Just another absolute shite day weatherwise- rain and windy and chilly and just grey and, well, shitty. It’s supposed to rain basically all day tomorrow, so I think I am going to commit to some big project, perhaps dealing with the home office, which is a train wreck. Also, you all were such annoying pricks about my camera angle in the podcast video I bought a tripod for your desk so I have to set that up.
In other news, it’s really hard to describe just how fucking bad this bill that is being rushed through the House is. So much so that I prefer to not even think about it.
Made a big batch of black beans and rice tonight. I always ignore the recipe and add way more beans and I added a can of store brand rotel and some bacon from the general store I browned up and cut into pieces. It was very good, and I added a bunch of fresh cilantro and some sour cream before eating it. I just love cilantro- it just goes so well with so many things that I love.
I suppose I really don’t have much to say tonight.
War for Ukraine Day 1,182: The G7-1
Old Dan and Little Ann
Another softball game canceled due to rain. Fucking bollocks!
geg6
You can have all my cilantro, Cole. Disgusting stuff for me.
bbleh
Apparently there is a genetic trait such that, for IIRC something like 15-20% of people, cilantro tastes like soap.
Points for creative metaphorical extrapolations!
Mathguy
Ed Zitron’s newsletter is well worth a subscription (and it’s free!). The piece today is exceptional:
The Era of the Business Idiot
Virginia
I always feel sad for the people who taste soap in cilantro. I think it’s just such a lovely, refreshing flavor. I would hate to not enjoy it due to a genetic fluke.
Mr. Bemused Senior
You and me both. Glad I don’t have the unfortunate gene profile.
[ETA a recipe featuring it that you might like is Madhur Jaffrey’s green beans with mustard. It is a family favorite.]
zhena gogolia
@Mr. Bemused Senior: I don’t have the gene profile. I just find the flavor annoying. I much prefer parsley.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@zhena gogolia: no accounting for taste. 😁
Suzanne
Cilantro is scrumptious. Mr. Suzanne has the soap taste gene, so I add it only to my food. More for me.
Elizabelle
I can do a little bit of cilantro, but occasionally get the soap taste. Remember that Trader Joe’s used to have a really good refrigerated cilantro salad dressing.
Julia Child regretted that cilantro tasted like soap to her, too.
geg6
@Virginia:
You can’t imagine how nasty it is. Makes any Central American and many Asian foods inedible.
Kayla Rudbek
I am sitting here trying to decide whether to buy the exact yarn for this particular pattern https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/boardwalk-mosaic-shawl or whether I should be good and use yarn from my stash. The pattern calls for cotton yarn and I don’t have quite as much of that in my stash. I’m not sure if it would be for my mom or for myself, although I could probably use some summer weight knitting.
Lyrebird
@Kayla Rudbek: Could you do a little of both? Like buy enough of the black to be sure that’s consistent, but then use some of your other fave colors to fill in?
Either way, hats off to you for such skill! Did you see when Avalune did an Artists in our Midst?
They Call Me Noni
@Kayla Rudbek: Buy the yarn. When it is done you won’t be sorry you did. And then you’ll have even more to add to your stash!
Jackie
JC, it’s been chilly enough here – southeast WA – that I broke down and ordered a lightweight Mariners sweatshirt. It should arrive by the time we get hit with our more customary mid to upper 80s… but, it should prove handy come end of Sept into Oct… :-D When I’m mixing up baseball attire with Seahawks attire.
Jackie
Gorgeous pic, MomSense and WaterGirl!
scav
@Kayla Rudbek: I’d suggest perhaps making the decision based upon the favorite colors of a designated recipient. At least that might clarify issues. Then again, if you reallllly like knitting with cotton then, that could tip it. (it would tip me away, I like wool, especially for colorwork, but that’s my kink.)
NotMax
Open thread FYI.
This upcoming auto looks pretty darn nice* on paper, so long as the eventual price is in the realm of reasonable.
*I could do without the sizeable central screen but that ship has sailed.
@geg6
Come munch by me.
;)
dww44
@geg6: I’m with you re cilantro! Supposedly there’s a biological explanation for why we who can’t handle cilantro hate it.
Chetan Murthy
@dww44: https://ourbloodinstitute.org/blood-matters/cilantro-tastes-like-soap/
aldehyde receptors, apparently.
Elizabelle
@NotMax: not looking, but nothing can beat the Flying Wombat.
Timill
@NotMax: Linky no worky. Both go to comment #2.
NotMax
FYI.
Krugman appearing on the O’Donnell show tonight.
Kayla Rudbek
@Lyrebird: the one aspect that I will not like about this pattern is that it’s crescent shaped instead of triangle shaped (I find that it’s easier to keep track of the increases when doing a symmetrical triangle or a half-circle as there are “spine stitches” around which the increases happen for those shapes). Hmm, maybe consider modifying it to a triangle style instead? Although with the mosaic stitch pattern, I might have less trouble than I normally do with a crescent shaped pattern.
I would want to keep the materials of the shawl consistent (so either work it as all in wool or all in cotton) so that when it’s wetted down, the yarn all reacts consistently to the water. (This is why suits have to be dry cleaned; wool can handle getting wet, the liner of acetate/nylon may possibly handle getting wet, but the outer layer and the inner layer don’t react the same way to the water so things get distorted, and nobody in this day and age is going to pick apart the stitches and sew the entire suit together again every time it’s cleaned).
I tend to be a bit too persnickety about this, as I prefer to use the exact same brand and line in the multiple color shawls that I make, when I probably could mix different brands and lines of my superwash merino sock yarns together (keeping the 100% wools together and then the 75/25 wool/nylon blends together)
I probably have enough yarn to make a wool one although I might have to play with the color scheme a bit if I used my leftovers from previous projects. Or I could use some of what I bought at Maryland Sheep and Wool with some other yarn from that vendor…hmm. Main color gray with two jewel tones would be what I would have on hand in wool and readily accessible. Which would look massively different although still very pretty.
But then again, sometimes I do want to work straight from the pattern as written, no substitutions. Time to sleep on the decision and reconsider it in the morning
schrodingers_cat
Musical and art break:
Listening to this right now. KK hits it out of the park. Salman’s character has lost the love of his love.
Tadap Tadap Ke, MTV unplugged version from the superhit Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam sung by KK Menon.
This is the movie version.
Finished coloring a mermaid for #Mermay from Hanna Karlzon’s Magical Dawn
I used watercolors, colored pencils, acrylic markers and gel pens for some glitter.
Kayla Rudbek
@scav: on the one hand, cotton is harder on my hands when I knit it, on the other hand, Virginia in the summer is miserable to be knitting with wool, on the gripping hand, my mom is allergic to wool…
Color choices: I am pretty happy with what the designer picked, if I order the exact yarn I might have to make a substitution for the yellow shade depending on which online store I go with as some of them are out of the particular yellow shade. If I decide to go with stash yarn, I might go with a light grey main color and two jewel tones as the contrast colors as being what’s on hand. If I make it for my mom, she might go with the designer picks, or she might want a combination with teal involved somewhere.
NotMax
@Timill
My bad. Fix.
This upcoming auto looks pretty darn nice* on paper, so long as the eventual price is in the realm of reasonable.
*I could do without the sizeable central screen but that ship has sailed.
Gin & Tonic
@Virginia: Since I don’t eat soap, I don’t know if that is the flavor, but I do know that adding cilantro to anything is the guaranteed way to make it inedible.
MCat
@geg6: me too. disgusting stuff.
Gin & Tonic
This Knicks-Pacers game is pretty damned exciting.
am
It gives us coriander, the stems are a secret for great stocks, and it tastes good raw or cooked. I’m glad I don’t have the genetic soap tasting thing. You can put fresh cilantro, fine chopped white onions, sliced red radishes, and just about anything in a warm corn tortilla and it’s delicious. I wish more Republican politicians – and honestly, people in general – aspired to be half as useful as a bunch of cilantro. Damn it I’m old.
dww44
@Chetan Murthy: just read the whole article. Learned some new stuff. Thanks.
schrodingers_cat
Ginger+Garlic+Cilantro+Green chilies+lime, (blend all the ingredients in a blender or food processor) makes an excellent marinade. You can add cayenne and turmeric to iti f you are feeling adventurous.
I add some yogurt if I am using it to marinade bone-in chicken. And add kosher salt to taste.
VeniceRiley
@Suzanne: I adore cilantro and my wife has the gene. She does pick it up for me if I ask. Weirdly, I find cilantro here in England almost tasteless
JaySinWA
Kind of the inverse of this quote;
NotMax
@am
Oddly enough, while I shun cilantro as being a vile weed, have no taste problem with adding a pinch or two of ground coriander to certain soups and stews.
Chetan Murthy
@NotMax: apparently the aldehydes are in the leaves (or maybe the waxy coating of the leaves?) and not in the seeeds.
Melancholy Jaques
@NotMax:
I thought that about the screen when I bought it, but after 10k miles, I’m pretty much used to it. I don’t really use it for much more than the radio. I found that having constant map there was annoying.
Mr. Bemused Senior
I have a colleague who detests onions. Also cilantro. Poor guy.
Quiltingfool
@Kayla Rudbek:
I hear you, sister; for me, it’s using fabric from my stash.
My quilt guild peeps and I went to a couple of Mennonite owned fabric stores last week. I was very good and did not buy any fabric. I did buy thread and a new cutting board, very reasonably priced.
One of the stores sold fabric and appliances! Quite the combo!
We also saw a Mennonite wedding. It was being held in a barn lot. I just hope someone got rid of any manure before the ceremony. I wondered why they didn’t have it in a nice grassy yard, but there were lots of people there, and it was a pretty big barn lot.
narya
I might be bringing a sweatshirt AND a rain poncho to the Indy 500… this is my 16th, and it might well be the coolest. Last year will hopefully be the wettest (multi hour delay because of lightning and hard rain). At least we have a (very expensive) hotel Saturday and Sunday.
frosty
It was so absolute shite that I hauled in some firewood and made a fire. In May! A week from Memorial Day! I was tired of sitting around being chilly.
frosty
@narya: You’ll get to see the Weinermobiles race!
I went to one Indy 500. On the drive out from PA the cars had signs on the back windows: “Indy. Drive fast. Turn left.”
NotMax
@frosty
Driven by Paul Ryan?
//
sentient ai from the future
i, too, love cilantro.
i grew some “rau ram” (Persicaria odorata) that was labeled as “vietnamese coriander” at the nursery.
it’s also purchasable at the asian markets.
it is fucking phenomenally aromatic. cilantro, but more floral. but the actual plant matter is nowhere near as delicate as cilantro so it’s more difficult to put in light-textured things or as a garnish.
i’d use it in soups, at the last minute after they are off the boil.
made some pico de gallo with it and the floral complexity dies off after a day or so.
check it out.
also fuck these republican assholes for taking away my and my child’s healthcare (gender affirming care is a thing they are limiting, last i looked)
Interesting Name Goes Here
@narya: Guess you’ve been following Roger Penske’s latest tire fire, then.
He just shitcanned his team president and two of IndyCar’s top execs because of this new cheating scandal. Rumors are Honda may use it as a reason to bail on the series. People are wondering exactly how long Penske’s had this blended attenuator on his cars; again, rumors are this could go back to last year or further.
He has made a proper mess of things, hasn’t he?
Sister Golden Bear
Just to add an extra dollop of shit to the anthrax and tire rims budget the House passed, it explicitly bans Medicaid coverage of trans healthcare regardless of age. Originally, the nationwide ban would’ve only applied to trans minors—which was bad enough—but House Republicans specifically passed an amendment to have it apply to trans adults as well.
This includes hormones and if it makes it into the final budget, it’s going to forcibly detransition ten of thousands of trans people.
Steve LaBonne
@Sister Golden Bear: Good Christ I hate these motherfuckers.
Jacel
@NotMax: Has Paul Ryan gone back to his old job after stepping down as Speaker Of The House and aspiring VP?
sentient ai from the future
these people are fucking ghouls.
narya
@Interesting Name Goes Here: well, I hadn’t watched qualifying yet so I didn’t know all of that . . . We’re going to watch it all Friday before we go.
No One of Consequence
@Mathguy: That link should come with a warning. Wow. still reading. It’s good, but geez. ;)
-NOoC
cain
@NotMax:
Isn’t it funny how much the old Republican guard have completely disappeared?
They Call Me Noni
@Suzanne: My cats were like that with catnip. Tootsie loved it but it had no effect on Gizzy. About 10% of cats don’t have the gene that makes the catnip so alluring.
Geminid
I was looking for Middle news on Laura Rozen’s social media feed and ran into this story from ABC reporter Beatrice Peterson:*
* “(MissBeaE on all platforms)”
Josh Krashaur is posting about this also:
It sounds like this happened an hour or so ago.
cain
@Sister Golden Bear:
They are fucking assholes. Leave these people alone, they aren’t doing anything to you.
Bought and paid for by Evangelicals. Trump voting evangelicals are some least moral, unemphatic people on the planet.
cain
@Geminid:
Yes, perhaps this is when he declares martial law.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Sister Golden Bear:
When the hell are other countries going wake the fuck up and allow asylum claims from the US for trans people and others? This is literally genocide for god’s sake!
The Trump is admin defying court orders to disappear people to other countries!
I don’t think “moving to a blue state” is going to cut it here, certainly not for the people you’re talking about, and definitely not for someone like Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who lived in Maryland, a blue state
Geminid
@cain: I can it now, on Truth Social:
More seriously, it sounds like the victims were shot as they left a social event at the National Jewish Museum.
Jackie
@Sister Golden Bear:
I hate these people. If it gets voted on, I’m so, so angry!
Gloria DryGarden
I’m so happy that I can taste cilantro. When I get pho, I always need more than they give us. It’s that Vietnamese cilantro with big long leaves, and I’ve never found it at the plant nurseries. I crave it.
but I’m missing the gene to taste olives. They all taste the same, and I dislike them so. You can have all my olives. I pick them out before I eat a dish, if it came with olives…
Trivia Man
@geg6: I used to taste soap in cilantro. Sometime in my 40s that just… stopped. Apparently that is common – only some people taste it as nasty, but some of those have a change and it tastes good. Still dont love it or crave it, but it is now pleasant.
Trivia Man
@NotMax: I heard he lied about being a Hotdogger, sure sounds like his MO. I used to have professional dealings with the wienermobiles and nobody there ever mentioned working with him.
prostratedragon
Clay Bennett
Sister Golden Bear
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
That’s why I’ve been seriously looking at leaving the country. Doing it in an orderly fashion will take at least six months, but part of the calculation has been how quickly anti-trans stuff escalates.
prostratedragon
@Steve LaBonne: Thought about. Still have nothing better.
glc
@Chetan Murthy: As you say – if you’ ve got the gene that lets you taste what’s in them, you tend to avoid soap-flavored herbs. Or try to in any case.
On the other hand, if you have the gene that lets you see more of the colors all around you (tetrachromats), then from what I hear, that’s very unpleasant, at least in an urban setting.
Geminid
@Geminid: I did run into a significant Middle East news story: Tom Barrack, the new US Ambassador to Turkiye, has been appointed “Special Envoy” for Syria. Barrack, who is a healthy-looking 78-year old, is a longtime friend and ally of Donald Trump.
Barrack has some ties to the region. For one thing, he’s from a Lebanese American family. He grew up in Culver City, California where his father was a grocer and his mother a secretary. Barrack’s first job out of the University of San Diego law school was with Herbert Kalmbach, Ronald Reagan’s lawyer. During the 1970s and 80s, Barrack’s legal career took him to the Middle East, where he hobnobbed with oil executives and Saudi princes. Then he founded the investment firm Colony Capital and made a ton of money.
This is a serious guy with a lot of clout, and that’s a good thing in my opinion. Syria is a very important part of the Arab world, and it’s still in a critical period. There’s a lot that could go wrong in Syria, and a lot that could go right.
KrackenJack
@Trivia Man:
Same here. Got less revolting over time and now it’s acceptable. I don’t add extra, myself.
We have some in the herb bed that are already bolting. Had to buy a pack of six at the garden store. Guess we’ll harvest the coriander.
Nancy
@bbleh:
That’s me, the soapy tasting cilantro person. And cucumbers are bitter if they haven’t been peeled. Not sure if there are any other tasting oddities about me. I’m otherwise charming.
rikyrah
@Sister Golden Bear:
They are evil
No other way to see it
PsiFighter37
I hope the poor people of rural red America enjoy the massive fucking over their congresspeople are about to hand them. Fuck ‘em.
Chetan Murthy
@PsiFighter37: There are some who comment or post here, who believe we should have compassion for these people. I don’t agree with them, and believe that what we have here is an iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma. And consistently “co-operating” means consistently losing, b/c the other player suffers no cost from “defecting”. If you want to stop losing, you need to impose a cost for defecting, and that means we should -want- for the MAGAt bastards to suffer, and to suffer long enough and deeply enough that they wise up.
So I’m with you: I hope they get what they voted for, good and fucking hard.
Nancy
@Sister Golden Bear: This is another intolerable part of our current reality. I’m sad for all the peeps who will be hit with this cruel attack. Are you close enough to seek treatment in Canada? My daughter is thinking of that option as they are just a few hours away.
prostratedragon
Regarding the people abducted to Sudan:
–ly Ballou
@cain: After all, these are the same people (or the children of the people) who insisted that Reagan let AIDS run its course, because it was God’s righteous judgment on The Homosexuals.
Geminid
@Chetan Murthy: What about the Democrats who live in “rural red America”? I’ve lived the last 20 years in rural counties that voted around 60-40 Republican. I’ll be ok more or less, but a lot of Democratic voters poorer than me won’t be. And this being Virginia, a lot of them are African Americans.
JoyceH
Hatred of Brussels sprouts also has a genetic component. People who hate Brussels sprouts are actually tasting something that the sprouts lovers can’t taste.
oklahomo
@They Call Me Noni: We had a cat who was indifferent to catnip leaves and ground catnip. The spray catnip, however, did its magic thing.
Chetan Murthy
@Geminid: They need to fucking move to a Blue state. I grew up in Texas, and me and my sibs all got the fuck out. Yeah, it sucks. ANd yeah, everybody wants to pretend that their American birthright gives them the right to have the same rights everywhere in our country.
Well, that’s bullshit. I know that Texas is enemy territory, and I won’t willingly set foot there again, probably in my life. Immigrants figure this shit out. Decent people in the Red states need to GTFO, b/c we can’t protect them; nobody can protect them.
ETA: And something else: what people always say is “oh, but lots of these people are too poor to be able to afford to move”. All I can say to that is: you think it’s hard now? Wait until the pogroms start. People fucking -walk- from the Darien Gap to the US border. Americans need to understand that they’re no different. Your American birthright gets you NOTHING: that’s what these last eight years of Donald Trump have taught us.
Sister Golden Bear
@Nancy: I’m in California, so Canada isn’t an easy option. Thankfully all I need are hormones at this point. I do have back up plans, which I’m not going to talk about publicly.
Geminid
@Chetan Murthy: The only person your vindictiveness hurts is yourself.
Chetan Murthy
@Geminid: To be clear, if I thought we had any ability to affect the situation, if we had any power -what-so-FUCKING-ever-, I would be wanting our reps to oppose Trump’s agenda. But we don’t. And so, yeah, I want Trump to fuck over his base, his voters, as hard as he possibly can.
And you should too! Jesus Christ, mabye you should read some history! Hitler and the Nazis were -assiduous- in ensuring that the German Base had clothing, housing, food — to the point that they repeatedly diverted resources from rearmament to those goals. We should -want- that Trump doesn’t do the same! We should -want- that he materially harms his voters!
Christ, this isn’t rocket science.
Gloria DryGarden
@Chetan Murthy: ouch.
eclare
@Chetan Murthy:
He is also going to hurt a lot of people who weren’t his voters, like me. I don’t want to be collateral damage so you can attempt to prove a political point.
Doug R
I had noticed that camera angle in the screenshots but decided not to pile on (at the time).
But now that you’ve got the tripod, what are you going to do with the drone you must have been using?
bluefoot
@Mathguy: interesting article. I was just talking to a friend who commented on the changes in our industry. It used to be that the business folks worked for the scientists/experts who did the decision making in service to the science and patients. The business guys were in a service role. Now that’s been inverted – the scientists & experts work for the business guys who are the decision makers in service of chasing money.
this coincides with a change in attitude in the industry. Small companies used to have a goal of developing new therapies and partnering for late clinical trials to take them to market. Success was defined as taking something in house all the way to market. Now it’s to be successful enough to get bought and management to cash out. This is a broad generalization, but many people I’ve talked to who have been in the industry for 25+ years feel the same.
Paul in KY
@Suzanne: I looooove cilantro! One of the great spices, IMO.
Manyakitty
@Mr. Bemused Senior: I’m with him on onions. When I cook with them, they’re either in big enough chunks to remove or ground to a pulp so I don’t bite into one. Ick.
Miss Bianca
@Mathguy: wow. That was some read.
JaySinWA
@Mathguy: From the Bloomberg excerpt on Microsoft’s CEO in Zitron’s article:
I was reminded of the mad emperor in Babylon 5 with his shadow cabinet of severed heads that he ‘consulted’ with. I’m not sure why, since he had plenty of living yes-men, but it seemed apt.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Miss Bianca: thanks for the nudge to get me to read that article. Well worth it!