This is what one of Edmond Dantes alter egos did in the Count of Monte Cristo. “Lord Wilmore” was an eccentric Englishman who understood French perfectly well, but refused to speak it:

… Lord Wilmore appeared….His first remark on entering was, “You know, sir, I do not speak French?”

“I know you do not like to converse in our language,” replied the envoy.

“But you may use it,” replied Lord Wilmore; “I understand it.”

NA beer is not basically “beer flavored soda.” The only thing the two have in common is carbonation and even that is produced differently in each. Soda is flavored syrup mixed with water that has been carbonated by forcing CO2 through it. NA beer is brewed the same as regular beer, and carbonation occurs during this process. For some NA beers, fermentation is arrested before significant amounts of alcohol form, while others are subjected to a vacuum to lower the boiling point so that the alcohol can be boiled out with a minimum effect of the flavor.

I use a kettle at home, but I’ve used a microwave at work. I don’t understand what’s remotely laughable about doing so. Boiling water is boiling water.

I’ll tell what is laughable is how America restaurants typically serve hot tea. They draw a small metal container of hot water from the spigot on the side of the coffee maker, and bring it to the table with an empty cup and a teabag. By the time the bag goes in the water, the water is far too cold to infuse properly.

Re: transparency about bankrolling, i believe you since you say so. I’ve seen many of his videos and never heard him say so. I guess I just missed the ones where he did, or perhaps he said so on social media.

As for rigor, I can’t count the number of times he uses an unspecified amount of a chemical in a reaction, referring only to “throwing a bunch in.” But again, perhaps I’ve just watched the wrong videos.

His approach seems to me to be very “by guess and by gosh.” Part of that stems from trying to follow poorly written instructions in an academic paper; applied sciences grapples with that too. And some of it may be less slapdash that it appears, with Nilered using a deliberately casual tone in his scripts so that they’re more relatable, knowing that people aren’t likely to use his videos to attempt to reproduce his results. Even taking that into account though, given the number of attempts it often takes him to get the desired result, I doubt his rigor. Props to him for showing the failures and partial successes, though. And whatever else I say about him, I do generally find him entertaining.

My problem with him is that he lacks rigor and his methodology is poor.

Also, from the amount of money he throws around buying equipment, I suspect he has wealthy parents bankrolling him.

Applied Science is a far more interesting youtube channel.

Space Viking by H. Beam Piper. Ignore the pulpy sounding title. It’s a good novel with real scope.

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20728