Once upon a time, many years ago, I was working in a bar in rural Ireland. I was 16 or 17, I was alone in the place, it was a slow afternoon, I was crouched down, putting bottles on shelves, idly wondering what the strongest drink - highest ABV - in this place was. Most spirits were about 40%, many less, some slightly more. At that moment I happened to look up and I swear a beam of sunshine at that moment lit on a bottle of green chartreuse above my head, highlighting the “55% ABV” on the label. In my memory, music also chimed. I just had to taste this stuff, so I poured a tiny drop into a glass. O. M. G. It. Was. _Vile_. To this day, it is my benchmark for how bad something tastes.
In fairness, I thought the same thing about most types of beer at that age. If you like cocktails and interesting flavors, Chartreuse is genuinely excellent and beloved by bartenders. There are bars that have drink programs that specialize in it, and this has been a thing since far before the shortage.
It's very sweet. The thing here is nobody drinks it straight. Do equal parts Chartreuse, gin, Maraschino, and lemon juice (a Last Word); it's hard to hate, and a good introduction to what Chartreuse is about. My next move would be to put it in a Sazerac.
If you want to use it in a Sazerac, swap it in for the Peychaud's and soak a real sugar cube with it instead of using simple syrup. I don't personally like it, but IMO it's the only good entry point for it in terms of texture.
The other option is a Carthusian, which puts a 1/4 oz. in and swaps the Peychaud's with lemon bitters to offset with acid.
Malort tastes like Meyer's lemons (the ones you use to clean things instead of eat) and anise, most people without a strong anise culture would hate it.
Malort tastes like what it is: a cleaning solvent. It's a prank Chicagoans play on tourists. The authentic, artistically coherent version of Malort is Novasalus.
Malort improves a lot with a little airing out. Straight out of the bottle and into a shot glass tastes like poison, but if you leave it in a glass, maybe giving it a few swirls for a bit while doing something else (like trying to convince someone to try it for the first time), it tempers out quite a bit, and, while still bitter, becomes a drink that at least sometimes can be enjoyed.
What? Chartreuse is delicious. But more importantly, the crazy ABVs are in overproof rum. Some are over 75%. Not advisable to drink neat. And much more disgusting.
There is a line in 30 rock "I don't know anything. I get all my news from the radio in Grand Theft Auto” and I aspire to this level of ignoring the “News”.
Even when I go coldest turkey, I’ve found that actually important news will find me, often in a way that makes it easier to judge for myself whether it’s good or bad.
This article feels like a hit piece on Air Conditioning. Some groups seem to regard AC as somehow morally weak and even evil, and while the sentiment resonates with me - I grew up in Ireland! I never even saw the _point_ of AC until I moved to California! - attempts, like this one, to damn AC with logic always feel kind of, well, obtuse. They seem to deliberately miss the main benefits of AC. Which are:
1) AC literally saves lives. Continuing to reject it in hot countries is kind of evil.
2) AC is efficient. Each kWh of heat sucked out of buildings uses a fraction of a kWh of electricity.
3) AC's electricity use is strongly correlated with when the sun is shining brightest. It is the greenest (man-made) energy use I can imagine!
And, most importantly:
4) AC nowadays is almost always installed so it can work in reverse, as a "heat pump". So countries that currently heat their buildings with natural gas or other fossils, would actually _reduce_ their total carbon burden by installing AC everywhere! Because they can use these instead of burning fossils in winter! Doubly so in countries avec lots of nuclear generation, but even if they don't, burning natural gas or even coal to make electricity to drive a heat pump emits less carbon than burning the same natural gas to heat a house! (Citation needed!)
I have a pet conspiracy theory that the anti-AC lobby in Europe is funded by Big Fossil. It seems silly, even to me, but it's not totally illogical: widespread AC installation in mainland Europe will inexorably reduce dependency on oil and gas for heating, first by burning less of it to make electricity to drive a heat pump rather than by burning it directly, and second by making it _possible_ to substitute renewables for it.
Not a hit piece on AC, rather about how non coordinated a thorough policy change can have adversarial effect.
Also, yes AC is essential, but it is on track to consuming so much electricity that is has to be pushed in the right direction to not become a new problem replacing the old.
Humans seem to be wired to weigh negative news much more strongly than positive news.
(The most plausible hypothesis I’ve found for this is that bad news - fire, predators nearby - has historically been much more likely to kill you than good news to benefit you, so we are descended from people who over-weighed bad news, and survived to reproduce.)
Modern media seems to really lean into this. All takes on everything are The Worst Possible Take. I heard Twitter described yesterday as “gain of function research for takes”. It’s not that the takes have to be bad, they just have to provoke a strong reaction, and bad news just gets a stronger reaction in humans.
“Cure for death found - social security bankrupt!!”
We have become more anti-fragile: and good things are way more likely to benefit us than before, and bad things less likely to harm us. Eventually we will evolve into this, but it will take literally generations!
Anyway, given people’s tendency to give bad news more weight, and given that most media is strongly negative, it is no wonder that people can come to believe that everything is terrible and that we are all doomed and that humanity has never had it worse. This seems absolutely ridiculous to me, comically so, but it seems almost tautological to many people. And telling them that things are actually great can seem like an attack!!!!!
If people don’t carefully curate their media environment, it is almost inevitable that they’ll become negative about the future. I don’t know what to do about this in general, but I know that I have to be very careful about what I consume. (And be gentle toward people who have been harmed by consuming too much negative for too long. I don’t think a psychologist can help though!)
I remember an interview with Margaret Atwood [0] in which she joked that while Quebec might vote to leave Canada, the first nations own the bit of Canada where all the hydroelectric power comes from, and _they_ won't want to secede. And wouldn't have to, because Canada has treaties with various First Nations that among other things require Canada to come to their aid if attacked.
ATWOOD: I think things will stay kind of the way they are. But think about this very carefully, as people did when it was a distinct possibility. You have Quebec there. The people to the north of Quebec are not French-speaking Quebecers. They’re indigenous people. And they said — and that’s where the hydroelectric power comes from, by the way — they said, “If you separate from Canada, we’re going to separate from you on the same grounds. Different language, older culture, etc.”
And Quebec said, “Oh, no, you’re not.” And they said, “Oh, yes, we are. And by the way, we happen to have a treaty with Canada that says that if any foreign power invades us, they have to defend us.” So if Quebec separates, north of Quebec separates from Quebec, Quebec invades them, Canada invades. You see what I mean?
When I renewed my H1B visa (I think after three years), I had to leave the US to do it. I couldn't renew it from inside. The permission to work got renewed just fine - I could just keep on working for another three years - but if I left after the first visa expired, and wanted to come back, I would need a new _visa_ (thing stuck into my passport) to come back, and I could only apply for that while outside the country.
I read that it used to not be like this, that it used to be possible to renew the _visa_ itself from inside the US, but that got changed before my time. I can only imagine that the reason for that was that non-citizens inside the US are entitled to due process, but non-citizens outside the US are not. And denying a visa to somebody outside the US is therefore a lot easier than denying it to somebody inside the US, and essentially cannot be appealed.
When I applied for AOS form H1B to Green Card, I didn't have to leave the US. With this change, I would have had to. The only reason I can think for this change is that denials of AOS would now become unappealable. I hate this.
> I read that it used to not be like this, that it used to be possible to renew the _visa_ itself from inside the US, but that got changed before my time. I can only imagine that the reason for that was that non-citizens inside the US are entitled to due process, but non-citizens outside the US are not. And denying a visa to somebody outside the US is therefore a lot easier than denying it to somebody inside the US, and essentially cannot be appealed
No, after 9/11 they passed a rule to always collect biometrics before issuing visas and validating them at border entry. The DoS facilities in the US did not have fingerprinting facilities but the consulates and embassies did, so they forced the change. Recently there was a pilot to allow it in the US itself.
This is just Trump trying to torture immigrants likely due to the psychopath Steven Miller.
In general the law applies equally to everyone associated with the US in any respect so you get due process (in theory) regardless. Specific laws may apply to different classes of people though (see 'enemy combatants').
Yes, many things are slightly - a few percent - cheaper than many other stores, per unit weight/volume, but it’s not a a big difference. Some things are more expensive though, like meat and fish. It seems “cheap” only if you do most of your other grocery shopping in premium grocery stores (eg Whole Foods). I do most of my grocery shopping in Market Basket, and it’s about the same as Costco for most things I buy. And everything comes in normal sized portions!
Costco’s real benefit is that everything they sell is pretty good stuff, and nothing is outrageously overpriced. Eg They sell Goya beans, for more per can than supermarket brand beans, but less than Goya beans in supermarkets. Many things are like this. You can assume that the things Costco sells are The Good Brands, but you can get most things cheaper if you’re not brand sensitive.
There are many things for which buying in bulk is a false economy: I will *ever again buy Costco-sized containers of eg yogurt covered raisins, or praline covered almonds! I suspect that every trip to Costco used to raise my average body weight for the next year by half a pound. Especially if I went to Costco hungry! Never go to Costco hungry!
My old car is a Honda Civic hybrid from 2008. Your comment sent me checking out the current Civic (ICE) performance, and it's also eight seconds! So I see your point, I guess my expectations have changed since EVs came on the scene.
Oh I'm sorry, but this makes total sense. I say sorry so much that I have seen people take it as admission of responsibility. And it's not good. Glad there are laws that understand the nuance of language.
