aramis87

“Computer, play a British holiday film.”

computer plays The Great Escape

Thank you for your comment, and welcome to my blocklist.

Tribeca is a neighborhood in Manhattan. Everything in Manhattan is more expensive, simply because of the cost to rent the store. [Not denying there are other factors, but that will be a big one, simply because Manhattan cannot grow outward any more.]

Rochester is a large city in the north of New York State, on the banks of Lake Ontario. It has plenty of room to grow out - and it’s surrounded by rural counties. Eggs are cheaper there simply because there are more chickens and less humans than there are near Manhattan.

Again, there are unfortunately other factors in play. But surely they could’ve used a better example than the price of eggs in two such disparate parts of the state?

Go to versus. On the left side, scroll down to 3.5mm headphone jack and change the selector to On. Then choose whatever are the other most important criteria for you.

This version was probably too long for the regular series. I do find it interesting that, when enumerating the cast at the end, they individually refer to the Skipper, Gilligan and the Howells, while Ginger, Mary Ann and the Professor are not individually called out.

In the original series theme song, they went with “Gilligan, the Skipper too, the millionaire and his wife, the movie star, and the rest”, which was absolutely stupid as there were only two more people to list. They later changed it to “[…] the movie star, the Professor and Mary Ann”, which was better.

Which leads to the fun fact that Russell Johnson and Dawn Wells kept in touch for decades afterward, and they always signed their Christmas cards to each other as “the rest”.

Man, that 100°W longitude is just a killer, isn’t it?

Lock screen ads are coming to all smartphones. Because you know that, once they get one group to accept it, they’re going to shove it onto everyone.

When I’m making it to eat hot, I generally prefer yellow butterfly popcorn. If I’m making popcorn to eat cold - like when I’m making caramel corn balls or something (or stringing them for the Christmas tree), I prefer white mushroom popcorn. In either case, I prefer hull-lesd over hulled popcorn - I have cracking my teeth on them. I tend not to like popcorn mixes (mixed red, blue, yellow and white kernels) - they’re very pretty, but I have enough trouble timing the pops without adding in complexity between the kernels.

I know the different types taste different, but not enough that I really notice much - that’s likely a function of the added toppings, even if it’s just something as simple as butter and salt. Popcorn-on-the-cob is a fun thing for the kids or a friend.

I usually run through the start of a bag of corn, then stop because I get tired of it, and when I start again, the moisture content has dropped enough that I’m no longer getting y the big puffy corn I like, which is usually the sign to pop the current bag into popcorn balls and start a new bag for movie viewing.

The passes fundamentally disrupt this industry-standard model

Funny how they didn’t care about how streaming in general disrupted cable. Or how cable disrupted broadcast. Or how tv disrupted radio …

I’m sorry about the depression; I very much understand that!

Try googling “csa [your country]” or “community supported agriculture [your country]”. I did a very quick search on each of the three Nordics, and they each have some efforts underway. For example

Norway, 2023: “NIBIO researcher Anna Birgitte Milford has analysed the response forms from 390 cooperative owners in 45 different CSAs in Norway.”

Finland: has at least one CSA called Rekola Farm (they’ve been operating for over 50 years), and there’s apparently a Finnish CSA umbrella association. Their posts are mostly in Finnish so I don’t understand many of the details, but the group is called Suomen Kumppanuusmaataloudet ry, and they seem to have a decent-but-not-overwhelming Facebook group going.

Sweden: andelsjordbruksverige.se says “It is estimated that around 100 CSA farms exist in Sweden today although there are no official statistics.”

Anyway … I don’t know if any of the farms are anywhere near you (though check: some places have local drop-off locations, or will bring it to the farmers market), I don’t know if the price will work for you, I don’t know if you’ll decide it’s too much effort. But there may be options near you.

If you do decide to get a share, you might see if you know anyone who might split it with you. The first year or so can be overwhelming.

Whatever you decide, I hope you have a wonderful life, with much joy and less depression :)

Stores also have to worry about shelf-life and damage in transit, so they tend to buy stuff that’s under-ripe to varying degrees; farm shares pick at the peak of ripeness, so it tastes better. Plus, they’ll generally grow different varieties that you don’t get in stores because those varieties don’t travel well through the collection-and-distribution system, so you get to try things you didn’t know existed: my last farm had paw-paws before they became famous again, and my current farm (we had to move) has 14 different types of basil.

So, err, um … yeah, sorry. I love farm shares and CSAs, in case you couldn’t tell, lol. I generally either split a share with a friend, or I get a 10-week share. My current share is a 10-week share for $450 a year. I know that sounds like a lot up front, but it takes care of like 90% of my vegetable needs for the entire year, and it ensures that I’m eating my veggies!

It’s called Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). One of the main problems farmers face is financing because they have to invest in so many things up front - not just the land, but every year they have to pay up front for seed, fertilizer, equipment, labor, etc - and then they have to hope for a good harvest in order to repay their loans. And the harvest has to be “just right” – too much of a crop means everyone has too much of it and prices drop; too little of a crop and there’s still a limit to how much you can charge so you lose money. A CSA avoids all that uncertainty.

The farmer figures out how much money they need to make that year, for all their farm expenses, plus an emergency fund, plus money for retirement, etc. Then he figures out how many roughly-3/4-bushel shares his farm can produce on a weekly basis. Money-needed divided by number-of-shares is the price for which he sells the shares to the general public. Shares usually go on sale in January, so the farmer has money up-front for the entire growing season, and can focus exclusively on growing crops.

In return, the share-buyer is guaranteed a box of produce every week during the growing season. If it’s a great year for crops, you’ll get extra; if it’s a poor year, you’ll get less - but prices at the supermarker would have increased anyway. There are lots of variations - some places also have 10-week shares, or offer smaller shares, or offer a small number of shares where you can work on the farm for like 4 hours a week in exchange for a share, that kind of thing. Some places also have fruit or nut trees, or team up with other local producers to also carry their items – eggs, milk, cheese, honey, mushrooms, whatever.

One of the nice things about this model is that it strongly favors small, local farms over big conglomerates; another nice thing is that both the farmer and the share-buyer are guaranteed that the farm will still be in business next year. And it helps build and maintain communities, and the share-buyer is much more in-tune with the natural growing season.

I pick up my share and do the PYO on Thursday, and figure out what to make. Friday after work I pick up any extra needed ingredients from the grocery store. Friday night, I watch tv and clean, peel, slice, dice, etc. Then I cook for about 2 hours on Saturday morning - this week took longer because it’s peak harvest season right now, but I was still only there for about 3 hours (it really helps when everything is already prepped beforehand!) I eat about half of what I make each week and store the other half for the winter.

This week’s farm share included onions; regular and a mixture of hot peppers; cherry, canning, and heirloom tomatoes (for some reason slicing tomatoes aren’t doing well this year); eggplant; zucchini (I forgot to mention the zucchini boats!); cabbage; carrots; 3-4 types of green leafy things; a watermelon; a canteloupe; a large bunch of lemon basil; and early garlic. There were also a few early potatoes (I haven’t done anything with them yet, I’ll probably use them next week in a larger dish) and the last of the beets for the year (which I don’t like and gave to my beet-loving neighbor).

This week’s pick-your-own included many more tomatoes, ground cherries (I’ll make a tart with them later today once the dishes are done and I have energy again), the last of the blackberries, various herbs, and flowers - I grabbed some sunflowers and also made a mixed bouquet for a friend who’s ill. The peaches and mushrooms came in from a couple of other local producers: I had to pay for the mushrooms, but the peaches were “free” as I’d also bought a fruit add-on for my share: I got blueberries last month, next month I’ll get apples, and then a couple extra pumpkins in October (I make pumpkin pie filling, then freeze it flat in ziplocs. At Thanksgiving and Christmas, I buy empty pie shells and make homemade pumpkin pies.)

Oh! something else I forgot to mention is that the produce you get in stores goes from the farm to a middle-man who processes it and sells it to supermarket chains, which send it to a distribution center, which ships it to the store, which eventually puts it out on the floor. All that takes time and cuts down on the shelf-life of the produce you eventually get. With a farm share, the produce was picked within the last 24 hours, so everything stays fresh longer - my heads of lettuce last like 3 weeks.

[continued, sorry, just two more paragraphs, I swear!]

I just finished cooking off my weekly farm share this morning: French onion soup, fire roasted peppers and tomatoes with browned brown rice, eggplant parmesan, cole slaw, peach kuchen, black pearl mushroom soup, frittata with peppers and mixed greens, caprese sets (ready to slide onto crispy bread to eat), sliced watermelon, sliced canteloupe, and a salad. Preservation-wise, I also made dried red pepper flakes, the last of the blackberries jam, marinara, the r/legaladvice salsa, and ice cubes of garlic confit. Plus a frozen bag of miscellaneous skins and end-bits to contribute to a stock sometime later.

Oh, and I cleaned a bunch of small bunches of herbs and froze them as well - chives, rosemary, mint, oregano, parsley, basil, thyme, dill, sage, cilantro, etc. We get some big bunches during the season and we’re allowed to PYO small bunches every week, but the small bunches are too small to really process every week. So I clean and chop them, freeze them on trays, then move them into labeled ziplocs in the freezer. At the end of the season, I take out the ziplocs and dry everything in the oven to restock the spice shelf.

I’m exhausted, my kitchen needs a massive cleaning (had to wait for the dishwasher to finish a load and now I’m too tired to unload and refill), and I have to add the non-stockable bits to the compost pile (which I really should turn but again, tired, and I should weed while I’m out there).

But!! I’m going to eat well, both this week and this winter!

I’m sure they’d be fine with seven 8-hour days a week.

I haven’t watched this yet, but personally I like the theory that not only is Trump in the Epstein files, but that the Epstein files contain proof that he was actively trafficking kids himself.

On top of other comments, some trackers suck at clearing out ghost seeds.

Also nightmare fuel: Will America’s Worst Wildfire Disaster Happen in New Jersey? [article is 6 pages long, sorry for the need to click-through).

AI data centers are also gobbling down massive amounts of electricity, stressing the grid, giving consumers higher bills for worse service. All for something that pretty much everyone hates.

Funny how that happened right after Paramount bribed Trump and also fired Colbert …

I wonder how often they have to restock it?