causing her to mercilessly smash it for hours with all the tools at her disposal, intending to "end this mocking machine" as she called it.
By the time she finally gave up, overwhelmed by exhaustion, the engine ran smoother than the day it rolled off the factory.
Her colleagues were happy, but for months she gave it death glares at every opportunity.
Now I wonder whether that's a social taboo or something like that.
Better double check she didn't include some of her spare engine parts.
That doesn't exactly narrow it down, does it?
Good chapter!
I enjoyed reading it.
11594485
They're getting close, but they've still got a ways to go.
Still, they've got ponies in most of the places they need them, and S.C.S. Livery is busy tracking down all the leads they have.
11594522
To a degree, yes. I think they still have some fine-tuning before they really get to the scientific method, but they at least have a good foundation in place.
I don't think they have the whole algorithm, and I also don't think it fully applies in the sense of duplicating cooking (although it's similar), since unlike most science! they know the end result they want and they're fine-tuning the experiment to get that. Sort of like how the Mythbusters sometimes duplicated both the myth, and when that was busted, duplicated the result.
I know that and you know that, but explain that to a pony. You either get confusion, or a pony like Silver Glow who uses a hellish mix of both, picking the units that are closest to what's being measured
Sailors use nautical miles on the open ocean and normal miles on inland waterways because tradition.
At least on the Great Lakes there are other traditions; if you go north on Lake Huron, you're upbound, and then when you cross the Straights of Mackinac and turn south for Chicago, you're still upbound. And then there's Lake Huron, where westbound is upbound . . . so in short, because of tradition, going north, south, or west is 'upbound', depending on where your ship is at that particular moment (likewise, north, south, or east can be 'downbound.').
And speaking of nautical miles, mariners also measure depth in fathoms, and if the system made any sense, there'd a be an even number of fathoms in a nautical mile, but there aren't (fathoms are 6 feet, and might have gotten their name from some guy named "Fathom," just like Smoots got their name from Oliver R. Smoot).
Also for what it's worth, subways often use chains as their unit of distance measurement.
Just the same, we got new ones and used those standards of measurement as a basis for our non-metric system--all our units are defined to the metric standard by law--for example, the foot has been legally defined as 1200/3937m since 1893.
11594715
Huzzah! Have a happy Sonata!
derpicdn.net/img/view/2023/3/18/3066083.jpg
11594786
That is something very different indeed.
Probably for the best that ponies don't have those; unicorns and pegasi already do enough to break physicists' brains. And other scientists' . . .
"Oh, you want a to examine a cloud? Hold on, I'll make one and then bring it down so you can look at it."
11595003
Oh boy!
<cracks knuckles>
The "Pixiis" are AC current. It's a double reference; first to YouTubers like AvE who refer to electrons and other electrical things as 'pixies' (or if there's a lot of current/voltage, 'angry pixies' and then also to Hippolyte Pixii, one of the earliest to invent an AC generator.
"Monpolar" is direct current.
My headcanon is that ponies don't have electricity as we know it, but they do have some electricity-like effects using crystals that either absorb and store or just collect and utilize existing thaumic fields in Equestria, and that the few things we see in canon which appear to be electric aren't, or at least not electricity as we know it.
I also think that the antennas on the 'hydroelectric' dam are actually receiving arrays for unicorn spells or just thaums and are used if they need to pump water into the reservoir.
There is no doubt that they have steam power; we've seen the steam train in every single episode AFAIK. I can't recall if we've seen any stationary steam engines in the show, but then IRL stationary steam predated steam locomotives, so in my opinion they certainly use steam for more than just trains and the spa.
11596840
Thanks!
11597097
It's probably happened more than once.
Or else she intends to repower it in a way GM never intended. "I finally got that dumb engine out and now it runs on a crystal array."
Nah, it's just a chef thing. Like here on Earth if a Michelin star chef were to admit out loud that when he goes home after a long day of preparing fancy food, there's nothing he likes better for dinner than a pop tart and a bag of microwaved popcorn.
"The parts manual doesn't show this injector pump on the side."
"Clearly that was an oversight."
Not at all. Flowerdew's a doer, not an instruction-reader.
Thanks!
11597274
It seems that the sailors use statutory miles on inland waterways, because that is compatible with the landlubbers. As for upbound and downbound, if we assume that the lakes drain into the Atlantic Ocean, then it is a variant on upstream and downstream.
This story is a lot of fun!
One thing I find a bit odd or puzzling about it, though, is that these ponies are focusing on reverse engineering Taco Bell food instead of taking advantage of the many cookbooks, cooking classes, and instructional videos that could teach them to make real Mexican food (or the Mexican-American variations) without having to mount a massive industrial espionage scheme.
At the same time, the massiveness and semi-covertness of the industrial espionage project does help to add even more interest to the story in its way, so I guess I can't complain?
11604204
Thanks!
It's a running joke in my PoE fics that ponies love Taco Bell, so that's what they're trying to emulate, rather than authentic Mexican food. Ideally complete with the food coming in paper wrappers, little sacks for the food, and inspirational messages on the sauce packets.
For what it's worth, I did experiment to see if you could eat Taco Bell food with hooves and you totally could.
The best part is that they probably wouldn't have to be covert; they're so cute that just asking for all the secrets would get them all the secrets . . . but where's the fun in that?
11598261
That's true, but there's no reason they had to. On the Mississippi (and probably other inland waterways) they still measured water depth in fathoms, although these days it's usually done in feet.
Heck, some of the infamous shoals around me are named in fathoms (like the Six Fathom Shoal which the Edmund Fitzgerald might have scraped before she sank).
Yeah, that might be why, or it might have gone from canal conventions (since canals were 'up' and 'down.' (I think that usually 'up' was away from the body of water the canal went to, but that might not have always been the case; usually on canals the locks were numbered, and going 'up' was going through locks in ascending order
(It's possible that there were canals which never connected to a larger body of water, in which case 'up' and 'down' would be arbitrary, but would need to be named.
11604820
Well, most canals will have an overall direction of flow, or a higher end and a lower end
11605025
That is true, although if you go over hills or mountains it gets weird.
Just for giggles, I looked up the Panama Canal, which debatably terminates at the same level at both ends, and also both ends are oceans which means that one isn't 'better' than the other. Of course they don't number their locks, but they do have mile markers. Based on that, you're going 'up' if you're going to the Pacific, and you go 'down' to the Atlantic.
According to Google, the Pacific Ocean is actually higher than the Atlantic (by 40cm or so).
11605720
How useful a fact!
My new 'free energy' / 'perpetual motion machine' plan is to construct a canal or at least a large tube, perhaps a siphon, between the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans, with turbines and elctrical generators.
11606025
I'd say the large tube is the way to go. Eventually the levels of the Pacific and Atlantic will equalize, but I feel like you'd get a few centuries of basically free energy before that happens. The real question is how much it would cost to install such a pipe and what the payback period would be.