it's actually not funny at all. the optimistic outcome is that this act is recognised as what it is, and the Republican party, now that they have definitively lost, turns on Trump and everything he represents. the good news is there is a chance to make things better in the short and long term.
also, i think it's fundamentally good that the cracks and biases in society have been exposed in such an explicit way. like, the comparison with BLM makes reality crystal clear. these are problems that have to be reckoned with, that have always existed, and they are just becoming more visible and harder to ignore. that's good.
From the outside (I'm Australian), the last years have seen the impression of the US change from “that dangerous place full of guns, but still tries to be the distinguished host of the cocktail party” to “that dangerous place full of guns, now just a circus”.
Now, it looks like the circus is full of Pennywise's.
We've gone from scared deference, to laughing at the US, to now just being sad and sorry for anyone stuck inside it, and genuinely worried that the influence will spread.
Sorry, I know this isn't helpful.
On the coffee front, I am extremely fortunate to live in a city (Melbourne) that is known for its coffee culture, and having a very well established industry of independant cafes that are forced to make excellent coffee in order to survive. We don't get a lot of franchise/chain coffee shops here. There are of course a few, but most cafes are independant, or at most part of a collection of 2-3 shops that the same people run (after being successful with their first). As such, I don't have any good coffee machinery at home, I would always grab a nice coffee in the morning at work.
...then, the pandemic happened, and my city went in to heavy lockdown. I have not been to my office since March, 2020. I have been dealing with instant coffee at home, purely as a utility drink. It is saddening.
Luckily, machinery is not really required to make tea, so I have still been able to enjoy both some nice black teas as well as some nice genmaichas.
@rejj get a stovetop espresso maker! they are cheap, easy to put away, and last for years. it gives you strong as heck coffee, which is an acquired taste, but you can soften it with whatever you prefer. i fill up 80% of a cup, then add the rest in mineral water. it‘s one of my life’s great joys.
Today I didn‘t do much of all. I was happy that I woke up at a slightly more reasonable time of 9am. I made some toast for breakfast, played some ring fit, and spent most of the day doing nothing online. I had some cucumber for a snack. I decided to treat myslef and ordered a 1/2 pizza for dinner: 1/4 pepperoni and 1/4 veggie. While eating I finished watching The Queen’s Gambit. I had a green tea with mandarin to help me digest.
I only really drink coffee at work, usually a flat white, as there is a cafe right below the office.
part of why I personally have a difficult time finding this funny is that anger + exhaustion is getting in the way. Maybe if this “blows over” it will become funny in retrospect. But I think we probably all recognize that trumpist attitudes, even to the degree shown yesterday, are going to be indulged and encouraged by the republican party, despite a few aging 87 year old assholes “strongly rebuking” them -actually now that I think about it, the GOP having to deal with these assholes for the foreseeable future is the one funny part. And a biden administration isn't going to try (and probably wouldnt be capable of) meaningfully confronting white supremacist orgs on the ground, or in the ranks of law enforcement agencies.
It's also exhausting to deal with the media microwaving everything on high. Was this a coup? Was this an insurrection? Were these just the usual assholes who were overindulged yet again by cops but at a photogenic moment? There's just not space to have an honest accounting of what's happening and what to do about it. There are always interests being served by this shit at some level of capital/finance. It would be "bad for business" if any of this calmed down or was approached forensically+with the intent of "problem solving."
Weirdly, my reflexive response to seeing this happen yesterday was a moment of relief, because I half-thought: this is so dumb, grotesque, and impossible to ignore, and has, depending on the angle, the look of actual danger for powerful people, that this will finally become "bad for business" and things will calm down, etc. But reflecting I doubt that it really is "bad for business." More material for the noble scolding of liberals and republicans positioning themselves for a pundit job or a book deal. Look forward to more NPR safaris into the dark continent of central Ohio.
@tombo yeah I love my bialetti. 10 second fresh burr grind+filtered water through the stovetop espresso maker is the best combination of good coffee+simple to make+not too too expensive I've found.
good call yes, I'm a tea in the evenings person. Had a Ten Ren in chinatown where you could buy like a garbage bag sized amount of good gunpowder or jasmine for not that much, but the franchise owner retired and the store went away. Now it's all yuppie shit+prices unfortunately for me
As someone living in a country with a fascist party already part of the congress and slowly rising in popularity I feel for everything that happened yesterday. Hope we manage to get this whole nazi situation under control because things are looking very bleak.
In the meantime, I'm going to teach you how to prepare a Barraquito, a coffee liquor typical of Tenerife, the island where I live. It's very sweet with a bit of alcohol in it and is usually served as dessert. Hope you like it!
1. Pour 25 ml of condensed milk on the bottom of a tall glass.
2. Pour another 25 ml of Licor 43 (if this is not available on your region use any sweet and soft liquor, for reference 43 is vanilla and orange flavored so try to find something similar). Do this over a spoon so the liquor falls gently over the condensed milk and they don't mix.
3. Froth 50 ml of milk either manually or using the coffee machine and pour it over the liquor.
4. Prepare a cup of coffee and put a tiny slice of lemon peel inside it while it's hot.
5. Again using the spoon trick pour the coffee over the frothed milk. Since you made milk lose density it should go through and end up in between the liquor and the frothed milk, let the lemon peel go inside too.
6. Sprinkle a bit of cinnamon over the whole thing, and if you want it to look fancier put a lemon slice or another bit of peel on the side for bonus presentation points.
There you go! You made your very own Barraquito!
Feel free to modify the amount of spirits contained within the beverage if you need an extra punch.
One problem I have is that I also do not own a grinder. I quite like coffee, and if I were to try and do anything above instant (which I've fooled myself into believing isn't "coffee", it is some other drink I can have in the morning while working from home) I would want to do it mostly properly. This would involve buying a decent burr grinder, and I suddenly have coffee machinery at home. Perhaps if this year sees me continuing to work from home for much longer, I'll go down this path anyway.
This looks and sounds great! I wonder, do you happen to know why the coffee is poured over/through the milk foam, rather than layering the coffee on top of the liqueur and then pouring the frothed milk on top?
I've never bought nor tried Licor 43, although a quick search shows that it is available here. I may have to grab a bottle to try!
Unfortunately it is the same around where I live, also. I quite enjoy some tea, but options these days seem to either be floor sweepings in a bag, or very much overpriced teas with no justifications for their price other than packaging and they want to sell it to me in a fancy boutique. I can't wait for proper markets to open again and for it to be safe to visit them, so I can just buy a large bag of leaves from some impatient market stall owner at a reasonable price.
you're referring to Vox? Is the fascist strain in spanish politics more committedly ideological vs material? And how seriously do the non-fascists take the threat?
In the US I suspect a lot of the far-rightward slide could be neutralized by just broad material redistribution. Biden running on a "we will give you $ and healthcare" platform for instance. Sometimes I wonder if he even reads my emails subj line "helpful suggestions
conical burr grinder is not the cheapest but will make an enormous difference in quality
you can also put the beans in an old walgreens bag, go outside, then throw it under the wheels of a passing bus
kidding aside, how does the mortar+pestle method come out?
@yeso Yeah, I was talking about V🤮X (I like to throw a puke emoji there, since their flag is green), a party that also hired Steve Bannon as its advisor and it's slowly but consistently rising in votes with every election for the past 4-5 years or so.
In all honesty, I really think they represent a bunch of lobbies and very wealthy people who have been funneling them money in order to counter the rise of the left we had with the 15-M movement and the rise of Podemos, a very committed left wing party who established its discourse around the need of pursue a true healthy democracy, ending the corruption of the two traditional parties, PSOE and PP.
So in theory I think they are just cynical capitalist proxies performing as true ideological intent BUT we did have a civil war that ended up with a dictator in power from 1936 to 1975 here and V🤮X is very purposefully embracing the whole franquist aesthetic so yeah, I'm a bit scared of that.
clarified I was joking so as not to seem unintentionally critical, not re the pestle method. What do you do after it's ground? French press?
@JoJoestar glad to hear podemos is in fact good. The english-language lefty press is not good about understanding other countries, and there has been some praise re podemos so I appreciate confirmation that it isn't yet another misread by the enthusiastic yet tenuously-informed out here
I too live in DC and have been hearing an undue amount of noise. I found that listening to Hiroshi Yoshimura's classic Music for Nine Post Cards in headphones was soothing.
As far as coffee is concerned I like to drink 2-3 cups per day and as such prefer my Mr. Coffee Drip coffee maker.
@yeso Yup. The main problem with VOX though is the continuos media coverage. We have an amazing example of a right wing party being completely blown off the map with Golden Dawn and Greece, but while the government has stood up to them and are mocking their complete hypocrisy (and how they really laugh at their voters) the media are giving them so much attention to them and trying to crush Podemos so much (they‘ve also made some mistakes, but the amount of demonization of Podemos is too gross) that it makes it more and more difficult to erode them completely off the map. Luckily, they are so stupid that they aren’t rising as properly and in fact I believe they will implode, but if they rise to power (or if another party that‘s even more far right oriented comes out of VOX) we could very well have a complete erosion of rights and public help cut off from us in favor of rich people. I think the main problem in Western countries though is that they need to start acting as political subjects instead of objects, but I think that’s almost impossible since that requires being self-critical, responsible and considerate and at least in Spain that seems a no-no.
@yeso#13274 Podemos has gone through its own journey and while it started great it has slowly devolved into the best we have. But despite the problems it‘s still the party I vote. I’m not a fan of Pablo Iglesias but there are other extremely good and talented politicians there like Irene Montero or Alberto Garzón.
I am sort of hoping that some of the people in influential positions who have been courting this crowd, whipping them up into a frenzy will have learned how unpredictable people can become and how easily they can turn up on your doorstep with automatic weapons.
Meanwhile here in the UK we are beginning the new trade agreement with the EU, predictably businesses are migrating to EU countries in droves and taking jobs with them. Various imports are struggling to get into the country. Good thing we're not in a global recession or anything.
I am intrigued by the pestle + mortar method! I can't imagine I would have enough finesse to produce anything resembling a consistent grind!
Everyone talking about pourovers inspired me to bust out my V60 this morning - everything went super smooth and the coffee was delicious.
my house has been doing drip coffee a while – but i dislike making several individual cups. my old housemates and i would make big pots of coffee every morning, and even if i got up earlier then them, or them earlier than i, there'd be some sweet coffee kindness exchanged between us.
with respect to the dudes who stormed the capital, it's scary seeing support for white supremacy and fascism reach higher heights every day and authorities responding only very mildly. the other day, this alt right freak from my college who despite constant requests to have him removed from other students planted a car bomb hoax in a stolen tesla in queens after causing a scene at a BLM memorial. like, we knew this dude was bad the whole time!
as for me, i'm on lunch break watching my university's women's basketball team practice right now and getting the covid vaccine later today. what a wild world
@xhekros It‘s not difficult, although you need a source of hot (ideally boiling) water and consistently ground coffee (freshly ground for best results). You don’t necessarily need a gooseneck kettle, even boiling water on the stove and pouring it from a jug would be okay but you would probably lose too much heat! There‘s a detailed video here if you’re interested in the technique:
