Yup, this sounds like something Loki would dig if he were down in the cyber muck of humanity like the rest of us.
What have you learned today?
- Thread starter hanselthecaretaker
- Start date
The US Navy Spent the first two years of WW2 with a torpedo that was by all accounts kinda shit. Part of the problem was it had numerous defects, but this was exacerbated by the fact they were so expensive and in such short supply that the Navy didn't bother to test them very much, and when they did, they ran tests that didn't reflect how they would actually be used. Which meant many, many precious torpedos were expended in combat and....didn't do jack shit other then annoy the japanese Navy and merchant shipping by occasionally scratching the paint job on the hull.
As a former US Navy guy it pisses me off that the flag officers let this go on for so long and some of them just blamed the sailors for "not understanding how to use torpedos correctly". Also how stupid it is to think your weapons not actually working like half the time isn't a problem.
As a former US Navy guy it pisses me off that the flag officers let this go on for so long and some of them just blamed the sailors for "not understanding how to use torpedos correctly". Also how stupid it is to think your weapons not actually working like half the time isn't a problem.
So, I decided to cook up some sweet and sour pork. Actually my partner decided she would like some sweet and sour pork and I'm the one who cooks, so, by induction, I decided to cook up some sweet and sour pork.
I figured it would be cool to see about trying to cook it up as traditional as possible assuming such a thing exists and although it does it took a while to come to terms with it because I kept finding ketchup in the ingredient list and it made me think it wasn't a traditional recipe. So, this here is what I learned today about China, international trade, 500 years of history, and weird circumstance.
Ketchup is originally Chinese, inspired by Chinese cuisine, and is inspiration for Chinese cuisine all at the same time. So 500 years ago there were these people who liked a particular kind of fermented fish sauce called kê-tsiap and used it to enhance umami flavours and such in a lot of dishes. Based on what I've found online, this is similar to but not exactly the same as the fish sauce you come across in Vietnamese cooking.
A hundred years later Europeans started trading with China like whoa, and they came across this sauce and apparently came to really like it (they kind of got suckered into it since they were there for something else but the fish sauce was everywhere and you know how it is, you're hungry and you got what you got). Barrels and barrels went back home, but it was an import from China, so not super cheap. To deal with that, the British started just trying to make something themselves. Now instead of anchovies and mushrooms fermented, it was mushrooms, shallots, and a bunch of spices that you boiled the piss out of and strained to make a thin kind of brown sauce. I don't know how you could taste fish sauce and taste one of these recipes I found and think they were even a little related, but I guess I don't know what fish sauce tasted like 400 years ago and that's how shit goes anyway. Its not even as weird as how worcestershire sauce came to be so whatever I guess.
Fast forward another couple hundred years and you come face to face with Tomatoes, imported from their original home in South America near the equator. Those beasties got brought back to Britain and, similar to everything else, just kind of got incorporated. I wasn't able to find out why specifically people decided that their brown sauce needed a red tinge, but it happened - originally in the same heavily spiced brown sauce format as above (with brandy and shit too? I found a number of recipes and they get progressively more and more complex over the years) - but eventually sugared down and simplified when it crossed the ocean into North America because we like it cheap and sweet baby. And, frankly, they probably couldn't really afford much in the way of imported spices to follow the British versions since a lot of that shit was not NA native or easily grown here. THAT sauce got exported BACK to China, apparently around 100 years ago but its tough to say, and eventually got incorporated back into Chinese cuisine as the sweet portion of many sweet and sour dishes.
So yeah. That's a sauce that took a journey. Its kind of hard to really say the sauce we know as corn syrup and tomato paste is really anything like what ketchup was, but it is undeniably the result of a 500 year long game of telephone.
I figured it would be cool to see about trying to cook it up as traditional as possible assuming such a thing exists and although it does it took a while to come to terms with it because I kept finding ketchup in the ingredient list and it made me think it wasn't a traditional recipe. So, this here is what I learned today about China, international trade, 500 years of history, and weird circumstance.
Ketchup is originally Chinese, inspired by Chinese cuisine, and is inspiration for Chinese cuisine all at the same time. So 500 years ago there were these people who liked a particular kind of fermented fish sauce called kê-tsiap and used it to enhance umami flavours and such in a lot of dishes. Based on what I've found online, this is similar to but not exactly the same as the fish sauce you come across in Vietnamese cooking.
A hundred years later Europeans started trading with China like whoa, and they came across this sauce and apparently came to really like it (they kind of got suckered into it since they were there for something else but the fish sauce was everywhere and you know how it is, you're hungry and you got what you got). Barrels and barrels went back home, but it was an import from China, so not super cheap. To deal with that, the British started just trying to make something themselves. Now instead of anchovies and mushrooms fermented, it was mushrooms, shallots, and a bunch of spices that you boiled the piss out of and strained to make a thin kind of brown sauce. I don't know how you could taste fish sauce and taste one of these recipes I found and think they were even a little related, but I guess I don't know what fish sauce tasted like 400 years ago and that's how shit goes anyway. Its not even as weird as how worcestershire sauce came to be so whatever I guess.
Fast forward another couple hundred years and you come face to face with Tomatoes, imported from their original home in South America near the equator. Those beasties got brought back to Britain and, similar to everything else, just kind of got incorporated. I wasn't able to find out why specifically people decided that their brown sauce needed a red tinge, but it happened - originally in the same heavily spiced brown sauce format as above (with brandy and shit too? I found a number of recipes and they get progressively more and more complex over the years) - but eventually sugared down and simplified when it crossed the ocean into North America because we like it cheap and sweet baby. And, frankly, they probably couldn't really afford much in the way of imported spices to follow the British versions since a lot of that shit was not NA native or easily grown here. THAT sauce got exported BACK to China, apparently around 100 years ago but its tough to say, and eventually got incorporated back into Chinese cuisine as the sweet portion of many sweet and sour dishes.
So yeah. That's a sauce that took a journey. Its kind of hard to really say the sauce we know as corn syrup and tomato paste is really anything like what ketchup was, but it is undeniably the result of a 500 year long game of telephone.
This would explain why American Mustard is an abomination and should be shunned.
I had to look American Mustard up because I was thinking like, French's isn't exactly high culture but its not that gross. American Mustard is mustard powder mixed with apple cider vinegar and honey and other shit? I've never heard of that, and it sounds awful. Maybe its like a US thing, we don't do that in Canada. Aside from the unwelcome addition of Maple to literally everything, its usually just the extremely cheap bright yellow mustard here.
With the lack of plumbing back then they probably figured something that looks like blood is a bit easier to digest than, well, yeah.
I feel like they missed a primo endorsement opportunity when Ol' Dirty Bastard died.OTOH, this is really tasty -
Slap some of that on your ham 'n cheese.
Not unique by any measure.
Any who, today I learned that (for me at least), yesterday has been declared by some corner of the Internet to be 'Enterprise Day' in honour of Starfleet's flagship due to the day/month combo being 17/01. I approve of this and am kind of glad my big three sci-fi franchises have had some weird special day assigned to them. In a belated honour, here are my two favourites.
Two "alpha" chasing guys decided to randomly kill a homeless guy, for societal dehumanisation always leads to this. Much appreciate the bigger spotlight given to the victims when covering this shit.
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Andrew still being protected by the establishment all while our trash filth press in the UK won't stop hounding on any perceived "disrespect" from Harry and Megan literally every day with relentless articles which for some stupid fucking reason other countries take seriously and build financially-rewarding reactionary social media channels on. Wtf is wrong with everybody?
On the upside, the infamous interview Andrew did is something of a saffron' unicorn we'll never likely ever get again: A rare glimpse into a gated, cushioned royal psychology not filtered through 12 seperate PR-optimisation groups fed through fawning blindly patriotic media, as it scrambles to selfishly regain its sense of "honour" while completely unaware of how obvious their dishonesty is to everyday people who interact with everyday people. It should be studied in all the "...ologies."
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Andrew still being protected by the establishment all while our trash filth press in the UK won't stop hounding on any perceived "disrespect" from Harry and Megan literally every day with relentless articles which for some stupid fucking reason other countries take seriously and build financially-rewarding reactionary social media channels on. Wtf is wrong with everybody?
On the upside, the infamous interview Andrew did is something of a saffron' unicorn we'll never likely ever get again: A rare glimpse into a gated, cushioned royal psychology not filtered through 12 seperate PR-optimisation groups fed through fawning blindly patriotic media, as it scrambles to selfishly regain its sense of "honour" while completely unaware of how obvious their dishonesty is to everyday people who interact with everyday people. It should be studied in all the "...ologies."
Actor Julian Sands has gone missing during a hike in the mountains of southern California. It's been a few days now in some very harsh conditions; I don't expect a happy ending to this story.
Julian Sands has always scared the shit out of me since I watched Warlock at too young an age.
In the US in the late 1800s, railway companies would deliberately crash (un-manned) trains at pre-planned events as a form of entertainment and publicity.
The most famous of this was at a temporary town called Crush (named after the person behind it, not because trains were being crushed), drew a crowd of 40,000 people. The boilers of both steam trains exploded, showering the spectators with shrapnel, killing 2 and injuring dozens (some due to trampling in the panic, I suspect). Before the bodies and injured were removed, the survivors were taking souvenirs, some so keen that they burned themselves by not waiting for the hot metal to cool.
Crush was immediately fired, quietly rehired the next day, and it was a massive success for the MKT train company, because they got lots of publicity.
I'd have thought that watching a train crash, even if nobody was injured would put people off wanting to travel by trains, but no, it had the opposite effect.
The most famous of this was at a temporary town called Crush (named after the person behind it, not because trains were being crushed), drew a crowd of 40,000 people. The boilers of both steam trains exploded, showering the spectators with shrapnel, killing 2 and injuring dozens (some due to trampling in the panic, I suspect). Before the bodies and injured were removed, the survivors were taking souvenirs, some so keen that they burned themselves by not waiting for the hot metal to cool.
Crush was immediately fired, quietly rehired the next day, and it was a massive success for the MKT train company, because they got lots of publicity.
I'd have thought that watching a train crash, even if nobody was injured would put people off wanting to travel by trains, but no, it had the opposite effect.
Only just learnt about postcard lynchings. What in the actual fuck America.
wordinblack.com
cvltnation.com
The Horrors of Lynching Photographs and Postcards
Lynching photographs captured the brazen cruelty of white mobs who were so audacious they did not fear arrest and were willing to be photographed with the victims.
wordinblack.com
American Terrorism… Lynching Postcards
Terrorism is defined as “the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.” Western media likes to paint terrorists with a brown face, but one of the most horrific campaigns of terror happened in the past century on American soil – the estimated 3,436 lynchings of black...
cvltnation.com
While maybe not today, I learned something in my last therapy appointment. I had this thought in the back of my head for awhile now, but my therapist more or less confirmed my thoughts have merit based on everything I've brought to him over the past several years...
I may not be suitable for longer term work.
Every new job starts out great. Then I hit the 6 month mark and it starts to show a few cracks. Frustrating ones, but ones I can continue to ignore cause the good outweighs the bad. But eventually, in a year or so (maybe slightly more if the job is decently chill, less if the job is stress and anxiety inducing), it's gone the polar opposite, even if the job itself has barely changed at all. Every fault can't be ignored, every fault gets worse in my mind, my stress and anxiety spike constantly, and I can't handle it. Then I check out mentally, and at that point it's over, time to look for a new job.
With how my mind is tuned, be it with stuff mentally like my disability, my anxiety, both or more... or with things related to the work itself... this conclusion follows the patterns of my work experience perfectly. Longer term work has rarely drawn success for one reason or another, despite desperately trying to make it fit. Being in a situation where I have to keep doing the same type of job or work over a long period of time wears on me, and it eventually falls apart, even with jobs (like my current one) where I really enjoy(ed) it. Then I end up having to spend long periods of time out of work just to recover mentally so I can tackle the next one. If I go back too soon it falls apart faster.
It's all kinda messed up. I've felt this way for awhile, wondered if such was the case, but this was the first time someone besides me more or less confirmed that it had some truth to it. Future's going to look extremely different for me going forward. Not sure what I'm gonna do with all of this
I may not be suitable for longer term work.
Every new job starts out great. Then I hit the 6 month mark and it starts to show a few cracks. Frustrating ones, but ones I can continue to ignore cause the good outweighs the bad. But eventually, in a year or so (maybe slightly more if the job is decently chill, less if the job is stress and anxiety inducing), it's gone the polar opposite, even if the job itself has barely changed at all. Every fault can't be ignored, every fault gets worse in my mind, my stress and anxiety spike constantly, and I can't handle it. Then I check out mentally, and at that point it's over, time to look for a new job.
With how my mind is tuned, be it with stuff mentally like my disability, my anxiety, both or more... or with things related to the work itself... this conclusion follows the patterns of my work experience perfectly. Longer term work has rarely drawn success for one reason or another, despite desperately trying to make it fit. Being in a situation where I have to keep doing the same type of job or work over a long period of time wears on me, and it eventually falls apart, even with jobs (like my current one) where I really enjoy(ed) it. Then I end up having to spend long periods of time out of work just to recover mentally so I can tackle the next one. If I go back too soon it falls apart faster.
It's all kinda messed up. I've felt this way for awhile, wondered if such was the case, but this was the first time someone besides me more or less confirmed that it had some truth to it. Future's going to look extremely different for me going forward. Not sure what I'm gonna do with all of this
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No thanks, NY Times. I won’t be paying $1 a week to read this or any of your other articles!
Anyways, an update on the still-mostly-a-myth regarding recycled plastic -
Is plastic recycling a scam? Here’s the truth about the common practice
Headlines make it seem like all plastic recycling is a doomed endeavor — but is that the complete picture? Not exactly.