Second and Third Thoughts
I could probably sum up my approach to food & wine in fifty words, here goes. Acid likes fat (think vinegar on chips), tannin likes protein (red wine with steak), spice likes sweetness, cheese is generally better with something sweet and/or white than something dry and/or red, sweet foods need sweeter wines, and if your dish/wine wants to impress, the accompanying wine/dish shouldn’t be too assertive. Exactly fifty words, not bad Simon.
Pinched this from from Simon Woods’ email newsletter.
That MSG isn’t the poison we’ve made it out to be has been well-established. News stories are written regularly about the lack of evidence tying MSG to negative health effects… Still, Yelp reviews of Chinese restaurants tell tales of racing hearts, sleepless nights and tingling limbs from dishes “laden with MSG.” Even when the science is clear, it takes a lot to overwrite a stigma, especially when that stigma is about more than just food.
Source: How MSG Got A Bad Rap: Flawed Science And Xenophobia | FiveThirtyEight
I did not know this.
Today, écailleur Louis is multitasking, shucking knife in one hand, bottle of muscadet in the other.
He assembles a cluster of happiness. The huîtres spéciales are sweeter than the Fines with their hint of iodine; raised off the coast of Normandy with the flavors of the Channel filtering through their bodies. Naturally spawned in April, they are now beautifully fat.
I prod with a terrifyingly sharp, candy-pink plastic shucking knife, trying not to cut my tongue while scraping the oyster into my mouth, adductor muscles and all. They are masculine, metallic, sea sweet, with a taste of noisette on the tongue.
Source: A Historic International Agreement Demands Oysters and Wine for Breakfast – Roads & Kingdoms
Oh, my!
This is really cool! The video has been around since August last year, but I’ve only just discovered it as the creators, Axanar Productions, are having their asses sued by CBS and Paramount Studios despite the claim that no commercial gain will be made from the use of copyrighted material. I hope the big boys lose.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 3,400 times in 2015. If it were a cable car, it would take about 57 trips to carry that many people.
Click here to see the complete report.
What fun!
I started to use Adobe Photoshop a good few years ago and spent a good chunk of money on upgrades over the years. When Adobe changed to a subscription model, I decided that a monthly sub of a bit under 9 GBP for Photoshop and Lightroom was reasonable. However, for various reasons, I used the software less and less: in the last six months, I’ve done no image processing with Lightroom and opened Photoshop maybe twice.
Nine quid a month for nothing isn’t reasonable so I logged on to my Adobe account see about cancelling my sub. Here was revealed the first bit of sleazy behaviour: there is no way to cancel on the account management page. You have to contact Adobe by chat line or phone. Already I’m expecting some hassle. Anyway, I elected for chat line and after a short wait, Chinthana appeared.
I explained I wanted to cancel because I wasn’t getting any value as I wasn’t using the software. This lead to the second sleazy manoeuvre: I was offered next month free if I carried on with the subscription. At this point, I should point out that the Adobe CC subscription is an annual subscription payable monthly. No doubt, I knew this when I signed up, but had forgotten. Adobe doesn’t remind you very often. I get an invoice each month that includes the line:
“Your Creative Cloud membership will renew automatically each month until you cancel.”
It seems to me it’s reasonable to suppose that I could cancel anytime with a month’s notice. Chinthana explained that the small print doesn’t say this: it says you can cancel, but you have to pay 50% of the remaining annual subscription— 32.48 GBP in my case. By this time, I was pissed off and responded:
“I will pay this under protest. I think this policy is disgraceful for a customer who has paid the sub for at least two years.”
Time for sleazy tactic number 3: I was offered two free months to see out my subscription. The conversation continued:
Roger Cavanagh: No. How many times do I have to repeat myself? I want to cancel. I am getting no value for my money as I do not use the software anymore.
Chinthana: Okay. Are you okay with the cancellation fee?
Roger Cavanagh: No I am not OK with the cancellation fee, but no doubt, the small print says I have to pay it.
Roger Cavanagh: The monthly bill you send says: “Your Creative Cloud membership will renew automatically each month until you cancel.” It does not say, “and you will be charged to leave”.
At this point, Chinthana said he would check with his supervisor. After a little while, he came back on line and said his supervisor had agreed to waive the fee. Now I’m sure than Chinthana does have a supervisor, but I’m not all sure that he asked permission to waive the cancellation charge. It’s more likely that the workflow got to a point that tells the agent to give up and let the customer off.
So I got what I wanted: cancellation. Adobe got almost one month’s sub for nothing because my last payment was only a couple of days ago and I have already uninstalled the software. But I am left with a much-reduced opinion of the company.
But to my mind, the iPad Pro deserves the Professional label – this is a serious piece of hardware for illustrators, and it’s been a long time coming. And if you buy it, buy the Pencil. Without it you’re not doing the iPad Pro justice.
Source: An Illustrator’s Review of the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil
The goal is to minimize distorted thinking and see the world more accurately. You start by learning
the names of the dozen or so most common cognitive distortions … Each time you notice yourself falling prey to one of them, you name it, describe the facts of the situation, consider alternative interpretations, and then choose an interpretation of events more in line with those facts. Your emotions follow your new interpretation. In time, this process becomes automatic. When people improve their mental hygiene in this way—when they free themselves from the repetitive irrational thoughts that had previously filled so much of their consciousness—they become less depressed, anxious, and angry.
Common Cognitive Distortions
1. Mind reading. You assume that you know what people think without having sufficient evidence of their thoughts. “He thinks I’m a loser.”
2. Fortune-telling. You predict the future negatively: things will get worse, or there is danger ahead. “I’ll fail that exam,” or “I won’t get the job.”
3. Catastrophizing.You believe that what has happened or will happen will be so awful and unbearable that you won’t be able to stand it. “It would be terrible if I failed.”
4. Labeling. You assign global negative traits to yourself and others. “I’m undesirable,” or “He’s a rotten person.”
5. Discounting positives. You claim that the positive things you or others do are trivial. “That’s what wives are supposed to do—so it doesn’t count when she’s nice to me,” or “Those successes were easy, so they don’t matter.”
6. Negative filtering. You focus almost exclusively on the negatives and seldom notice the positives. “Look at all of the people who don’t like me.”
7. Overgeneralizing. You perceive a global pattern of negatives on the basis of a single incident. “This generally happens to me. I seem to fail at a lot of things.”
8. Dichotomous thinking. You view events or people in all-or-nothing terms. “I get rejected by everyone,” or “It was a complete waste of time.”
9. Blaming. You focus on the other person as the source of your negative feelings, and you refuse to take responsibility for changing yourself. “She’s to blame for the way I feel now,” or “My parents caused all my problems.”
10. What if? You keep asking a series of questions about “what if” something happens, and you fail to be satisfied with any of the answers. “Yeah, but what if I get anxious?,” or “What if I can’t catch my breath?”
11. Emotional reasoning. You let your feelings guide your interpretation of reality. “I feel depressed; therefore, my marriage is not working out.”
12. Inability to disconfirm. You reject any evidence or arguments that might contradict your negative
thoughts. For example, when you have the thought I’m unlovable, you reject as irrelevant any evidence that people like you. Consequently, your thought cannot be refuted. “That’s not the real issue. There are deeper problems. There are other factors.”
Source: How Trigger Warnings Are Hurting Mental Health on Campus – The Atlantic
