What's your favorite dome?

@f00l As soon as I saw the topic today I was going to mention Monolothic Domes. Pretty cool company and while I think dome homes and buildings are kind of ugly, there’s beauty in their strength and utility. If we lived in tornado or other storm country I’d happily live in one, as long as it had a big enough garage and good internet

@duodec
I’d happily live in a monolithic dome anywhere, provided it was well constructed.

These have insane insulation and ability to withstand stress. The pictured one has been engineered to withstand flooding and 500 mph winds… They are amazing in weather-risk areas and places with extreme temps.

I once spent half a day at the Monolithic Dome Institute in Italy, Texas. Was very interesting.

These have caught in a bit as schools, churches, libraries. Very cheap to build and operate for the square footage. If you want one for a house - there can be huge zoning and code issues because it’s not “normal” - and neighborhood opposition. Plus it is very difficult to finance the construction or purchase.

Lenders often are not sure what they are, and think it’s equivalent to building a house out of tires or toys or other homemade methods. Plus lenders believe the house will be difficult or impossible to sell later (because the buyer won’t be able to get a loan, for starters) and so they don’t want the financial risk on what they see as a house with zero market.

These need to catch on as houses - become somewhat socially ok and have a market - before they are financially viable for lenders. But they can’t catch on because no one wants to finance them so they don’t get built - in spite of the long list of virtues.

@boc Oddly enough, when I clicked on the YouTube link for this video, I got an ad in which Ted Cruz is campaigning for Roy Blunt for Missouri Senate. I don’t think Ted or Roy would approve of Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

One of my favorite albums when I was 13, and it took me a few years to realize truly what it all meant.

@melwin
Thumbs down to political ads on YouTube. Wow.

@f00l Thumbs down to political ads anywhere.

@sammydog01 No one? Not even @bullrocky? Damn I’m old.

@brhfl

I love this one too. Have never seen the building completely free of scaffolding.

@brhfl
Because Texans are all obsessed with size, the dome of the Texas State Capital Building is supposedly bigger than the one in Washington DC.

It is a nice building.

@f00l We love our scaffolding in DC…

@Ignorant Forget Arby’s, this is the real Meat Mountain.

@fastemily Attended a Seahawks/Redskins game there back in the early 1990s. It was a nice stadium.

@dijit27
Must have pix

@dijit27 it seems like it’s only a fraction of some of the others here.

@dijit27 This was my first thought, too! I think it counts.

@dijit27 My answer too. I spent the night on top 30 years ago. You can’t do that any more. Now my wife and I go to a vet conference in Yosemite and see it every year.

This was in 2009:

Reflected in Mirror Lake:

@SSteve
How tough a climb to the top (30 years ago)?

@f00l Getting to the top wasn’t awful. The worst part was that I had little hiking experience so I had really bad shoes and got some serious blisters. I even enjoyed going up the cables. A lot of the people in the party were a touch terrified at that part.

What did me in was coming back down. It turns out there’s something not right in my knees. When I walk downhill for an extended period of time it hurts a lot. As we got toward the end I couldn’t put any downhill weight at all on my right knee and my left knee was seriously painful. That slowed me down quite a bit. I could walk fine on level ground, though. I lived in a second-floor flat in San Francisco at the time. It was no fun walking down the two flights of stairs for a couple weeks.

@SSteve
Yeah I have the knee thing. One old, one w few ligaments are almost no cartilage. If I hiked anything but a fairly flat or even trail, I’d have to wear knee braces.

bet that climb was awesome. I went up a few mountains in Colorado or NM (not the big ones), and up Katahdin in Maine. The biggest prob was always my knees and leg muscles on the way down down.

@f00l Technically Spaceship Earth is a full-on geodesic sphere.

@simplersimon if you played turtles in time you would know better

@Pantheist I did play turtles in time. It was the first video game I ever beat! The shame is devouring me.

@simplersimon as it should be. I am proud of you for beating the game though, so it’s a wash.

@serpent I thought it was pretty good until the last season…and maybe a little before the last.

@mehbee I thought it was bloody terrible since maybe 2-3 episodes in, but couldn’t stop watching - it’s like the current elections, a total trainwreck with no positive outcome possible, but so damn fascinating. Zero plot, zero acting, no likeable characters, absolute cringefest.

@serpent I couldn’t get through the first episode and my standards are incredibly low.

@ButterQuark
Wonder who got an architectural award for that.

It’s not that it’s terrible, so much as that it’s a stupid variation on a theme for no reason except “well, nobody else already did this shape. Woohoo, we’re so innovative!”

Not exactly designed primarily to be a wonderful building to work and live in and around.

@LaVikinga
Oh, that’s a fav. Grandma’s house!

@PlacidPenguin, it’s your fault that I am now thinking about cake.

@f00l

What kind?

@PlacidPenguin
Around cake I turn into a four year old.

So different cake with tons of layers and fudge icing.

I don’t mean fudge flavored icing. I mean icing you makr from scratch with unsweetened Baker’s chocolate and cook to soft-boiled stagr and cool and then have to get onto the cake fast before it hardens too much.

Also black forest cake. Also ice cream cake.

Also just any great cake.

Here a recipes similar to those my grandmother who didn’t insist on being “always-right” used.

I believe they can be found in Vintage copies of The Joy Of Cooking from the 1950s-1980’s. Perhaps they are still in the newest editions.

Cake
http://www.ramblemuse.com/recipes/choc_cake.html

Devil’s Food Cake Cockaigne
with Chocolate Fudge Icing

This is a recipe out of The Joy of Cookingone-bit. I liked it because it took making a chocolate cake about as far as one could go in the direction of including chocolate. For suitable celebrations, a glass of champagne goes well with it. For less extreme occasions, a cup of coffee from freshly ground beans will suffice. It is a quality of cake suitable for feeding bite-by-bite to a close friend.
Devil’s Food Cake Cockaigne

Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Prepare the following custard:

Cook and stir in a double boiler over — not in — boiling water:

2 to 4 oz. unsweetened chocolate
½ cup milk
1 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
1 egg yolk

Remove from the heat when thickened. Have other ingredients at about 70°F (21°C). Sift before measuring:

2 cups cake flour

Resift with:

1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt

Beat until soft: ½ cup butter
Add and cream until light: 1 cup sifted sugar.
Beat in one at a time: 2 egg yolks

Add the flour to the butter mixture in 3 parts, alternating with the following mixture:

¼ cup water
½ cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla

Stir the batter until smooth after each addition. Stir in the chocolate custard.

Whip until stiff, but not dry: 2 egg whites.

Fold them lightly into the cake batter. Bake in greased pan about 25 minutes. Spread when cool with Chocolate Fudge Icing.

Icing
http://www.ramblemuse.com/recipes/choc_icing.html

Chocolate Fudge Icing

This recipe is the icing for Devil’s Food Cake Cockaigne.

Prepare: Fudge Cockaigne. Use in all 1 cup milk. Beat until the icing is of the right consistency to be spread.
Fudge Cockaigne

Bring to a boil in a large heavy pan 1 cup minus 1 tablespoon milk.

Remove from the heat and stir in until dissolved:

2 cups sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 oz. grated unsweetened chocolate

Bring to a boil and cook covered 2 to 3 minutes until the steam washes down from the sides of the pan any crystals which may have formed. Uncover, reduce heat and cook without stirring to soft-ball stage; 234°F (112°C). When nearing 234°F, there is a fine overall bubbling with, simultaneously, a coarser pattern, as though the fine bubbled areas were being pulled down for quilting into the coarser ones. Cool the candy to 110°F (43°C). You may hasten the process by placing the hot pan in a larger pan of cold water until the bottom of the pan has cooled.

Add: 2 to 4 tablespoons butter and beat fudge partially.

Add: 1 teaspoon vanilla Then beat until it begins to loose its sheen.

At this point the drip from the spoon, when you flip it over, holds its shape against the bottom of the spoon.

Quickly add ½ to 1 cup broken nutmeats. Pour the fudge into a buttered pan. Cut into squares before it hardens. To use fudge for centers, beat until thick, knead and shape.

Here is another icing recipe really similar to my grandmother’s

Family Recipe: Boiled Chocolate Icing
By Nealy Dozier

http://www.thekitchn.com/family-recipe-boiled-chocolate-icing-recipes-from-the-kitchn-174777

Boiled Chocolate Icing
Recipe adapted from Grandmother Mimmy and Joy of Cooking

Yields enough icing for one 2-layer cake

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
3 cups granulated sugar
1 1/2 cups whole or 2% milk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 squares unsweetened baking chocolate
1/4 cup heavy cream (optional)

In a large heavy saucepan, melt the butter, sugar, milk, and vanilla over low heat until the sugar is dissolved, about 5 minutes. Bring to a boil and cook, without stirring, for 1 minute. Brush down the sides of the pan with a pastry brush dipped in warm water to remove sugar crystals, then turn off heat. Stir in the chocolate until melted and smooth.

Return heat to medium. Brush down the sides of the pan again one more time with water. Cook the chocolate mixture, WITHOUT STIRRING, until it reaches 238°F, the soft-ball stage, approximately 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare an ice water bath in a large bowl. When icing reaches soft-ball temperature, place saucepan in water to stop the cooking. DO NOT STIR. Let the frosting cool to 120°F, approximately 20 minutes. Remove the pan from the water. Using an electric mixer, beat the icing on high speed for about 3-5 minutes. It should reach a pourable consistency. If it is too thick to pour, beat in heavy cream one tablespoon at a time until it is the right consistency.

Working quickly, frost the cake. Pour 1/3 of icing over the center of first layer and push out with a spatula. Add second cake layer and pour remaining icing over the top. Push out frosting so it runs over the sides of the cake. Smooth as much as possible. Let cake stand until icing sets and loses its sheen. Good luck!
Notes:

• To Make a 3-Layer Cake: Prepare an extra-large batch of the recipe, increasing all the ingredients by half (to make 1 1/2 batches). To frost the cake, pour 1/4 of the icing over the first layer, 1/4 of the icing over the second layer, and the remaining icing over top.

If you follow the link at the start of this recipe, there is much more info on that page.

/giphy "let them eat cake"

@f00l

Kinda confused as to why don’t you like cake.

/giphy confused penguin

@PlacidPenguin
I try not to like too much things I am somewhat addicted to.

/image fudge cake

@sanspoint We are Devo. D. E. V. O.

@smilingjack It’s not one of his better ones. Not horrible but…well, you know how it goes with King.

@smilingjack It was like a lot of his books- good start, OK middle and WTF ending. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have an ending in mind when he sits down at his computer.

@sammydog01 this ending and Dreamcatcher were Wtf for me. I actually liked the Dreamcatcher movie ending much better… But I saw it before I read the book.