It's kind of a sloppy solution, but what about using a Bluetooth to aux adapter? You would lose the dashboard audio controls but at least you can listen to your stuff.
Thanks to a Hacker News comment, my kids, ages 7-13. Have been watching an episode of Tintin from the internet archive every week, and they love it. Link: https://archive.org/details/tintinseries43
Get them the comic books; they are well worth the money. The stories, the imagination, the artwork, the language, the settings across the world, the spirit of exploration all together fires one's mind. They are some of the best comics ever written.
I would say: skip the early ones. Tintin in the Land of the Soviets and especially Tintin in the Congo are outrageously bad (Tintin in the Congo is horrendously racist). Tintin didn't really become the Tintin we know and love until Blue Lotus, though Cigars of the Pharaoh is still readable.
Like, the parts of Tintin that capture the imagination, the world travel, the realistic depiction of different cultures, the great adventure stories, all of that starts with Blue Lotus.
When people criticize Tintin for being racist, what they're really criticizing are those early stories. In the later stories, the ones that everyone falls in love with, Hergé went to enormous trouble to depict cultures accurately, gathering huge amounts of references to depict everything accurately (you see that in this article, with the image from Blue Lotus). In these stories, almost without exception, Tintin is the champion of colonized and oppressed peoples, and the stories hold up extremely well.
I espouse precisely the opposite opinion: actively try to get Tintin in the Land of the Soviets and Tintin in the Congo, preferably the original/uncensored version of the latter. They’re hilarious. They weren’t supposed to be serious—it was humour. It was only from Tintin in America that he headed in the direction of being more serious (and yeah, it took about three more books to really settle).
Just as a couple of examples, one from each, which I believe are fairly representative of the tone (and probably my favourite bits in each):
• Car breaks down, so pull the engine apart completely, then realise it was a flat tyre, so punch a guy, chase him till he’s out of breath, then stick the valve in his mouth so he reinflates your tyre; then toss all the bits of the engine back in, throw away the few bits that don’t fit, drive off, and remark about how reliable these cars are.
• When hunting a rhinoceros and bullets don’t work, drill a hole in its hide (somehow unnoticed), put in some dynamite, light the fuse, hide behind a tree, explosion, rhinoceros obliterated, and say (loose translation) “oops, guess I used too much dynamite”.
The latter incident was removed from the 1975 edition of Tintin in the Congo by Hergé (45 years after initial publication), and by then he said he regretted its big game hunting stuff (understandable; that and the race issues certainly haven’t aged well!). But really, it was never supposed to be taken seriously, it was a fun and gloriously unrealistic story. Instead of getting upset, I wish people would just enjoy its absurdity, as I think was originally intended.
But definitely don’t treat those two as containing the same Tintin as in later books. They feature his slapstick humour twin brother.
A very hard disagree with your comment. The GP is right in that the early ones were badly racist and cannot be construed as "hilarious" or "slapstick humour" particularly for impressionable young minds. Hence it is better kept away from them.
As this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42691442 points out even the later ones were biased but at least they are just tired old cliches and stereotypes without being overtly racist.
I'm not sure I understand the sequence with the rhino. Is he actually killing the rhino by drilling a hole in its back and lighting a stick of dynamite inside the hole? Or am I reading this wrong? That seems pretty out there.
I love Tintin comics, but even the later ones Tintin is very much the archetype white savior. Everywhere he goes, he's saving the cowering savages and poor natives from themselves or racist whites, and the good ones are always groveling and indebted to the brave and wise Sahib.
Which is okay as a superhero story, but if one is terrified of their children being incapable of separating fact from fiction or inability to develop their own understanding of the time and environment these were created in, they may not be ideal.
There are a bunch of other problems too.
* I'm not big on everything having to be about equal representation all the time, but there is a glaring omission of women. Which I guess would be okay given the times, but the few that do show up are vain, narcissistic, selfish -- Castafiore and General Alcazar's American wife are two I can remember.
* Haddock can get a little racist when he's drunk. It does help that most of his more colorful insults are so old that they've fallen off the treadmill and kids wouldn't understand what they mean (or maybe they've been censored in recent editions?).
* Speaking of which, depictions of Haddock's alcoholism are for comedic value. Tintin often enables and exploits his addiction and gets him inebriated in order to consent to things he had refused. While his drinking usually ends in disaster, he generally comes out unscathed or even ahead and faces no real consequences.
* Non-whites / savages are often treated as simpletons, emotionally driven, gullible and superstitious. Quickly resorting to violence, being fooled by ventriloquism or other cheap tricks, terrified of spells and gods, etc.
I'm skeptical whether these kinds of things actually harm children. I read these as a young child and could recognize all these issues and understand they were based on stereotypes or opinions, but again if people don't think their children are capable, I would advise reading them first. Ones where he stays in Europe are generally pretty safe IIRC.
On a completely different note, it's funny in the English editions, they seemed to me to imply that he's living in Britain, but if you keep an eye out you can spot the inconsistencies. Cars drive on the right, he takes a ferry to get to Scotland, etc.
Even the later tintin books are awkward: its the comic equivalent of a sausage fest; The only 2 women I recall are: Tintin's cleaning lady and Captain Haddock's favorite Bianca Castafiore (a comical drama queen and opera singer).
So taking myself as an example: I drink 12 oz of coffee daily (7 days per week), and I add exactly 12 grams of table sugar to my coffee each day (equivalent to 3 sugar packets), which is 45 calories. Seems like I don't have much wiggle room and should continue avoiding soda and juice.
I sweeten my coffee now with pure monkfruit. It's great in coffee, and chocolate too. It's really sweet, which is how I like my coffee, only a little is needed. And there's zero sugar or anything even close to a sugar.
The best time to stop eating sugar is yesterday. I wish I hadn't fucked up my body so much with sugar.
I'll be the guy that I assume most people are sick of by this point, and recommend experimenting with dropping the additives in exchange for higher quality coffee if you can afford it (it's usually not much more per cup). At effectively zero calories, after some period of time you'll get used to it and recalibrate your sense of sweetness to the point where sugary drinks and coffee are much less palatable
You can either get better coffee or you can also just get used to the flavor. I didn't like it and after about a year it became fine, now I have a lifetime of no sugar coffee unlocked.
I think this is something that people don't appreciate about being acclimated to sugar coffee. It takes a while to adapt, you can't just try it periodically and try to convince yourself it's better than the milky alternative, contrast is too significant, like comparing a pear and a slice of dry whole grain bread, or walking vs driving, or going to the gym vs not. A couple of months though and you'll probably be well on the way. In a pinch I'll grab a black coffee from McDonalds, since it's more on the medium side anyway, and it's perfectly serviceable.
I was able to switch to coffee and a little half and half with nothing else. That seems to be good enough for me and pretty low calorie and sugar content.
Drinking black coffee only has been difficult though, even with more expensive coffee (I'm not sure what's considered higher quality necessarily, but I have an espresso machine and I'm grinding whole beans for brands of coffee that websites claim are good)
From my cursory sense of espresso, it's a bit of a finicky, expensive, and niche thing to enjoy in the raw. It's my impression that the overwhelming majority of people in Canada and the U.S for example enjoy their espresso in an espresso-based drink, like a latte or cortado, because the intensity and texture of it mixes quite well with the fats and sugars in cream or milk, and is often made from darker roasts which balance out well. It would be very hard to transition from that to just raw espresso made from any bean.
I personally do not enjoy espresso on its own enough to invest in that sort of equipment, and am fine just getting that periodically at a cafe.
Anyone recommending any particular coffee on the internet should qualify it with their brewing method and personal preferences, because some people like a french press, some people like espresso, or aeropress, or pourover, for various reasons, and none are better than any other, but some people like the intensity of straight espresso, and some people like what you'd call drip/filter coffee, which would be a classic cone that you drip water through.
Likewise, among "high quality" coffee, there's a world of variety. Many great South American beans lean into chocolatey, but some end up quite sweet and fruity, while east african or indonesian beans can pretty much taste like candy. Quality usually refers to "grade", which is more technical and I'm not too well versed on, but to me it means how well the roasted product reveals the potential of a well-selected batch. Sounds a bit pretentious, but basically if you like bitters or cocoa or milk or dark chocolate, high quality beans will make that very enjoyable, both because it was a good crop from the right region, and because the roaster did their job by leaving enough of the sugars and moisture in the bean throughout the roasting process. It's worth experimenting with all of this.
If it doesn't taste that good, it can be because any of those other variables are off, or the blend that the roaster chose to make wasn't a good selection; they might have chosen to mix a brazillian with an east african and got the balance wrong for your taste, or it's too bitter because they roasted it too long, or it might just be stale, or you just don't like it because it's not your vibe.
Right now, I'm doing pour overs with a Hario Switch or V60 dripper and use a modest grinder. It's a pretty standard and inexpensive setup, the dripper usually comes in plastic or glass, and I get beans that are roasted in the neighbourhood within the month for about ~$10USD or sometimes more, and often they'll be an african or columbian blend. It costs me very little and is a simple pleasure. This is probably what I'd recommend if you were looking to play around, it's cheap and would require only the most marginal of equipment changes. It admittedly did take me a long time to taper off the cream and milk, I'd get it from McDonalds or whatever, but now I can even drink that stuff black pretty easily, but it's nearly impossible to tolerate if you're just side-by-side comparing with a coffee+milk mix, the contrast is too harsh.
I do still drink an occasional soda fwiw, and enjoy a latte, but now that I've figured out how to find and make good black coffee, there's no turning back. I'd rather the sugar come from a dessert.
Before we got the espresso machine I was using a manual grinder and a pourover daily and still have the equipment. I do use it sometimes still but the espresso machine is very convenient.
The best tasting coffee beans I found for the manual grinder / pourover setup was Mayorga brand Mayan Blend coffee (Medium Roast), which you can get on Amazon. Although even then I was putting a little half and half in there.
There's not too many neighborhood coffee roasters nearby (there's only one non-chain coffee shop near us, it's a bit of a dead zone). If I drive half an hour or more I start to have some choices though (three places if I drive 30 minutes, a couple more if I drive further), so at some point I should make the drive (or go a little out of my way when I'm roughly in that area for some other errand).
I honestly can't tell much difference between expensive coffee and Maxwell House. But in general I've never nerded out over coffee, wine, bread, cheese, whiskey, or any other food or beverage.
I can easily tell the difference between the two, but I really don't care so long as the coffee is brewed well. I still like Maxwell House Black Silk, but at home I grind my own beans and brew in a French Press.
What I don't like is "Church Coffee", where it has brewed within an inch of its life and is the darkest, most bitter/burned flavor that ever existed.
I’ve tried lots of different coffee’s and I keep going back to (don’t laugh) Folgers Instant. Maybe it’s because it’s what my parents had when I was a kid. Nothing else is quite like it.
Unfortunately, I add 100 calories of crap to it. But I drink it slower than Coke and it’s at least half the calories of a 32oz (my other vise). I use it as a way to lower my calorie count, just a little.
Surprisingly less calories in 32oz of Coke than I was expecting, less than a standard Starbucks sugary drink probably. Regarding coffee, people like what they like, and there's a lot of memories I also have associated with it, as well as drinking copious amounts of Coke for that matter.
If you ever want to try and ease off both those vices, I'd simply recommend buying a McDonalds coffee, buying a Starbucks Blonde Americano, and then taking them home and brewing a cup of the folgers instant with no additions. Get someone to pour them into identical cups, and have them play a shell game (move the cups around to hide which ones they are), then try them back and forth. Try to avoid anything with sugar in it for a few hours before. I bet you'll pick out some differences and maybe even like them, then if you want to try and delete the sugar from your coffee, avoid it in exchange for black coffee for at least a few months. It's not as hard as it seems, but it does take some time.
Then if you like, play around with easy home brewing methods like french press or pour over, grinding beans etc.. those were probably the most impactful things I tried when I went on the same journey. Grinding recently roasted beans before brewing was eye opening. I honestly didn't believe black coffee could be palatable, and was drinking Folgers with half and half from the big red can for ages.
Cheese is worth it, a bit. First because it’s way leas of a bullshit industry when compared to wine for example, and also because (particularly if you’re in europe) there is so much variety of cheese at overall an affordable price. And you largely don’t need tools or fancy accessories. If anything, you could get something nice to paid it with :)
Here in Singapore cheese is a lot more expensive than in Europe, alas.
I can definitely tell the differences between different coffees or teas or bread etc. The range for wine isn't that large. And that's not just in 'quality', but also just in less variety than eg (craft) beers or breads.
Just to add a bit, we bought a Breville espresso and grinder. I only use some whole milk to make my coffee and no sugar. My wife uses a little agave syrup and skips most of the milk.
Agave syrup is virtually pure fructose. As a sugar alternative it's ... not that great. The insulin response is fairly low, true, but the high fructose content carries its own risks.
Stevia would be a non-sugar-based sweetener, though it does have a distinctly different taste.
I'd learned to drink coffee with milk/cream, no sugar. With decent beans (Trader Joe's Bay Blend, e.g., nothing fancy) and a Moka pot that's more than sufficient.
Have you tried playing around with using the same grinder, but switching up the beans and brewing method?
I think a lot of people go espresso at home, but I do think that's an extremely difficult thing to transition to consuming black unless you're really into the hobby of it all and have adjusted. It's just really intense, which naturally blends well with the fats and sugars in dairy, especially with most espresso roasts being darker. If I personally go espresso, it's either a latte or black Americano.
Learn to drink it black, it’s good. But I do get beans and grind them so the brew is much higher quality. I’m assuming you drink that can of grinds for 3 bucks or instant. Those suck
I learned to drink it black, but not for health reasons. I did it to avoid having to depend on sugar a/o milk in order to have a coffee. Plus, nothing says "No nonsense" like "Coffee? Yes, black please."
It"s funny but also true? I have taken my coffee black for years now, having started because I wanted to just simplify my experience with it (among other things in my life). Not that my old coffee order was complex, but being lactose intolerant meant I needed to choose which milk substitute I was going to get, since not all coffee shops carried the same ones back in the day (less of a problem now, from what I understand). I grew to enjoy it black and still drink it that way to this day.
Going back to it, I think the need to simplify things was key for me. We are bombarded with so many choices, especially in our food products which I've described as the Breakfast Cereal Problem in the past. There are simply too many to consider them all with each shopping trip, so you are almost forced to just make one arbitrary choice and live with it unless you want to be paralyzed in the grocer aisle. None of the choices really offer a significant value or weight over the others, each cereal promising the same thing; to be part of a balanced breakfast, that Gestalt puzzle created by marketers to kick off our day.
Once you step back from that world, it does seem miserably pointless and the same can be said for the SSB's in the article. But on a deeper level, it says something about the stresses we introduce into our lives by chasing too many choices. I can't remember which of his books he mentions this in, but Richard Feynman seemed to have the same realization when struggling to decide what to get for dessert in restaurants. Eventually, be just settled on chocolate cake so he didn't have to make that decision anymore. That stuck with me for some reason, more than any concerns about how soda or whatever might be affecting my blood sugar, pushing me in the direction of just going with the more ubiquitous alternative; water.
Plus with soda at $4USD a pop in most restaurants these days, it's just cheaper to go with water. So we have health, simplicity and financial reasons to not go for the SSBs. Seems enough for me.
I just add a few drops of Stevia (have a liquid bottle that ends up being incredibly cheap on the whole)... personally, I can't really tell the difference.
EVERYTHING used to be so complex. Before minicomputers all control systems mostly used relays, so a complicated AV automated system would have walls of octal base relays. We just only have the pinballs and juke machines left because all this was ripped out of industrial places since the 70s and replaced with PLCs and embedded controllers. The complexity is nanoscale and software now so harder to see.
I've posted about this before on here, but in the mid-90's I visited the group at the US Army Signal Corps that built their radio simulators. When you opened them up, there were just banks of time-delay relays and ladder logic. It was insane.
His video about the jukebox is a great example to show people when they ask how important microprocessors and microcontrollers were when they were introduced.
All of that complicated electromechanical relay work replaced with a small board that can be reworked in software.
It's multiple lebanese family/gangs (Haddara family and others) vs biker gangs - as far as I can tell from news reports.
Both these parties run tobacco stores in many states - licensing was/is non-existant or minimal, although they are now increasing the overview and requirements in states that were lax.
These stores were mostly branded as vape/convenience stores until the recent regulation changes, now they often sell american candy and various random things along with local gov sanctioned cigarettes ($50/pack minimum) or the imported packs ($15-25 pack) - you can guess which one they pretty much exclusively sell.
Asians (Vietnamese/Chinese) are also selling the imported cigarettes out of their own branded stores and also some of the big chain tobacco stores (TSG, Cignall).
There have been dozens of arson attacks against the Lebanese and Biker stores over the last few years, supposedly over territory and payments.
A lebanese nearby had its security facade destroyed and was torched black the day after last years Christmas.
The asians don't seem to be involved in the arson attacks, they may be importing it as many of the packs are korean/chinese, but unsure as also eastern european and english brands are available.
The government engineered this situation with its ridiculous taxation policy, it was effective up to a point but it's becoming reminiscent of the era of alcohol prohibition in the USA.
$50 a pack? Yeah at those prices you can bet a black market crops up.
IMO this is only causing more problems. It won't put people off smoking because cheaper illegal alternatives arrive and it will create heavy crime syndicates.
Australian police: "We're not saying all tobacconists are linked with the sale of illicit tobacco, but what we are saying is that people are being targeted, businesses are being targeted because the organisers police allege are linked to the sale of illicit tobacco are simply standing over them."
There have been few isolated incidents of the tobacconist stores having been set ablaze, but it does not equate to, e.g. east coast Australian capital cities, being engulfed in putrid smouldering fires emanating from the said tobacconist shops.
Australian government introduced a (rushed) law in July this year that outlawed street sales of vapes and obligated local pharmacies to sell the officially licensed vapes instead, which has caused a uproar and a revolt on behalf of the Pharmacist Guild who bluntly refused to stock and distribute the vapes. The pharmacies that are not the guild members have made decisions at their own discretion. The drama is still unfolding.
There have been more than 70 arson attacks on tobacco stores and other businesses believed to be involved in the sale of illicit tobacco since March 2023, according to the Victoria police assistant commissioner Martin O’Brien.
Very well. You are correct, and I will admit my own ignorance with respect to the situation in Victoria as it appears to be wildly (in the literal sense of the word) different, and I used the NSW situational numbers.
ABC[0] reports following numbers for arson attacks on tobacconists across Australian states:
NSW: 14
Victoria: 130
Queensland: 30
South Australia: 12
Western Australia: 8
Whilst 14 (NSW) is more than a few, the order of magnitude difference compared with 130 (VIC) is a bewildering revelation, indeed, especially considering that NSW has a larger population. I do not know what makes NSW and VIC so different with respect to the matter at hand.
Does anyone know if there's an official NWS API you can pull from? Is that what this app uses? The NWS weather.gov site is my go-to for weather (no ads, no tracking) but the UI isn't great, I'd love to build my own customized front-end for it.
