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Construction complete on the incense box. First coat of boiled linseed oil applied. The shop assistant approves.

Nice that this showed up today:

"Tokyo Olympics: 10 Storylines That Make These Summer Games Unique" #5 will shock @cetoole https://www.npr.org/sections/tokyo-olympics-live-updates/2021/07/20/1018180729/tokyo-olympics-preview-biles-rapinoe-ledecky-gymnastics-track

I think you have the Sieveking Omega stand. One of mine is also. The other is a newer, cheaper made, random brand X Omega stand (lots of options) that’s 1/7th the price and probably why no one stocks the Sieveking any longer (if they even make them). The amp stand, aka monitor/laptop stand, is made by Navaris, and dimensions work well with the GS-X Mini.

My experience has been if they can't make any build fit in a Tik ToK video it doesn't get done.

I'm just mad about siphon. Siphon's mad about me...

They make memes.

That detail was only in the part you had to read. I just looked at the pictures and gave my own opinion - is that what the kids do these days?

Thanks! Very good to know it doesn't fall short of expectations -- indeed, that's quite high praise for decaf. Anything more would enter into "ehhh is this really true?" territory. To be fair to the Saint Frank decaf (also Colombian) I think it was past its prime when I started having extreme dial-in issues, and that certainly does it...

I have indeed. Keep in mind that my roast date was 7/5, so it’s still pretty off-gassy, so I do an extra 10 seconds or so of pull (using a lever machine, where you flow profile by default), but it’s very good. Tasty cortado in the afternoon is a nice thing. This coffee is basically what you would expect a high altitude light/medium single farm roast Colombian to taste like. I can’t think of higher praise for a decaf.

Speaking of...

Yeah, White’s name is all that got me past the first episode, but I did think it laid the ground work in the second and I enjoyed its growing cringy-ness. It’s a limited series so we’ll see, but very hopeful. On the other end of hope, watched the pilot of Sexy Beasts, a dating show where the put sexy people with the worst personalities together to prove it’s “all about personalities”.

I was gone for a few days, to see my partner, who is not local. A friend visited the Bingies, but I guess there is nothing like having me back. Ears perked in case I say that magic word, Tee Are Eee Aye Tee Ess. The other one is around here too.

Crema Coffee tamp/distributors for the Signature and the Pro2, respectively. The one for the Pro2 weighs 668 grams. It’s a unit. I’m sure they are gonna make one for the Flair 58, which will sink to the center of the earth. I would get a 58, but if I didn’t have to travel to see my partner I would just get a MaraX and an Option-O P-64, as I don’t have space for a stationery until then. I should have just gotten the Pro 2 to begin with. I’m enjoying this shit either way. I’ve pulled way better shots with the Flair than I ever did with the midrange Breville electric I have. Also mostly much worse shots, but the highs are high and the lows are okay with milk

Not so shocking by this point, as I follow a couple people who are going, but very cool. Hopefully downhill gets included one of these years, but I won't hold my breath.

It makes good coffee. I wouldn’t have one at home. It’s silly. But it makes good coffee at a coffee bar that is willing to be silly. Keep in mind that I have a completely manual espresso setup and I think siphon coffee is silly for home. Go for it. Now I have to listen to Donovan. Hardly a curse!

Graz Nils Frahm 2021 Example:

Still doesn’t suck.

I finished The Leftovers yesterday, all three seasons. Not bad, last season is IMO weaker.

Very good point! I certainly do think espresso is interesting in that regard -- even if it's more or less dialed in it's going to change with the day, and that can be quite interesting.

Anyone else watching Mike White’s The White Lotus [HBO]? Two episodes out so far and building its awkward fun.

Let's bring up an old favorite. Ievan Polkka is a traditional Finnish folk song. It's been recorded by many artists, but most famously by Loituma in the mid 1990s. About a dozen years after they initially recorded it, the song went viral as typically nonsensical internet meme. Late last year the song went viral again when it a version by blind Turkish street musician Bilal Göregen went viral: While his skills are impressive, I must admit I never particularly liked this version. First off I find repetition he uses to be bothersome, secondly he just can't compete with the four part harmony of the Loituma version. I realize this a wholly unfair comparison. Of course the Kiffness did a remix of Bilal's version, which is an improvement but in my jaded opinion still underwhelming. This version by a group of Finnish women is impressive for its insane speed if nothing else: The end of it would make a gabba DJ do a doubletake. Not to be outdone by a song they recorded 25 years ago going viral yet again, Loituma did a "zoom call" version earlier this year. You'll have to click through to watch this version because YouTube won't allow an embed. It's worth it, I promise. TL;DW: Loituma still have it a quarter of a century later, though I notice that the singer (I am not even going to attempt Finnish names) who does the most iconic part of the song (the bit looped in the original meme, which where the titualar Ievan is asserting that she is having too much fun at a party and will not leave) does NOT project like she did in the original version. She still hits all the notes (and, ahem, words) and conveys the feeling behind them but just not with the same power. This live version from 1996 is still the best version for plainly obvious reasons. 100% Finnish projection. This other live version ca. 1996 is also excellent. Sadly, there's another version of this video with 14M views that use (otherwise fine) album version audio. The recorded version is fine, but given how much energy there is in this performance, it's a travesty to strip the audio out of it. There's a bunch of "club" mixes of the Lotiuma version from the mid 00s. They're all unimaginably bad and absolutely ruinous to the original. Avoid them like the plague. Ievan Polkka remains an enduring meme that succeeds largely because it's such an infectious, timeless song. Even if one doesn't speak a single word of an extinct regional dialect of an already impenetrable language. 10/10 would Barillas dilla deiaduu badaba daga daga daga daga dujaduu again.

There's a YouTuber named Fernafloo who is quite famous in the Spanish speaking world, and relatively unknown outside of it. I became aware of him years ago because someone was micspamming a rap song about him in a TF2 Casual match (you don't need to know what any of that means.) I don't speak Spanish and have more or less no interest in streamers or streamer culture, but I found the melody of that novelty rap song to be quite catchy. That turns out it's because the rapper (Bambiel) lifted it from a song by TheFatRat: I'm ...not really into TheFatRat's brand of hands in the EDM, but he has a knack for writing oddly infectious melodies.

Ella Fitzgerald with her assistant in a Houston PD holding cell after she and fellow jazz great Dizzy Gillespie were arrested for "throwing dice" in Fitzgerald’s dressing room at the Houston Music Hall, 1955

RIP to Tab "Hunter" In a double whammy after losing my mother-in-law Friday night, yesterday we had to put down our kitty. Tab was "my" boy, he loved to be cradled when I picked him up, and he would extend his paws out in a bit of a hug, and kneed my neck. But he loved pets and scratches from Karen as well, who always had better nails for it than me. We're very sad, but he was diagnosed last August with lung cancer, and given as little as 2 weeks back then. 9-10 months later, he was still with us. So we're also very glad to have had that extra time.