This week's contributors: Nadia, Dore Fasolati, this week's subjects: Sustainable fashion, , supplements, Wagyu meat, Andrew Wyeth black paintngs

Sustainable fashion tips for everyone

As the world starts to make an effort to heal itself from mankind’s constant and ongoing destruction, recycling has become the norm. And though fast fashion is on the rise, the best ways for fashion brands to reduce their environmental impact is by using sustainable materials.

Sustainable products are things that come from renewable resources and which don’t cause damage to the environment when being produced or disposed off.

We all need to put in a collective effort by

o   Shopping vintage- and second-hand items, not because we cannot afford a brand new fast fashion item but because we want to lower our impact on the environment. Also, second-hand often has unique and rare fashion items which you will cherish. Just look in the streets of Accra and you will see water hawkers dressed like celebrities

o   Choosing organic clothing which are made from natural and degradable materials which have less impact on the environment. Garments made from organic cotton have become mainstream in the fashion industry. The cotton needs to be produced without the use of synthetic agrochemicals. And there is organic linen as well, a great luxurious option.

o   Investing in quality and not quantity. Most young people jump on trends without thinking about the long-term impact it will have on their daily lives. Let’s take a break from fast fashion by repairing and upcycling clothes and shoes. Purchasing trans-seasonal clothes also will do the world a great deal of good. Price wise you will pay more for sustainable clothing than for fast fashion but you know what’s behind those low cost fast fashion clothings.

o   Buying clothes from sustainable brands which are transparent about their manufacturing process, where they buy and from who.

o   Only washing clothes when you need to, so less soap and less wear-off clothing particles into the environment and less water used.

o   Organize your wardrobe, exchange clothes with friends and family or even donate the ones you don’t need.

With these few ideas on sustainability, I hope I am making you more conscious of what you buy, what you wear and to maintain and repair your clothes.

Supplements

I recently asked my doctor if he knew of any good vitamin and mineral supplement, and all he did was shaking his head. But i beg to differ with him, supplements are good for the manufacturer and  highly profitable.  And good for the branding guys. Vita plus, Mineral boost, Fresh and Fit, Top Up, Power Cocktail, Be on Top, Vitismile, Lastlonger, Brain Booster, Sky Limit. The best brand is called Keep your Money.

Wagyu meat

Wagyu meat is a type of Japanese beef meat completely interspersed with fat, which makes it a very tender and tasty meat. It is difficult to produce and can fetch 300 US$ per kg retail. Of course people are trying to copy this, and somehow similar meat can now be bought in the USA for half that money.

Arby's, a big American fast food chain also started selling a Wagyu burger at 6 $, they claim 50% is American Wagyu and 50% unspecified beef....  The reception is not very good, fake is fake after all. And, recently I had a small Wagyu starter in a supposedly upscale  restaurant in Labone,  and that was a mistake. It was served still half frozen and it was tasteless, it must have been frozen and unfrozen umpty times. This is one of the current problems in Accra, plenty upscale restaurants are springing up but most in fact are not worth the money they are charging, and apart from that most are not even worth talking about anyway. Buying the tools does not make you a good carpenter.

So I made my own Wagyu burgers, friend of mine was so kind to bring 100 gms from UK, which made us 2 small but size wise ok burgers. Warm bread bums from Shoprite Osu (they have some surprisingly good bread), lightly fried onions (just to get rid of the sharp taste) and tomato ketchup, and wamm, it was nice indeed. Unfortunately definitely outside of my budget.

Recently the Andrew Wyeth Foundation showed hundreds of his paintings, some of them paintings of blacks...

Andrew Newell Wyeth, a white, (1917 –2009) was one of America's best-known painters of the mid 20th century. He mainly painted what he saw, what he experienced, in daily life around him. Wyeth's art has long been controversial. He developed technically beautiful works, had a large following and became rich as a result. Yet critics, curators and historians have offered conflicting views about the importance of his work. Art historian Robert Rosenblum was asked in 1977 to identify the “most overrated and underrated” artists of the 20th century. He provided one name for both categories: Andrew Wyeth.

One of his feats was that he not only painted subjects very realistically, but he had light make them come alive and show a deeper, hidden, often controversial and emotional meaning. Many of his paintings were never really shown to the public, but now the Andrew Wyeth Foundation showed lots of them, and, here comes the hitch, many of his subjects were black. Painted before America cancelled segregation in 1964, segregation that held that blacks sat in the back of the bus, and whites in the front. The irony was that both were poor, if you were not poor you had a car and no need to sit in a bus.

day of the fair, 1963

Inter racial sex was also forbidden in many American states till 1967, and this makes me wonder what relationship Wyeth had with this lady

1964

So Wyeth painted blacks, and he painted lots of them. But this was not really known to his big crowd of fans. Was he afraid to show this side of his world in a world where many, till today think of blacks as second hand citizens? Was he afraid it would damage his career? Or was this his way to protest, to alert, to make the public aware of what was wrong?

Nadia...

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I have received requests about leaving comments/replies. For security and privacy reasons my blog is not associated with the major media giants like Facebook or Twitter. I am talking with the host about a solution, for the time being you can mail me on wunimi@proton.me

I accept invitations and payments to write about certain products or events, things, people, but I may refuse to accept and if my comments are negative then that's what I will publish, despite your payment. This is not a political newsletter. I do not discriminate on any basis whatsoever.

Today I noticed that I had the urge to write about my thoughts and feelings. Whenever I want to share something on the web, I feel apprehensive. I am not sure if I wish to share something online. However, sharing is learning to be vulnerable.

Slowly, I am learning to be vulnerable.

Written on: 2022-08-05

My homemade coffee comes in three forms: Filter coffee, espresso and moka pot. I have a PID modded Gaggia Classic in my Studio and if I don't forget it in our sweden summer home, I have an Aeropress there and a Hario V60 02 to make filter coffee there. My grinder there is a DF64/G-Iota which I am very happy with.

At home, so far, I had a small V60 and two moka pots, a simple single one and a Bialetti Brikka (Which I used to love but now basically don't use anymore). As grinders go, I used to have two small handgrinders, one of them being the ubiquitous Hario Slim and one being a slightly more sturdy aluminium body grinder with no brand name to mention. And after got the DF64 for the studio, I moved the relatively ok Saeco Mac 001 espresso grinder to my home kitchen.

The two smaller hand grinders are not very consistent unfortunately. The Saeco is more consistent, but produces a lot of fines even at coarse settings.

One thing was clear, I didn't want to shell out another 400 EUR for another DF64. I don't drink a ton of coffee at home, so I am actually happy to hand grind.

A new era of hand grinders

Fortunately, the world of hand grinders for coffee has been completely uprooted by a small german producer, Commandante. The C40 was the first hand grinder in a new generation of grinders probably best described by the following properties:

• solid metal enclosure for increased stability
• actual ball bearings for more stability and precision in holding the drive shaft
• bigger steel burrs, often with interesting and new burr geometries, massively increasing grind speed, but also allowing for much finer grounds to be produced, making it viable (if exhausting) to grind for espresso.

The Commandante C40 is still a very well regarded grinder, but it is also a relatively expensive grinder, starting at ~250 EUR. From what I can tell, it is worth the money given that it is built in germany with high precision and good materials.

Then, as it always happens in these modern times, knockoffs began to appear. And then the knockoffs began to get better and better. The companies, mainly Timemore, Normcore and 1zpresso, began to innovate beyond the Commandante, but also, produced good, consistent grinders at much lower price points.

And I am super late to that game. I am currently testing two grinders I specifically selected for their features and their price point.

The first I got was a Normcore V2 (38mm, steel burr). The grinder costs roughly around $100 but is unfortunately not shipped from within Europe which makes shipping a bit painful. It feels very solid, grinds extremely fast and ... had a defect. It is supposed to grind espresso but I believe there are some issues with the length of the drive shaft on my grinder, which means that I can't adjust the grind size into these very fine territories. I am now in contact with them (oddly, the only way of contacting them reliably seems an Instagram DM?!?) and they promised to send me a new drive shaft.

Apart from that, the grinder seems great and I like the fact that they have a rubber sleeve (maybe silicon?) that holds the crank and that the whole grinder actually fits into an aeropress.

Then I also got myself an 1zpresso JX. 1zpresso has a wide range of grinders and the JX is (clocking in at around $130) one of their cheaper grinders, but has a much bigger burr set (48mm) and more capacity, which is great for larger batches and cold brews, for example. The burr set seems to be a bit slower and a bit less consistent than the normcore but I need to verify this in further tests. The build quality is super solid, it fits my hand size, grinding is very fast as well and it also looks very nice.

I'll report back with some more findings soon, hopefully.

A new brewer

The last addition to my home filter coffee setup is an April brewer. I was looking for an alternative for my V60 but I was a bit afraid of the Kalita with the usual stories of stalling brews because of the small holes in the bottom – The April brewer is a very nice thing to look at, even in the plastic version I ordered. It came in a set with some paper filters which April claims are better for their brewer than the same sized Kalita 155 filters and a very nice Coffee, their Ethiopian Zewde, a natural process Krume variety.

The April brewer has been interesting to test because if feels like it's a lot less finicky than a V60 and following April's recipe has given me, generally, very good and much more consistent results, and, probably more importantly, also something to benchmark against – Drawdown times always were very inconsistent for me in the V60 and with the April brewer I finally get consistent enough results so that playing with the grind settings actually starts to make sense.

Fun and Danger

Of course it is great fun to explore new gear, so much is true for technology as well as coffee equipment, but there obviously is a problem: You can only drink so much coffee in one day. Let's just say that I have probably exceeded my recommended dose for a couple of days in a row now. And my sleeping patterns are already slightly affected, so yeah, that needs to change.

As certain speech is outlawed, certain thoughts follow, and slowly but surely we make our way towards Thought-Crime becoming an accepted social standard. If we aren't free to explore or to engage certain ideologies directly, especially for the sake of disputing them, we risk allowing their logical premises leaking out into wider society under new names.

People with divisive beliefs often interpret people's emotional reactions to their claims as some kind of proof that they must be true, yet too powerful for other people to handle hearing. When simple discussion with them is outlawed and seen as some kind of support or advocacy, what we do in its place can inadvertently strengthen those beliefs within the believer. If nothing else, this only makes it more difficult for the believer to learn their way out.

It also leaves others ill-equipped to handle confrontations with these people, as they lack the insight necessary to engage it. They won’t be ready for the positions and arguments that will be thrown at them if that’s the case, and they definitely won’t know what to do if they start emulating this logic in their own minds.

When I held certain beliefs, it was always preferable for my ego to have people frantically and emotionally lashing out against me rather than reasonably disagreeing with me. In fact, it was also more preferable for them to lash out than it was even for them to agree with me.

Some things, we have to go through in order to be able to gain the insight necessary to overcome. If we create this world where people aren't allowed to explore certain trains of thought and will be forever slapped with the one time they were guilty of WrongThink, we take away a great deal of the freedom that enables people to explore, to understand, to grow and to change. With that also comes a huge reduction in the chances of them bridging their personal and cultural differences.

Beyond that, this is yet another classic example of ostracising those who step out of the norm; the metaphorical sheep who now keep each other in line through social shaming and casting people out.

My concern with this is that humanity is, once again, falling into the divisionary traps of those who seek to keep us divided so that they can remain to appear relevant.

If I hadn't gone so deep down the rabbit holes of the beliefs I used to hold, I wouldn't be as effective at communicating with people who hold those beliefs now. If I hadn't made the mistakes and the errors of my past and acknowledged them as I have fortunately been able to, I might be doomed to repeat them for the rest of my life, as can be seen across humanity and all throughout time.

“It was a mistake” is not an excuse; it's a reason, but if people are not allowed to go through these things, we don't know what kind of future wisdom we might be sacrificing.

#Freedom #ThoughtCrime #FreedomOfSpeech #Censorship #Division

When I first took a look at the garden in our newly rented house, I expected the plants to be affected by too much shade and a ground aspect that pointed away from the most sun exposure. I also assumed that a few heavy amendments to the dirt would be enough to make living soil. I was wrong on both accounts.

The dryness of Susanville’s high desert climate more than made up for the tall pines that shaded the garden after 6 or 7 pm. After two times a day of watering, I could put my finger a couple inches into the soil and feel only dry sand. And speaking of dry sand: Over a dozen bags of Harvest Supreme soil amendments couldn’t turn my dirt into anything other than. We mixed the bags into the first six inches of topsoil. After a few days of watering, the material packed down, and it looked as if I just had a browner color of caked sand. Water wasn’t absorbed, and was instead wicked off into the walkway.

Because of these factors, the carrots and more than 70 percent of all the seeds did not germinate. It took weeks for the spinach to become visible. Only one eggplant seedling came to fruition.

It’s funny that I read gardening books, and right when I start gardening, I completely ignore them and try to do improvise what would appear to work for garden, but might not really. After these dismal results in July, I started reading up on what plants like carrots and spinach might need to succeed in these beds. One thing emphasized for the carrots was a lot of water. This is when I started sticking my finger into the soil and realizing we weren’t nearly watering enough to make up for the the 95+ degree heat the past month, and the terrible water absorption capabilities of our amended soils.

In light of the lack of water, I wanted to mitigate the absorption issues by purchasing peat moss, so that the soil would have more spongey, organic material to absorb water further into the top soil. I also purchased more of the compost amendments with wood chips, so that the soil would be more aerated and less of a sand cake.

Lastly, I asked my girlfriend and landlord, who both water the garden while I’m away, to be much more aggressive with watering the plants. I let them know that the water wasn’t actually penetrating beneath the first quarter inch of sand, and that the carrots will have a hard time if they don’t get enough.

Within a week of these changes, my next round of seeded carrots succeeded in germinating, along with a few more eggplants and beets. I’ve also planted basil and onions, which have shown themselves recently as well. While not a full success story—I’d like to eat these veggies sooner or later, and it’ll be a bit before that—I am glad that a few basic changes, or adaptations, to the garden allowed it to at least start seeds much more effectively than a month ago. As a beginner gardener armed with only books and the hearsay of locals, every week of seeding and gardening has been a fundamental lesson in the caring of plants.

There’s a trend now in my home country of Australia for “zero-tolerance” signs to be displayed in all kind of retail settings. Signs like the one below:

I first noticed these signs appearing years ago in hospitals. I thought at the time that this was fair enough: there are plenty of scumbags visiting hospitals, and people who are stressing out over their health. They take out their issues on the staff, which is a natural result of their upbringing/condition.

These signs then started to appear at auxiliary health settings, like GP clinics and chiropractors.

The last couple of years, they have been appearing at supermarkets, fast food restaurants and other retail shops.

Again, this didn’t really strike me as too odd, just the typical Western message of “everyone be kind to each other”.

Then, over a few months, I noticed a pattern with these signs, starting with my local fast food chicken restaurant.

This particular franchise had been taken over by Indians about six months before. They were notoriously slow in getting orders out, the service was horrible and they were chronically understaffed.

Despite being a patient person, I lost my temper with them a few times as my orders were messed up or forgotten or delayed. I noticed I wasn’t the only customer getting upset.

Going about my daily errands now, I take my time to notice the demographics of the staff where these signs are hung. Invariably, the majority of staff are minorities: Southern Asians, Chinese or Middle-Easterners.

Thinking about front-line staff at health centres, they are also staffed with a quite a few minority Australians, especially the health support staff (e.g. nurses).

Why is it that these signs are mostly hung at shops with minority staff? I rarely see these signs at shops run by White Australians. And if this is the correlation, why is that?

One answer can be the lack of service and the state-sponsored message of an inclusive society.

Australia is proud of its “multiculturalism” policy. Any kind of dissent or criticism of this policy is quickly met with cancel culture or even prosecution.

To point-out the fact that minorities are generally poorer at providing customer service than White Australians goes against the message of inclusivity and must be shut down.

Appealing to the empathetic guilt of Caucasians through signage outlining “abusive behaviour will not be tolerated” is the first line of defence.

(“The message” being constantly blasted at Westerners may or may not become a theme of this blog.)

Of course, one could reason that minority Australians generally live in poorer parts of the city, where they are more likely to be abused by the less-than-civilised residents; that White-run shops are more likely to be in affluent suburbs with less crime.

However, this argument may be countered by at least two arguments.

First, minority Australians, especially Chinese and Indians are much more vocal in their complaints than White Australians. And where do they live? The same lower-income suburbs as the minority-run shops.

Second, anyone who has ever been in contact with rich boomers in Australia know that they don’t put up with bad service. Sure, they’re not as loud, but their vitriol is just as potent as those old Chinese ladies who line up for baby formula.

There are probably many other minor reasons why these signs are now becoming fashionable. Perhaps the smartphone revolution has shortened the fuse of the average consumer, for example.

I’m always up to learn more and hear from others on this subject, so please leave a reply if you can.

Indie products like Feedbin and write.as are nice, and a joy to use. But when you face any issue, you barely get a response from their support, much less have the problem resolved. I get why it’s hard but still, the service is paid for and thus becomes harder to recommended.

God's Word is meant to be heard and lived.

#ComeAndSee #FolllowMe

…Andere Dir kompliziert erscheint….

…. melden sich bei Dir vielleicht Bedürfnisse, für deren Erfüllung grad kein Weg besteht….

New pathways. Seeking sanctuary on the forest floor, a landscape of moss punctured by glacial erratics.

Entering into dialogue with the dense Spruce sprawl. The high Pines and coastal Oaks. The paper white Birch.

Wrestling with the histories wrought in stone, recorded in grave-fields and rune carvings.

Money-saving tips to know when buying dental gold. Buying dental gold is considered a particular achievement in life. Mainly because gold itself is a valuable thing associated with beauty. When purchasing dental gold, many people end up overspending or losing money to cartels simply because they don't know what they want. Or in other words, their money falls into the wrong hands. In this article, I have analyzed some of the best money-saving tips when buying dental gold. 1. Carrying out a deep research Deep research will help you determine which dental gold is the best. This will involve interviewing friends who maybe have ever bought dental gold. Be curious to ask about the cost, how they feel and how they appear with the dental gold fitting. If you get positive feedback about a specific dental gold, that might be your best option. Internet is also an excellent area to do your research. 2. Shop comparison It is usually not a good idea to buy an item in the first shop you see. Consider going around because it might be cheaper in another shop. Buying dental gold is a bit expensive; therefore, you have a lot of advantages by comparing prices, and for situations like shopping online, you got a good platform to compare prices with little time and effort. 3. Consult your family and friends When buying dental gold, ensure you gather as much information as possible. Family and friends typically give you essential information because they all want the best for you. Get pictures from online stores and ask what they think about it. Will it look good on me? Is it more expensive than I can afford? These are some of the questions you should ask when consulting your family and friends. 4. Avoid scams In today's world, scamming has become an everyday term because, day by day, people are becoming wiser. Buying dental gold is a bit risky when it comes to knowing real gold and fake gold. One way to avoid this kind of scam is to look for helpers in this field. It is heartbreaking when you pay a lot of money for something fake. 5. Discounts and money-saving programs When saving money, this might be the best choice for you. If you don't have the required amount for a particular dental gold, consider buying on-hire purchase terms. This applies when you can't afford it, but you want the peace of mind when you get what you want. 6. Insurance cover When you buy dental gold, be sure anything can happen. You can get robbed, attacked, or anything else can happen. That's why you need an insurance cover to cater for you in case everything happens. If you can't afford dental gold insurance but need the peace of mind that comes with knowing that you and your expenditures are well covered in case something goes wrong, then consider joining discount plans of between 5 and 50 percent. Conclusion When buying dental gold, it's essential to consider the security around you. If a thug knows you have a dental gold with Karat amount of 60-70%, your life is in danger. Always remember to walk on the safe streets. When consulting for help be cautious because not everybody you call your friend is really your friend.

Because I found it fun to explore all the fantastical and unknown worlds, to live many lives, to go from rags to riches, to struggle and to thrive...

#RPGaDAY #RPGaDAY2022

I switched around usernames so The Sitting Log would be The Sitting Log instead of my main blog (with “ithaka” in the write.as default url).

Now, the galleries on snap.as are gone. 😭

The images are still there, but no more old galleries. And no assigning existing images to new galleries.

• 아임 드리밍 script: 90 mins

And then this entry here, which doesn’t count.

Creation-ish sitting streaks

• Day 14 of breathing exercise
• Day 14 of giant journal writing

Thinking about:

Pinterest.

The thing with Pinterest feeds is that they’re simply beautiful to behold. I like the masonry layout. I like that, unless I go to the video section, there aren’t that many videos in the feed itself.

People talk about how videos are in, how videos are everything, how nobody is consuming anything except videos.

Well. Apparently, I’m getting old. I’m so tired of videos, I’m not even watching as much Youtube anymore as, say, three months ago—and Youtube is useful, mostly. And yet I now watch it less than 30 minutes a week.

Everything that moves excessively and generates noise unnecessarily tires me. So when I want to find random stuff, I go to Pinterest where it’s mostly static images. Even ancient (per the Internet standard) images are still searchable. Most importantly, people are mostly quiet.

Or at least, I don’t have to see people being loud (with text). Sure, there are follows and followers and likes and whatever, but I never see any of those numbers, except my own. The numbers are publicly visible; it’s just that, they’re so unnecessary for finding stuff and being found that nobody stresses about them the way people make a big deal out of the same numbers on other platforms.

And my Browse feed is pretty. That, mainly. Pretty things are good for mental health.

#daily #2022archiveQ3

I swear by my to-do list.

Recently, I made an observation- striking off all your to-dos has become a rare occurrence. And it’s become non-existent since I started going to the office.

• Sending that follow up email? To-do added
• Following up with a podcast guest? To-do added
• Quarterly discussion on marketing plan? Added.

And on top of this, I have my to-dos from yesterday. And from all the previous days. To overcome the To-do fatigue and the constant dissatisfaction associated with it, I started following  these 3 rules

1. Freezing 24 hours prior– I freeze all my to-dos 24 hours prior. If you tell me something today, that goes on tomorrow or day after tomorrow's to-do.

2. Blocking time for ad-hoc stuff– I've made peace that there will be folks who will walk up with urgent/ASAP stuff. I block for 30-45 minutes.

3. Schedule time– I group similar kinds of things, and get them checked off. For example- research, presentation, etc come in the same time block. All email related stuff goes in one time block. You get the drill. 

What would you change?