Food-shaming "influencers" can fuck all the way off.
Because what they're about has absolutely nothing to do with wanting people to eat healthier. It's all about making people feel bad about what they're eating... regardless of WHY they're eating what they're eating.
Especially "influencers" like this nightmare who honestly thinks that they're doing something with their shitty condescending attitude...
I've covered up this "influencer" because I don't mean to be sending any hate their way...
this is just one example of a huge problem that I picked to illustrate my point.
"This is not food." YES IT IS. It's not the healthiest food, but it's food. And if you'e working three jobs to get by and the only thing you can afford and have time to eat for breakfast is an Egg McMuffin and a McHashbrowns THAT'S OKAY. If you have difficulty cooking for whatever reason and this is what you can manage? THAT'S OKAY. If you don't have a kitchen available to cook food? THAT'S OKAY. Eat what you can eat and don't let people who don't care about you shit all over you for it.
"Imma keep saying it until y'all hear me!" Okay, I heard you. Now if I tell you that I don't give a shit about your food-shaming rhetoric, will you leave people alone? Because everybody already knows this. It's not news. Nobody eats at McDonald's for its health benefits. And your treating people who eat McHashbrowns like they're stupid and don't know any better just makes you a horrendous piece of shit.
If you want to suggest a way for people to eat healthier and peddle it to people who are looking for that information content, then go right ahead. But food shaming makes me crazy because the gall it takes is just beyond the pale.
Unless you are going to pay to have healthier food made available which people can afford... and have access to... and fits their particular situation...
Seriously. Go eat a head of lettuce and just fuck off already.
I became a vegetarian on Earth Day, 1986. Back then it was no easy task because the many food options we enjoy today didn't exist. Finding meat substitutes at the local grocery store was difficult if not impossible, so I ended up making weekly trips to the health food store... a very expensive endeavor.
As the years marched on, access to more reasonably-priced and better-tasting vegetarian options for all my favorite foods became easier. Burgers, bacon, hotdogs, sausages... it was all there. And my diet today is much the same as it was in the 1990's. Except now I can get an Impossible Whopper at Burger King. Now-a-days, being a vegetarian is easy. It's going vegan that's hard.
Because there's one dietary staple I simply cannot give up: dairy & egg products.
But not for lack of trying. This past year I've made a real effort to ditch milk. I mostly buy almond or soy milk. And it's fine. I love to drink chocolate-flavored faux-milks (mylks, they're called now?). I have no problem putting vanilla or plain mylks on my cereals. Everything that I used to do with milk works with imitation milk. I'm good. But there's three things that there is no adequate substitute for...
Ice Cream
This is not a deal-breaker. I can live without ice cream. I don't eat a ton of it anyway. Juice bars are good enough. But still... there are times that it's the perfect treat, and the vegan options aren't great.
Eggs
I don't really have to eat eggs. So long as there's a substitute to use in baking cakes and such, I could give up eggs without too much issue. I use maybe a maximum of a half-dozen a month (mostly in baking). I'd eat a lot more for the protein content, but I don't like the smell that comes from cooking them. When cooked at home, I eat them mostly scrambled inside of breakfast burritos. But if I'm at a restaurant? Over medium on toast all the way, baby.
Cheese
I love cheese, I live for cheese, most of my favorite dishes are built around cheese, and giving up cheese would require a radical shift in my diet that I'm not prepared to make. Currently, I've not been able to find a vegan cheese that is in any way acceptable to eat.
If a vegan cheese is developed which has the texture, cooking properties, and approximate taste of real cheese, I could become a vegan overnight. I wouldn't even have to think about it. And I really hope that day is coming. If Burger King's "Impossible Whopper" has taught me anything, it's that the science of plant-based foods is seriously breaking barriers.
It's only a matter of time.
But will it be before I die?
Yesterday I was all ready to have Apple unleash the "nuclear option" to see if the data of mine that they destroyed could be restored. This morning I called. The guy I talked to had no clue what this "magical restore" could be. He'd never heard of it. He didn't know why I was told it existed. It doesn't. Apple makes no backup of their customer's data on iCloud Drive in the event they have a catastrophic failure. There's nothing. There's no data saved anywhere that they can restore from. So first Apple doesn't tell you that Time Machine won't backup iCloud Drive files. And then they don't take any precautions to save your data if they fuck it up.
Sooo... what's gone is permanently gone.
Not because of anything I did. I used the service as it was designed. I dutifully bought an iMac with a pricey external drive to back up my stuff via Time Machine. But because Apple doesn't give a FUCK... and doesn't give a single shit about their customers... I'm screwed.
I fucking hate Apple with the passion of a thousand suns. THEY misrepresent. THEY lie. THEY screw up. But not a penny of their BILLIONS OF DOLLARS is used to safeguard their customers over THEIR mistakes.
After fuming all day, I arrived home to make banana bread.
I'm one of those people who buys bananas and "forgets" to eat them so they over-ripen, then the only thing I can do about it is make banana bread...
But I make banana bread MY way.
No lumps in my banana mash. I purée that shit. No spices. I want all the banana flavor and don't want it covered up. Extra walnuts. AND ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY NO RAISINS! I only eat raisins in oatmeal cookies or on their own. Never in cinnamon rolls or breads or pastries or anything else. Oatmeal cookies have that oatmeal texture to take the edge off the raisin texture so I don't get skeeved out.
A sweet end to a shitty fucking day.
Blogging can't be dead... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• CosMc's! McDonald's is going to take on Starbucks with a concept beverage shop they're calling "CosMc's." Now, I don't drink coffee, so I mostly don't give a shit about Starbucks, but I admit to being more than a little intrigued by CosMc's. Mostly because they don't look to be as coffee-focused (though there's a lot of coffee on there). When you look at the drink menu, there's plenty of cool-sounding beverages that I'd 100% try. Plus there's some food items I might like... and sandwiches I'd give a shot once I modify them to be vegetarian (why the fuck they can't put a single fucking vegetarian sandwich blows my mind). But, alas, I'd have to fly to Chicago and drive a while to get to the only
I WANT ME SOME McPOPS, DAMMIT! And all of those sundaes.
• SPEECH! I'm a sucker for a good wedding speech (here's a link in case TikTok is being a dick)...
@moorepictures Big brother toast + crown apple makes for a fantastic speech #brotherspeech #weddingtoast #funnyweddingspeech #funnyweddingmoments #funnywedding ♬ original sound - Brennan & Greta Moore
• NEWSFLASH: No joke: Feds discourage humorous electronic messages on highways Oh thank heavens. Because we have no bigger problems to work on. Guess what? THE ONLY REASON THAT PEOPLE PAY ATTENTION TO THESE SIGNS IS BECAUSE THERE'S A CHANCE THEY'LL BE FUNNY!
• Emmy! I don't give a shit about the Emmys. I really don't. The shows I love and feel deserve recognition rarely win, so what's the point in getting invested? As an example, Andor, one of the most remarkable shows to ever appear on television (and my favorite show of 2022) didn't win anything. Insanity. They gave it all to Succession, which is one of the shittiest fucking shows I've ever endured, and I remain dumbfounded that people love it as much as they do. But anyway... one show that I was happy to hear won again is Last Week Tonight, which is hilariously funny while also being incredibly disturbing. And John Oliver is a genius, as you can see in his post-Emmy appearance on Jimmy Kimmel...
He's a national treasure. By way of Britain. But now an American citizen.
• Nine Months to Make a Baby! I don't know if anybody else is following the drama that is the Royal Carribbean Nine-Month World Cruise... but it's been a lot. Remember just a few days ago when I was talking about the rough seas of the Drake Passage? The cruise just sailed that. And even though the people documenting the cruise were taken back by the strength of the waves, they actually look calm compared to what I remember going through. But even so, there's been flooding on the ship which has created even more drama. It's delicious.
• Inclusivity is Good! It's so fucking hilarious how assholes outrage farm over the stupidest stuff. Like Santa, who... SPOILER ALERT... is a fictional character, must be a white, able-bodied character. And if he's not then, HOLY SHIT, it's an attack on the REAL Santa! AND I AM GOING TO RAGE ABOUT IT AS IF IT'S THE MOST IMPORTANT FUCKING ISSUE IN THE WORLD TODAY! Well, if that's a pressing issue for you, then good. Because THE ENTIRE WORLD IS NOT ENTIRELY ABOUT YOU! (here's a link in case TikTok is being a dick)...
@dasiadoesit not.. all lives? #waronchristmas ♬ New Home - Frozen Silence
And it just gets crazier and crazier the deeper you go. People talking about how Santa is Nordic, so he has to be white and can't be anythng but white. AND IF HE'S IN A WHEELCHAIR, THEN HOW CAN HE DELIVER ALL THOSE PACKAGES?!? Oh... I dunno... THE SAME FUCKING WAY HE'S ABLE TO GO DOWN A CHIMNEY?!? Jesus.
• NERD! I gotta tell you... as a architecture nerd, I am finding the most amazing content on YouTube. My latest find is a show called How Did They Build That? and it's SO. FUCKING. COOL. Right now I'm on the second episode, which covers the Twin Copper Tilted Towers of New York, the Cultural Center and Library of Athens, and The Hive building of Nanyang Technological University of Singapore. It's glorious. I could watch this stuff all day long day after day...
If you're into this kind of thing, I can't recomment the Banijay Science YouTube channel highly enough.
Have a blogtastic day!
Odds of a White Christmas are diminishing, but that's okay... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Scale! Unsure about your place in the universe? No worries! Turns out that you're actually the center of everything!
It's amazing how good Kurzgesagt videos are. When I see that they have something new out, I drop everything and watch it. They never disappoint. Case in point? If you have tattoos... or even if you don't... this is 1000% worth a watch...
I don't know why, but seeing this video just wants me to go get a new tattoo.
• Mapped! XKCD is usually good for a laugh, but this one made my brain do a flip-flop first...
The genius is that, at first glance, you don't see anything wrong. And, because I like you, I named the extra states...
I don't know about you, but we totally should have a state named "Steve."
• NEWSFLASH: Stanley Tucci Going Back to Italy After Nat Geo Signs Up Former CNN Host! Stanley Tucci is a national treasure. Mostly for his movie roles (including my all-time favorites in Undercover Blues and The Devil Wears Prada). But also for his dedication to food, thanks to his amazing series called Searching for Italy. I love the show... right up until CNN stupidly canceled it a year ago. Fortunately NatGeo knows a good thing when they see it, and will pick it up again. Now titling it The Heart of Italy. And I cannot wait.
• FAKE! In Tokyo there's a famous area called Kappabashi Dougu Street (AKA "Kitcen Town"). It's filled with restaurant supply vendors. Kitchen equipment, dishware, decoration... it's all there. But the best thing you can buy there is fake food. Unlike in this country, most restaurants have windows filled with fake food representations of the dishes you can buy inside, and a lot of time there are prices next to each one so you also know what it's going to cost you. It's a fascinating part of Japanese culture, and now there's a video showing how this amazing fake food it crafted...
Mesmerizing. I've been to Kappabashi-dori a few times to look at all the replicas, but I don't recall ever seeing the stuff actually made.
• JOKE-SWAP 2024! How do they get away with this...
Easily the best thing to come out of Weekend Update, it almost makes you wish this was a weekly feature.
• Queen Flight! I've mentioned several times how much I love film. I've also mentioned how I'm a massive fan of film analysis. My favorite person doing analysis being Thomas Flight. One of his most famous videos is a critique of "Best Editing Oscar Winner" Bohemian Rhapsody by John Ottman. If you are not one of the 2.9 million people who saw the video, it's worth a look...
As a massive Queen fan, I ran to the theater so I could see Bohemian Rhapsody on the big screen. And, yes, this crap scene took me right out of the movie because I got whiplash trying to follow it. How could it not? To me it was just as bad as hearing a fucking "Wilhelm Scream" and being jerked out of the story. But anyway... what I didn't know is that John Ottman responded to the criticism, and Thomas made a video about that...
Ultimately I loved the movie. It's hard not to if you're a Freddie Mercury and Queen fan. But that doesn't make it above criticism. That shouldn't make it above criticism. Especially when we're talking about the editing, which wasn't that great, regardless of circumstance and the chaos of the film's production.
• True Lauv! Facebook Memories are a mixed bag. Sometimes it's painful memories of times I'd just as soon not revisit, but often times there's something nice awaiting me. Like a happy event, funny video, or cool song. Like this music video from last year. Lauv really knows how to craft a hook...
Most of the time, however? My Facebook memories are crowded with posts about all the travel that used to occupy my time.
Only one more Bullet Sunday until Christmas! Hope your shopping is finished.
Yesterday I wanted FBLTCs for dinner (Fake Bacon, Lettuce, Tomato, and Cheese Sandwiches). But, alas, when my grocery order arrived there was no bread. The one I asked for wasn't available so they substituted... nothing?!? It's white bread. For the love of God, Safeway, substitute ANY OTHER WHITE BREAD, like you substitute for everything else.
So anyway... that meant I had to make some bread.
A big part of the reason I wanted my kitchen remodeled? SEALED COUNTERTOPS. I've never had them before. I prefer a wood cutting board for chopping stuff up... but it kinda skeeves me out to have something wet like bread dough being scraped off wood with all the cuts on it. With sealed countertops, you can scrub them down with baking soda, disinfect them with white vinegar, then wipe them up with a hot water bath and know it's perfectly clean with no creepy crevices to scrape out of. Especially lately as I've been experimenting with a stickier SourJo bread dough... it still ends up with that super-dense texture I love, but has a crustier crust on it...
I think next I'll start experimenting with a longer third rise to get some air in it and see if I still like it as much. I usually prefer a bread with fewer holes so that condiments don't leak through it... but I had a rustic loaf last week that was really delicious, so maybe it's time I try something different.
But anyway... about those FBLTCs...
Too delicious. Many thanks to Morningstar Farms for their soy bacon, which tastes darn good in these sandos.
It started with the plain vanilla cones. You know... the yellow ones that are not actually cone-shaped. And I say "plain vanilla" even though there may actually be no vanilla flavoring in them... I was using "vanilla" as another word for "plain." Or, "plain plain" as it were.
From there I graduated to "sugar cones"... which are, in fact, cone-shaped.
After that I landed on bigger and better "waffel cones" and never looked back. Sure they're more expensive, but they're the best and I'm rolling in waffle cone cash, so I splurge.
Then I was putting together a grocery order, took a look at how fucking expensive it was, and decided to go back through and see if I could shave some money off my bill. Turns out I no longer have waffle cone cash, decided that plain vanilla is probably good enough considering I am actually more interested in the taste of the ice cream, and made the swap.
Strange thing... I actually prefer the plain cones!
Specifically because the ice cream tastes better in them. Well, probably not vanilla ice cream... but definitely the chocolate ice cream that's my favorite.
But anyway...
Apple had their "Scary Fast" event tonight. Every industry insider in existence had been speculating that this would be the introduction of M3 MacBook Pros and M3 iMacs, so I was not the least bit surprised when that ended up being the case. Not much else to say besides "they're a bit faster," so I will be brief...
I'll tell you what did surprise me about the presentation... how it ended. Look at this...
Sooo... Apple wasn't kidding about being able to film motion picture feature quality footage on the iPhone 15 Pro Max. And to prove it, they're eating their own dog food here.
But anyway, that's all for tonight. There's an ice cream cone calling my name.
I'm not an overly-sentimental guy. Sure I have experiences that I treasure and I guess thinking about them could be considered sentimentality... but I don't really view it that way. One area that I fully admit being sentimental about is food. It just pushes all the sensory memory buttons for me. For my Washington grandma, her apple pie was truly epic. Award-winning epic. Mind-bogglingly epic. For my California grandma, it was her incredible enchiladas that send me. I make them more often than is probably healthy, but it was something I associate with her so deeply that it goes beyond a memory. It's a connection with how I remember her.
This is getting somewhere I promise.
Another thing that my California grandma made that I love is "Magic Marshmallow Rolls." I remember very, very well the first time I got to eat them. They were just beyond anything I had ever had before. Melt in your mouth incredible. My mom got the recipe from her, made them from time to time (but never often enough), and once I became an adult I got the recipe and started making them for myself. But then I became a vegetarian, so the gelatin in marshmallows meant that I don't make them very often now. I wish there was a vegetarian marshmallow that worked the same, but it doesn't seem to work that way. Oh well.
Fast-forward to earlier this week.
I needed to place a grocery delivery order on Monday night for delivery Tuesday morning. I decided that I would order the large marshmallows and crescent rolls required for Magic Marshmallow Rolls. Essentially you coat a marshmallow in melted butter with sugar and cinnamon then wrap the crescent roll dough around it. When you cook it, the marshmallow melts and disappears, leaving behind sweet, gooey goodness. It's for this reason that they are also called "Jesus Resurrection Rolls" or "Easter Empty Tomb Rolls"... assumably Jesus is supposed to be the marshmallow in this scenario, and he disappears from his crescent dough "tomb" when he gets "resurrected."
Then yesterday morning I got a notification that Safeway had made substitutions on my order.
The Jet-Puffed large marshmallows were out of stock.
They asked if they could substitute mini marshmallows. And my only option is to click "Yes" or "No." You can't talk to the shopper and ask them to substitute with a different brand of large marshmallows like you can with Instacart. You can select a substitution before you send your order, but it takes a lot of time to go through every item, so I often skip it.
I was mad.
How the fuck can I replace my single Large Jesus Marshmallow with a bunch of Tiny Jesus Marshmallows and get the dough to seal around them without it becoming a lumpy, leaky mess? If I had wanted mini marshmallows, I would have ordered them. Where is the correlation with this substitution? I guess it's for the people who don't care about the size... they only care that they're made by Jet-Puffed.
I don't get it.
It's like the time they wanted to substitute a pepperoni frozen pizza for the cheese pizza I had ordered. I'm a vegetarian. I don't eat meat. Which is why I ordered a cheese pizza. And it's like... in what universe does this make a lick of sense? So lesson learned. I now specify a pizza substitution that I can actually eat. And this week I learned I have to substitute large marshmallows with large marshmallows if I actually want large marshmallows.
If only I wasn't so lazy I'd be enjoying Jesus Resurrection Rolls right now.
Instead his tomb will have to wait until next week when I can =shudder= go to the store.
It may be getting cold enough that I'm contemplating turning on the heat, but it's always warm on my blog... because an all new Very Special Video Edition of Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Kookaburra! Now, granted, I would not want this outside my window (and I remember them very well from my trip to Australia), but it's sure nice to admire them from afar...
So cute. Are there any baby creatures that are not adorable?
• Andor! Diego Luna is precious and life-affirming. This entire video is fantastic...
On top of that? He's a remarkably gifted actor. I am dying for the second season of Andor to arrive.
• ¡Yo Quiero! "It's the same thing in a different thing." — HE'S FIGURED IT OUT! HE'S DISCOVERED THE TACO BELL FORMULA!
LOL. These foreign takes on quintessentially American things never gets old!
• Does Whatever a Spider Can! Video games have reached the point where you're basically playing a feature film. This looks incredible...
This was a Spider-Man game when I first started playing...
Insanity. And soon we'll have much, much better VR experiences, which could take it to an even more immersive level.
• Unreal! If you want a look into the absolutely fascinating world of 3D computer graphics, this is an amazing behind-the-scenes look at how photogrammetry works...
Now, I've written about the Unity gaming engine a couple times before. The stuff people are doing with it is breathtaking (including companies like Lucasfilm and Marvel using it for producing their projects). It is an amazing, amazing tool. Unfortunately, they've just unveiled a hugely controversial licensing model, which is gouging game developers in a terrible way. It's easy to say "Just switch to a different gaming engine if you don't like the cost!" Except video games take years to develop. Even for large studios with hundreds of employees. So if you've been working on a game for two or three years... how can you afford to switch to a different engine? This is a major deal. So major that some game projects are being canceled... and some developers are going to switch engines despite the additional time needed...
Of course the people behind Unity deserve to get paid for their hard work. But to kill developers to get there seems like a horrifically bad business model. Hopefully they will re-evaluate what they're doing and come up with something more reasonable.
• SCIENCE! Despite an inexplicable (and highly selective) anti-science movement by fucking idiots, science marches on. And this is fascinating...
Fascinating and scary. Plants screaming? But in brighter news... research into Alzheimer's just keeps advancing. Very promising that one day we might have a cure.
• HomeShit! For anybody saying that I am exaggerating about just how fucking shitty Apple's HomeKit is, this guy is a total expert and even he can't solve the problems he's been having. He finally ended up resetting and rebuilding his entire HomeKit setup...
If I get this desperate, I'm just going to bail on HomeShit altogether and go with Matter and some kind of smarter home hub (like Homey Pro). In the meanwhile, I am just applying Band-Aids to try to solve the massive fucking problems I'm having. As an example, I just installed a light and motion sensor in my garage as a backup to automatically turn the light on when the doors open since HomeShit automations keep dying on my door sensor for some reason (even though the light switch and sensor itself is operating perfectly).
And on that happy note... enjoy the rest of your Sunday.
Don't worry about all my looming deadlines at work, I still have time for you, dear reader... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• The Bicycle Thief! All this pupper wanted was some pets... even if it was from a bicycle thief...
I hope that the dog didn't run away. That would be worse than losing a bike because your automated garage door opener (likely) screwed up (it's happened to me).
• Cat Coaster! I can't get enough of this (here's a link in case Instagram is being a dick)...
I wonder if, from the cat's viewpoint, they feel like this is the real deal? And that has me wondering if it's traumatizing. Though I suppose they could alway jump out.
• Virus! Yeah... I'll take all the vaccinations. All of them. SCIENCE, BITCHES!
Even that might be enough to save me, but at least I can say I tried.
• Strange New Gorn! Despite a bit of a continuity problem when it comes to the Gorn, the second season finale for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds was incredible...
My mind is still boggling at the thought that this is my favorite Star Trek now. I never, ever thought that anything would eclipse the original series for me.
• Florida? The repugnant shit going on in Florida to teach kids that slavery was a good thing because enslaved people learned “job skills” that could be used after emancipation can be easily refuted. But this gentleman vividly illustrates why it’s a bullshit concept that doesn’t deserve any consideration (here's a link in case TikTok is being a dick)...
@garrisonhayes Florida’s efforts to rewrite, redeem and santize the worst parts of American history *for white comfort* is exhausting. Here’s why, from Tennessee.
♬ original sound - Garrison Hayes
Fuck FOX “News” and their white suprematist agenda forever.
• Rao No! Well, shit. Campbell's Soup bought Rao's Homemade sauces. Guess we can kiss that brand goodbye. Like every other great brand that gets bought by a mega-corp, Campbell's is most certainly going to fuck up the recipe with cheaper ingredients so they can squeeze more money out of it. The way Kraft fucked up Boca Burger is still very fresh in my mind. It was good while it lasted, I guess.
If there's one thing you can count on, it's that companies with billions of dollars to throw around will ruin the brands they absorb, despite them always saying "We won't change a thing!" Because do you know how many times this has been promised? Current CEO of Campbell's says "WE WON'T CHANGE THE RECIPE!!!" But then he gets replaced or fired and the new CEO is all "WE MUST USE CHEAPER INGREDIENTS TO GET MORE PROFITS!" and then it's "WE ARE CHANGING THE RECIPE TO REFLECT CURRENT TRENDS" or some such bullshit. I do not believe it for one second. Not one. This has happened an astronomical number of times with a crazy number of brands. Profits are always the focus of these huge companies. ALWAYS. Maintaining the integrity of Rao's isn't the priority. It's a short game to buy the brand and squeeze as much money out of it as they can before they ruin it. And then they're on to the next beloved brand.
• RUINED!!! I had to step away from my TikTok "For You Page" for a while, because people who "Had their Maui vacation ruined!" or "Had their Maui wedding ruined!" or what the fuck ever were enraging me to entirely new levels. There was a "social media coach" bitching because her 25th birthday to Honolulu was ruined when her flight was cancelled... SO SHE WENT TO MAUI... and took away much needed resources from people trying to survive the fires. I’m amazed... but not surprised at these assholes. This guy says what I’ve been thinking (here's a link in case TikTok is being a dick)...
@thomas_thevillain_bishop #Inverted it’s not about you. It’s about survival.#fyp #thevillainsguild ♬ original sound - Thomas Bishop
Sorry about your vacation... but there are people still missing. Have some perspective for crying out loud.
And that's a wrap on bullets.
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