{"id":9731,"date":"2012-08-04T20:15:21","date_gmt":"2012-08-04T19:15:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=9731"},"modified":"2012-08-04T20:15:21","modified_gmt":"2012-08-04T19:15:21","slug":"you-have-to-laugh-sometimes-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=9731","title":{"rendered":"You Have To Laugh, Sometimes\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 200px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 200\/158;margin: 5px 10px 5px 0px; display: inline; float: left;\" title=\"Coyote on a rocket\" alt=\"Coyote on a rocket\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/coyote.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"158\" align=\"left\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" class=\"lazyload\" \/>A few weeks ago I bought some Potassium Nitrate (also known as saltpetre) from Amazon. I needed it because I am going to try my hand at curing my own bacon and saltpetre is used as a preservative in this process.<\/p>\n<p>To anyone who might not know, saltpetre is also one of the three ingredients in the traditional gunpowder recipe. I was surprised to be able to buy it, but happy that I could get hold of this food grade material.<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday I got one of Amazon\u2019s frequent \u201cwe thought you might like\u201d emails. The contents of these are based on what you\u2019ve purchased previously. So imagine my surprise when I saw that the suggestions included:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Potassium Nitrate 99.9% pure in 1kg bag<\/li>\n<li>Himalayan Pink Salt<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That Himalayan thing was a red herring. But when I clicked on the Potassium Nitrate link out of interest (my 500g pack cost more), I discovered that it wasn\u2019t food grade &#8211; and then I saw at the bottom of the page the following related items:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Pure Sulphur Brimstone Powder Incense 500g High Grade<\/li>\n<li>Commercial Grade Willow Charcoal Powder 400g<\/li>\n<li>Firework Safety Fuse for Pyrotechnics &#8211; 4 meters<\/li>\n<li>Magnesium Ribbon 99.9% 25g<\/li>\n<li>Aluminium Powder 99.7% Purity<\/li>\n<li>Potassium Chlorate High Purity\/Top Grade Pyrotechnic<\/li>\n<li>Pyro Rocket Tubes (various)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In fact, 10 pages of items specifically for making fireworks and\u2026 well, things that go BANG! And the joyful proclamation that the \u201cfollowing items are frequently bought together\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>I remember from my school days that very fine sulphur and Willow charcoal are key items for making fast-burning gunpowder (along with saltpetre). Other oxidising agents make it burn faster, and magnesium makes it burn brighter. Guess what the \u201cfrequently bought\u201d collections included!<\/p>\n<p>And probably the funniest thing is that the email starts with:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Are you looking for something in our Herbs, Spices &amp; Seasonings store? If so, you might be interested in these items.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The Potassium Nitrate it links to is NOT identified as food grade, doesn\u2019t actually fall\u00a0 under any of the headings \u201cherbs, spices, or seasonings\u201d even if it was food grade, <strong>and is being sold by a garden store<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>They\u2019ll be selling weapons grade Plutonium in the toys section next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few weeks ago I bought some Potassium Nitrate (also known as saltpetre) from Amazon. I needed it because I am going to try my hand at curing my own bacon and saltpetre is used as a preservative in this process. To anyone who might not know, saltpetre is also one of the three ingredients [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funny-related"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9731\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}