And if you’re not, happy Sunday, and happy any other holidays you celebrate around this time of year.
A good day to forget about all the bullshit this year has brought us.
Here are some more cats and dogs celebrating in their own peculiar ways.
Happy day!
@kupo : you do your cheese yourself ?
I am pretty sure cheese *can* go awry if badly done, since my father have had a trip to the hospital due to that. But it’s indeed pretty rare, and even rarer when firms are hold accountable to not, you know, poison their customers.
I love everything made from ducks, but I fear (for Kupo and John) that quite a lot of it is made with force-fed ducks. That being said, duck meat at least in France is reasonably unexpensive and easy to use. One of the thing I use most is duck fat, because it’s very flavorful and it especially go well to cook potatoes. Even wild duck have enough fat to flavor a dishe, so non-forcefed ducks can likely do it.
So I just took a glance at RoK, and I saw this headline.
[CW : It’s RoK, so all the usual warnings apply.] Leftist Ideology Destroyed The Neanderthals
The farticle itself ain’t that interesting though. Just the usual insufferably smug pseudo-sciencey bullshit. Pretty boring all in all, apart from that wonderful headline and premise.
@kupo
To be fair, it was a particularly scary specimen of blue cheese. The bacteria had probably developped its own social structure. The customs people could’ve arrested me for trying to smuggle a foreign army into the US.
@SpaceLawn
Saywatnow ?
Let me guess without reading. Something about Neanderthal letting their female mingle with the superior aryan race ?
It’s almost certainly bunk anyway, since we don’t have a good idea of how they disappeared. It’s similar to say that dinosaurs disappeared because they relied on centralized planning.
@Ohlmann
Yeah, I make my own cheese but am still a novice at it. I plan on trying my first aged cheese soon, but so far it’s all been fresh.
That’s a cool hobby indeed !
It’s official. Return of Kings is writing their headlines via Cards Against Humanity.
@kupo
It’s fairly easy to make a good aged cheese as long as you have a place that is a fairly constant temperature – 12 to 15C seems to work best for me, and, more importantly, a very consistent humidity. And, much like salami or air dried hams, don’t be overly shy with the vinegar or salt wash as needed to stop unwanted bugs colonizing the surface.
It’s because they had open borders, which led to immigration. Also gay marriage and neutral holiday greetings, probably, I dunno.
@EJ
That seems to hold true for most of them, yeah. Except for this one, which seems oddly genuine :
[CW : RoK again] How Game Can Backfire When You Invent Stories About Who You Really Are
Again, not very interesting apart from the headline.
@Shadowplay
Yeah, I bought a wine cooler specifically for this purpose, and I’ve been trying to get the humidity right. For most cheeses it’s recommended around 80% humidity but so far I’ve only been successful at keeping my cooler at 99% or somewhere around 50%. I bought some wax so that I don’t need to figure out yet the logistics of storing brine, but I’ve read about regularly using brine to keep unwanted mold off the surface, so I’m prepared for that once I get the hang of things. I was going to start with a short-aged cheese like Jack before trying anything longer, too, so that I can see the results a little sooner and figure out if I’m making any errors. I also read that it’s a good idea to keep notes on cheeses so that if something goes wrong (or really right) you can look back at the notes and see why.
@kupo
Not just yes but hell yes to the notes! Remember to include the weather – found out that titbit the hard way when I was trying to reproduce a cheshire that came out really well.
If you are going to wax the cheese (a good idea for a beginner to aging, but remember it will mature more slowly) – put your cheese in your cooler at 50% humidity for a couple days, then wax it. With a good coating of wax, the outside humidity doesn’t really matter, only the starting moisture of the cheese itself. I’m assuming you hand press the cheese and don’t have a hydraulic press laying around.
Brine I rarely bother keeping. Salt’s cheap, and using a small amount of a saturated solution makes it easier and less bulky, though more messy.
@Shadowplay
Good tips, thanks! I don’t have a press but if I get more into it I might consider getting one. I use weights like gallon jugs filled with water to aid in the pressing, but it’s definitely imperfect.
kupo
It’s not the dumb-asses in the government that are the problem. It’s all the dumb-asses in the population at large who have to be protected from their own dumb-assedness.
Actually, you have to protect children from their dumb-assed parents. Children die.
The company (and the parents really) had cooked up this stunt where raw milk could be legally sold as “bath milk” so the dairy was technically not selling unpasteurised milk for human consumption, but parents were in fact, and the dairy company damned well knew it, feeding it to their kids because that’s what they wanted to do. 4 get sick. One dies.
If you sold unpasteurised milk in quantities suitable for making cheese, you have to keep it out of the hands of dumb-assed parents who will, make no mistake, feed it to their children and occasionally kill one in the process.
And Happy Day of Boxes, everyone! 🙂
@mildlymagnificent
And that’s not even going into how many southern states effectively made child death by neglect legal so long as parents claim faith healing.
Raw milk (known as ‘green top’ because of the bottle cap) is legal in England and Wales, but not Scotland. You have to buy it directly from the producer though; it’s no longer sold in regular shops.
Some dairy farmer friends sell it as it’s an additional source of income. They barely make any profit on wholesale sales to supermarkets and dairy product manufacturers. But they can sell green top at retail prices directly to customers.
I notice the farmers all drink the pasteurised stuff though.
(I used to live on a dairy farm; which is why I could never grow anything)
http://i.imgur.com/liNbTiU.jpg
Off-topic:
RIP Vera Rubin, mother of dark matter cosmology.
Can’t really read the comments, family is over. But Merry Christmas and I hope you’re all well and warm and content in whatever snug little corner you can dig out for yourself. Sleep tight and stay safe, all, talk later.
OT: RIP George Michael, 80’s pop idol. 🙁 Early reports are saying heart attack. 🙁
The Cheesing, 2016 – by kupo & Shadowplay XD
@Fishy Goat,
That video is gorgeous! And very, very familiar 😀
@S. John,
Ah, I get you – sorry for misreading. Your stepfather sounds like the ultimate control freak. I won’t even start on the foie gras, being a slightly rabid animal welfare person. Enjoy gaming, tho!
Re fathers and stepfathers generally, if anyone has advice or suggestions I’d be seriously grateful (don’t feel obligated, however, especially at this time of year!). My biological father and my stepfather have both contacted me after years of silence, with xmas wishes and requests to re-establish communication. Feeling deeply ambivalent.
@Alan
Lovely! I feel as though I’m right there. Thanks for sharing.
@Mish
Do you have access to reasonably priced or free counselors, maybe where you teach? You might want to talk this over for a few sessions before making a decision.
When it rains, it pours!
I wish you the best in dealing with this challenging situation.
@Mish
Not an uncommon feeling… Or so I’m told >_>
Advice? Uhm… what Kat said. And, if you go for it, have an exit strategy. My father went back home after that weekend, so, even if it didn’t work out (it actually went alright), it wouldn’t be forever. Good luck, whatever you decide <3
TW: Violence
It turns out that DJT may be one of those scary clowns.
Miami DJ Says He Watched Donald Trump Brutally Slap His Son in College
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/miami-dj-says-he-watched-donald-trump-brutally-slap-his-son-in-college-8900500
And although wife number 1, Ivana, later walked it back, I can’t forget her accusation that DJT pulled out chunks of her hair and raped her.
President-elect Trump, you’re making my own father look like a sensitive soul.
TW: Violence
TW: Violence
It turns out that DJT may be one of those scary clowns.
Miami DJ Says He Watched Donald Trump Brutally Slap His Son in College
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/miami-dj-says-he-watched-donald-trump-brutally-slap-his-son-in-college-8900500
And although wife number 1, Ivana, later walked it back, I can’t forget her accusation that DJT pulled out chunks of her hair and raped her.
President-elect Trump, you’re making my father look like a sensitive soul.
TW: Violence
Oh great.
Learned his parenting skills from his father. Learned nothing from watching the results kill his brother. (Alcohol again.)
I s’pose others are like me, unsurprised but still shocked that he could be so awful. And not just awful, but shamelessly public about it.
AM PLAYING THE PRE-SEQUEL AND LAUGHING MY TEETH OFF ! 😀
I’m impressed by all the misandering too. THREE playable female characters, for TWO males and ONE robot ? Gynocracy gettin stronk. And Springs’ dialogues are priceless.
@Mish
I, huh, can only give biased advice : what I do with the biodad is just stay as far away from the bastard as possible no matter what. But then my case is extreme enough that it’s a no-brainer… so I dunno.
If you think some good might come out of that, I’d say go for it. But as the others have said, keep an exit strategy. And set some rules ! That’s important.