Pinned
FAQ March 2025
(wtf is #eggs for killie, etc)
Reblogged somebassistbitch
WEIRD substance I purchased when visiting an abbey
Poured into a glass, first glance has a very inky almost brownish color that you see in older wines. Very syrupy, liquid clings to the side of the glass when swirled. Almost 15% ABV. Stuck my nose in and was hit with something I’ve never experienced before. Barnyardy funk (in a bad way) almost like a dead animal in a bird’s nest. A mix of flat Coca Cola and caramel with a whiff of gun metal. On the palate, overwhelming sweetness and sugar. Cherry Cola mixed with Benadryl. Unlike anything I’ve tasted. I’m not sure what this liquid is but it is not wine, I’m actually not sure what it is but it tastes like something a doctor would prescribe. A chemical concoction of the highest degree. Can only compare it to a Four Loko.
...
An ungodly concoction made by seemingly godly men. I believe the Vatican needs to send an exorcist over to Buckfast Abbey as the devil’s works are cleary present there. After tasting this “wine,” the way I feel can only be described as akin to being under a bridge on one’s knees orally pleasing a vagrant while simultaneously drinking liquified meth through a dirty rag. I’ve drank a lot of wines in my life and will never forget this one.
This is getting notes again, so I’ll complete my report.
I agree with the sense of a very particular medicated cough syrup (the very American Benadryl!!! Benadryl like it was when I was little!! American wine reviewer, I shake your hand) but it did not bother me. It was a bit sludgy and herbal. I felt there were a lot of sulfites, plus a sort of cheap-red-port hedgerow-wine taste, which I find when I notice it, is usually an indicator of hangover potential in other people. I don’t know if other people perceive this the way I do, but it tastes a bit like blood to me, and when other people have things with this taste in it, they find it very poisonous.
I didn’t notice caffeine, but I did feel there was a sense of tar. As in creosote. I thought it was fun.
It was in the same family as the dodgy boater bramble wine that tried to kill some dads on a camping trip last year and I said “huh! Tastes like ink. Black, not red” about that.
However, I’ll drink mostly anything, have very high alcohol and caffeine tolerances, have senses of taste and smell that are mostly decoupled from desire, and I think I’ve only had one proper hangover. So I am a very, very, VERY bad judge.
Reblogged
it is weird that celiac stuff has become part of the 'culture war'. because it's literally just a medical thing.... I get super anemic unless I cut a certain protein out of my diet, because it bulldozes the villi in my intestines. but if I post about it, right-wingers send me gore images. I guess you can't expect shitty people to be logical, but I've even heard lefty people make fun of gluten stuff, and it's like why are you mad about this??? why are you pissed off that I'm eating bread that doesn't taste as good so that I can have blood in my body? it's so morally neutral.
I'm sorry, I know you weren't actually looking for an explanation but I always have a rant about this locked and loaded.
As far as I can tell the reasons that this happens are:
- The interpretation of disability accommodation as wokeness - a lot of the same people who are shitty about food limitations are also shitty about sign language interpreters and ramp requirements (also building regulations relating to the latter) because they view any accommodation as capitulation to a group they think should "suck it up and deal with it" (quietly exist without named or obvious accommodations). The conversations around peanut-free or milk-free classrooms to accommodate children with allergies are similarly unhinged and possibly more horrifying.
- Conflating specialty diets as a result of proximity in the popular consciousness - you're a lot more likely to see something described as "vegan + gluten free" or to see vegan/vegetarian/g-free options grouped on menus than you are to see keto/vegan/gfree options so the "lefty" animal-free diets get grouped with gluten-free (it's also interesting that there are right-wing diets, and I wonder how many of these people remember when you used to be able to find "atkins-friendly" symbols on casual dining restaurant menus)
- Gluten free diets became a fad fifteen years ago; tons of people read "Wheat Belly" and stopped eating wheat as a weight loss hack and when they went back to eating wheat because it's actually pretty difficult to get around a major staple grain they didn't experience any negative consequences; people saw this and basically think that it's a trend, that people are faking medically necessary diets as part of a fad. When questioned about this they always go "but, I mean, it's okay if you REALLY need to skip the wheat because you have a condition but most people are doing it because it's popular" when g-free diets haven't been a major trend for quite a while now. TO BE QUITE FAIR, I think that things like "Gluten Aware" cookies and beer and such, which contain a little gluten but not NO gluten contribute to this perception (these have annoyed me forever for two reasons: 1. They make people without celiac think that a little gluten is fine for people with celiac, which it is not; 2. fucking commit, companies. *I* want the cookies and beer and it's deeply annoying that these business will go to the lengths to create products with minimal gluten but won't actually make g-free foods - this is often because of the risk of cross contamination, they won't claim to make g-free things because they won't work with a dedicated g-free facility)
Anyway, in conclusion: it sucks, I'm sorry.
The fun flipside of this is that I've seen people who are more right wing become aggressively pro regulation and pro accommodation when they or their family members have to suddenly take on the individual burden of making up for a society that doesn't include them by default.
US specific:
Is your ham made with vinegar? Does your ham have the generic word "spices" on the ingredient list? Does your ham include "smoke flavoring"? Does your ham include caramel coloring?
Because malt vinegar has gluten in it. "Spices" may include wheat products in a mix. Smoke flavoring may be made with barley flour. Caramel coloring may be made with wheat or barley syrup.
If the label says "gluten free" that means that the "spices," caramel coloring, vinegar, and smoke flavor are certified to contain 20ppm or less of gluten.
If the ham is cured in any way, it may include gluten. If the ham was marinated, it probably includes gluten. If the ham was prepared in a facility that processes wheat in any way, it might be cross contaminated with gluten.
There's a company out there called "Gluten Free Water" that makes water in plastic bottles, poking fun at the idea that too many things have a gluten free label. I fucking hate that company. Because that company is functionally saying "lol, people are so sensitive and over the top about this, let's be a little silly and laugh about how crazy people can be with their 'gluten free' nonsense."
Did you know that there are sustainable food containers and straws that contain wheat? And that you don't have to label them? There are definitely people with celiac who have been sickened by biodegradable plastic straws in their "obviously water is gluten free there's no risk here" water.
"It's over-labeled so it looks trendy" just means you don't know how foods are made or what foods contain gluten. Gluten is ridiculously common in foods in general, and also in packaged meats.
Your ham has to say gluten free because it distinguishes it from the hams that do contain gluten, which is a fucking lot of them. And you're annoyed that your ham has to say gluten free and I'm annoyed that I'm standing in the grocery store calling a ham company to figure out where they source their caramel coloring so I can figure out if the damned ham is safe to eat.
"lol, oats don't have wheat in them, are people so stupid that they have to be told what is and isn't wheat? why does this oatmeal have a gluten free label?" Cross contamination; gluten free oats are not grown near wheat and are not processed in facilities that process wheat.
"lol, rice doesn't have wheat in it, why is this rice labeled gluten free, all rice is gluten free" Cross contamination; the rice isn't processed on equipment that processes wheat.
"lol why does this turkey breast say gluten free, it's just fucking turkey" read the ingredients on your "just" turkey, lots of packaged meat is packed in broth, some of which contains modified food starch, which may contain wheat.
"lol why are these strawberries labeled gluten free? they're fucking strawberries" WAX, BUDDY. SOME FRUITS ARE COATED IN PRESERVATIVE WAX FILMS BY THE MANUFACTURER AND SOME OF THOSE FUCKING FILMS CONTAIN GLUTEN.
I think that part of the reason that people are so irritated by g-free labels is because it exposes them to just how vast and alienating their food systems are.
"Ham should just be meat from a pig, maybe with sugar and salt; what on earth is happening that there might be wheat in that process? Nothing in that process should involve wheat." And then you might have to think about it for a second, might have to wonder what "sugar" and "salt" mean when someone is producing a million hams to be delivered thousands of miles away. It's not just sugar and salt; it's preservatives and nitrates and batch cooking and getting corn syrup instead of sugar and getting smoke flavoring instead of smoking the ham and turning your "whole food" into all the ingredients that make up the ingredients that make up the ingredients.
A "gluten free" label says "you can eat this" to somebody with celiac disease, who has already pounded their skull against the shittiness of the medical system and the food system.
But to someone who doesn't have to worry that their food is going to disable them, a "gluten free" sticker on ham takes a known quantity and turns their sandwich into a hyperobject that contains animal agriculture and industrial additive production and shipping pollution and the ongoing assault on regulation.
If it doesn't have the label, you can just eat your lunch. If it does have the label, you are haunted by the specter of RFK junior imploding the FDA.
Turns out that everyone in the US with celiac is already constantly haunted by the possible implosion of the FDA because food regulation is an up-close and personal part of our daily lives that most people would rather not think about.
Weirdly, I like British women’s fiction. I don’t know if you’ve seen them - books with titles like The Littlest Cupcake Shop On the Corner. Christmas At The Bookshop Bus Cafe. Wedding Cakes of Hopes and Dreams. The Littlest Coffee Shop In the World For Orcs and Fairies. Breakfast At The Dragon Tea Shop. Christmas Breakfast At the Dragon Tea Shop. Baby Breakfast at the Baby Dragon Tea Shop and Independent Women’s Soft Play Centre. Long Overdue Mental Breakdown at the -
They are largely produced by British author Jenny Colgan, with packs of ceaseless imitators snapping weakly at her heels, and occasionally people like Trisha Ashley, who used to be funny. In Australia you have Kerry Greenwood’s weird right-wing-Zionist, left-wing-everything else baker. They all have the same covers.
At any rate, they’re all books about liberated women doing pink-collar jobs that are Truly Meaningful, like owning their own bakery, combined with fantasies of property ownership and independence. Trisha Ashley used to attempt being vaguely witty, Kerry Greenwood used to attempt being vaguely feminist with it, and in an attempt to be #heartwarming Jenny Colgan will throw in some large-eyed refugees or campy trans gay people or other side characters. All pretty dire!!! but I still read a lot of them!! And in 2012 I started writing this essay, saved it as a draft and forgot. But they’re still at it. Anyway here it is:
A fascinating thing about all of those writers I’m picking on specifically is that they’ve all written a Baking Woman character - or multiple ones! - who specially goes out of her way to tell us things like :
- - doesn’t believe her annoying idiot friend has a real problem with gluten.
- hates baking gluten free.
- her gluten-free bread, which she makes for health freaks, sucks
- charges a huge markup on gluten-free products - and finds that gullible idiots pay willingly
- lies about whether things are gluten free.
- Points out that if you take the gluten out of baked goods it doesn’t taste as good.
- Explains that she doesn’t feel a need to cater to other diets because her bread/cupcakes/fairy dragon wedding cakes are perfect and she doesn’t modify her recipes
- One briefly considers accommodating gluten-free in her tea shop, and is advised by a narratively-smarter mature woman not to, because nobody actually needs it
These characterisation choices are all deliberate and are intended to paint a no-nonsense, down to earth, relatable woman. She’s the salt of the earth! She isn’t needy, and she doesn’t put up with people who are! She’s relatable!!
At the same time, their motivation for being “bakers” instead of any other useful profession is because the authors don’t have to think too much about it they can just copy and paste the same plots / it’s unthreateningly pink collar / lots of people dream of running a baby kitten wedding dress bakery chocolate shop because they make cakes for work sometimes these women truly love feeding people 🥹 they are Nourishing… for the Soul….. these women do it because they love to brighten the days of the grey-faced rat-race office women with a little pink and sugar and sparkle and sunshine… wouldn’t it be nice if the whole world just went out of their way to spread a bit more kindness?
As a result, without meaning to, Jenny Colgan and her pack of imitators have created these self-deluding, deliciously toxic, hateful-hearted, nasty little protagonists!
Every baker-character lauding herself for her magical-realism, cures-the-world, spoonful-of-kindness, supernaturally-delightful baking powers is a lazy fraud, but worse, actively deceiving the audience, because she just admitted that she can’t bake GF well. Stupid wench lol. that just means you’re a shitty baker who doesn’t even try.
Like, every single one of those bullet points reveals an unpleasant character with a rotten element. An unkind, deceitful person who “wants to feed the world” - but not if her own friends bring their own needs to the table! An unaccomplished, mediocre baker who can’t do anything challenging. In fact, a baker so bad at her job that she can’t bake without a single common protein. A person who’s openly excited to be a bully, if she can bully without consequences.
And because of the “culture war” thing, every single author has been able to blithely sail along in her belief that her little angel protagonists are justified in… being mean about medical needs? . And because the depressed, anxious, fearful, unhappy straight cis white women who buy these books ceaselessly are not the type to notice - because usually they’re also the first people in line to bully - nobody in the audience notices either! So these books are secretly about these truly hateful and evil women, who trick various straight men into bonking them, and keep the mask on with everyone, but people like you and I, who are like: “Girl WHAT? You poisoned your friend on PURPOSE? Girl???!” And getting a WHOLE DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE ON THESE CUPCAKES OF HOPES AND DREAMS LMAO.
Anyway these authors make bank! Other authors need the electric bill paid by KoFi but chicklit writers make a wage on this kind of secret, sour politics. Even ChatGPT would hesitate before doing this!!! It’s delicious
Reblogged wolfie180g
Local goat discovers joy of painting
Reblogged hufflefluffles
It really is crazy how if you mention you write fanfiction with people outside fandom, they're always like "you should change the names and try to sell it." It misses the point (fun), but more importantly to me, I get slightly (and I know irrationally) insulted on a craft letter. Excuse me, my fanfic is entwined with the canon, thank you very much. I wish sometimes less entwined. You wouldn't believe the stupid bullshit some of my fics have to include because of canon.
Reblogged lookadreygon
I explained the concept of "blorbo from my shows" to my 71 year old immigrant grandfather because I referenced it in passing and I thought nothing of it, until today when he said "I think I'll watch peaky blinders tonight and see my blorbo from my shows" referring, of course, to Cillian Murphy playing Tommy Shelby
English isn't his first language so he's not super in touch with modern slang, so I've been accidentally teaching him to talk like a tumblr user. His favorite thing to say lately is "me when I'm a little hater" when he's like talking shit about the neighbor's son
Reblogged werewolfetone
Nine Eyes of Google Street View, A858 Eilean Siar, United Kingdom, 2011, Archival pigment print, 102 x 162.5 cm
Hat tip @aranov !
Dr Glass blew my mind last night. We were sitting around our (excellent) campfire and as the other grownups went to bed I said it was a shame to waste the campfire.
“We shall keep the campfire,” he said loftily.
The tents are special fixed tents that have woodstoves inside, and Dr Glass announced his intention of simply bringing all the fire parts of the fire inside in a tin bucket and putting it in the wood stove.
“Like transferring Calcifer,” he said, by means of further explanation, which he considered sufficient.
And that’s what he did. Took a few trips. Put the campfire inside. It worked. Okay buddy!! I consider myself a swan of the world and it still has things strange and new in it!!!
My favourite harmless prank I've heard of was done by this girl whose dad was a geologist, and they'd go on day hikes with his geologist friends/co-workers and when she got bored on them she'd habitually pick up a random rock and go ask him what it is, and one of them would explain what kind of a rock that is, how it probably got here, and usually some notions of the more unusual features the rock had, if any.
And she had a friend who had once gone on a tourist trip to Iceland and brought back a volcanic rock. So she borrowed the rock and took it with her on the hike, and after two randomly picked up "hey dad what rock is this", she presented the volcanic rock, in the same fashion as all the others.
3 minutes later there are five middle-aged and older men circled around this mysterious rock, all agreeing on what it is, but not why it is. They keep asking her questions, where did she find it? Were there any other rocks around there that looked like it? Was it like this on the ground? People walking past the group try to stretch their necks to see over the geologists' shoulders to see what's the source of such amazement.
And in the end she couldn't take it anymore, burst into laughter and confessed. The geologists agree that it was pretty clever.
Geologist enrichment
Reblogged draftmare
Grief! Basil Nightingale (1864-1940)
Hat tip @eldriwolf look how shiny!!
Reblogged
Do you accept horrible things that USED to have legs, but have now been rendered in a more vile and slithery form?
I will be honest.
#horrible things with legs is a VERY open, very vibes-based collection.
Show me whatcha got
Behold!
Oh I SEE. I see; thank you. That’s Mr Blobby (I think) but you fixed him (made him better.)
Reblogged
I did it! I organised them!
My floss collection has been in a horrendous pile for six months (I mean literal ball of 60+ colours that I've been moving from shelf to shelf) but it's now organised!
I did it whilst watching Peep and the Big Wide World and I have no regrets except that I didn't have a CRT television to watch it on for the vibes (though I probably don't need more X-ray radiation considering the week I've had).
If people have questions, I am happy to advise. I know this is like,,, a whole thing in needlepoint circles but this is what's easiest for me. I do need to sew some sort of strap for the binder though because it fits the skeins easily but is springy as fuck.
That’s a very cool thing, thank you!!
Hi! Today my family visited the park, and the swans (and ducks) came right in front of us! They're beautiful birds, and I thought you may like to see them!
I DO like to see them, thank you so much for thinking of me!! Those are indeed mute swans (Cygnus olor) which are, of course, relatives. And the duck is likely a feral domestic mallard.
I think a perennially lovely thing about swans is that they are generally not at all afraid of people, in a world where wild animals and humans are usually in conflict. We expect the Wild to fawn or flee or cower, or perhaps come up prettily as supplicants to beg. Ultimately wild animals fall into categories like “nuisance” or “photogenic object” or sometimes “supplicant”… but mostly they are “tenants of land, upon which we, humans, are the owners and landlords.”
Swans, who consider themselves our equals in every way - even socially! - are an unusual exception to this. They’re wild animals who offer a glimpse of an entirely different relationship.
Isn’t it lovely when they come up to you like this? They don’t have to. You probably didn’t have food. (They can tell this.) You probably didn’t need to be threatened off (they’re not being particularly threatening.) they are looking at you because they were interested. You and they are equally equipped to harm each other but there was no reason to. It was a beautiful day at the park and they were interested in you too. What a lovely moment, thank you for sharing.
I don’t know who you are but I keep saw someone tag you on a picture of snakes without legs and a picture of a fish with legs?? I feel like you would like my friend Le Poisson Steve (unless you already know of him)
(Highly recommended listening to the song, it’s great)
The song for people who don’t have TikTok:
Thank you so much for thinking of me!
“I don’t know who you are” no!!!! you do this every lifetime!! I feel like we know each other deeply and intimately, like we will find each other in every universe, so please don’t worry about coming to me for the first time with something like this, we have been doing this since Mesopotamia when you used to just throw intricately carved stone fish with legs at my head. What I’m saying is don’t worry about it
