zdl

zhang.dianli, 8 months ago to tea

When I bought my #Tieguanyin I got with it a by-now-stereotypical free #gift. (#Taobao vendors almost always throw in a free gift when you buy things. These gifts generally fall into three categories: other products from the vendor as an enticement to buy more from them, useful supplemental gear for the product, or dead stock they're trying to get rid of.) The free gift this time was a steel #thermos bottle. I have about ten thousand of these things littering my apartment so I didn't pay any attention to it.

Eventually, though, I opened the box and started cleaning it (flushing it with boiling water, etc.) and got it ready for a test of its ability. (A lot of these are cheap junk that barely keep things warm for an hour, and given that this was a free gift attached to a middling grade tea.

I nearly dropped it when I put the lid on it for the insulation test and found the lid glowing at me.

The free gift for some mid-grade tea was a steel thermos that monitors temperature. It's triggered by covering the top with your hand for under a second and displays the temperature (in ℃) along with a little colour-coded water drop (red means this temperature can injure you, green means safe).

As a thermos it's decent. Water that starts at 97℃ post-pouring (and waiting for the temperature sensor to react: it takes a few minutes to keep up) will fall down to about 90℃ in an hour or so. Overnight (8-9 hours) it dropped to 65℃ and after 24 hours it was still 38℃.

@tea

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juglugs, 8 months ago to random

miriamrobern, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago) to random

zhang.dianli, 8 months ago to tea

I'm running out of my #Emeishan #tea at work, so I got myself some #Tieguanyin to replace it. This is the recently-innovated, so-called "Jade Guanyin", actually, which is lightly-roasted instead of the usual fully-roasted #wulong variety that Tieguanyin usually is. It's closer to a green than a full-blown wulong with lots of floral nose to it and a lovely, complicated flavour. (This despite the fact it's an early-summer Tieaguanyin which is the second-lowest grade.)

Being closer to a green means it has all of green teas' usual problems including a very high tannic acid level. You have to wash this tea if you don't want acrid bitter concealing all the other flavours. It's a fairly forgiving tea, however, with ample "oomph" in flavouring that will let you get multiple brews from even the relatively small amount of leaf each packet contains. This means if you overwash the taste won't vanish. You'll just lose one or two useful brews.

@tea

Side view of package with the information on the company and tea including the all-critical production date: 2023-06-01.
One serving packet, unfurled, displaying the design and labelling.
One serving packet, opened, leaves dumped out on a piece of paper towel to show the colour and volume.
My tea cup with the tea as it's brewing. At this stage of brewing the leaves have fully unfurled (about 30-45 seconds in).
The final product. This is a tea I'm intimately familiar with so I got the wash and brew time just right. It's sweet, has a strong floral nose, and only a hint of the acrid bitters lurking behind the more pleasant nutty bitters.

zhang.dianli, 8 months ago to chinese

Two new decks of #cards to show today. Neither is #Chinese. Both, however, are #PVC cards with metal leaf giving them a very unique look.

One deck is a silver colour (though very probably not silver inside: possibly white gold leaf) #poker deck. The other is a gold-colour (very probably having actual gold leaf inside) #tarot deck. If it sounds crazy that actual gold is possibly and likely (respectively) being used inside playing cards, keep in mind that gold leaf is cheap like borscht. There's not a lot of gold in a 1m² area of gold leaf...

The opened box with four selected cards: the ace of spades, the king of hearts, and both jokers, to show the print quality and colour vibrancy.
The box for the tarot cards. It's a cardboard box with magnetic latching and gold foil design of the card back on the front.
The opened box, the enclosed guidebook (it's a bog standard Rider-Waite deck), one of the major arcana (the High Priestess), and one of the minor arcana (the Three of Cups) being face-up to show the vibrant colouration with the rest of the deck behind them turned face down to show the back design.

zhang.dianli, 8 months ago to random

On Friday I had a serious blood sugar crash mid-day so I took a cheat day on my interval fasting. Shown are:

1. Barbecue Pork Lay's ruffled potato chips.
2. "Tiramisu" flavoured cakes.
3. A zero-calorie lychee flavoured sparkling water.

A local brand of snack cakes that is "tiramisu" flavour.
A zero-calorie sparkling water that is lychee flavoured.

rebeccawatson, 8 months ago to random

I told my partner that if a gunman said “your dog or your life” I would gladly die fighting for Indy, as I’d rather die than live without him. But Chris points out that I also love justice and this could start my John Wick era. This is now my trolley problem.

claasgefroi, 8 months ago to random German

Treffer. Versenkt.

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pezmico, 8 months ago to Economics

We tried Trickle Down economics and it didn't work.

Time to try a new approach.

Comrades, the era of Piñata Economics is upon us.

#PinataEconomics #TrickleDownEconomics #Economics #EatTheRich #meme

ernie, 8 months ago to random

I saved my boss from boarding a hijacked flight on 9/11. You won't believe what he did next

Post See new posts Conversation Bill Ellmore 𝕏 @BillEllmore · Sep 11 I was booked on United Flight 93 on 9/11, 2001, flying nonstop from Newark NJ to San Francisco CA. Around midnight the night before, a coworker called me urging me to change my flight to fly into San Jose instead. This meant I had to give up my 1st class seat and move to a flight… Show more Bill Ellmore 𝕏 @BillEllmore The reason my coworker told me to change my flight was she took the same flight on 9/10 and the commute from San Francisco to Mountain View would make me late for my meeting whereas traveling from San Jose to Mountain View would be faster in the morning. 11:42 AM · Sep 11, 2023 · 921.5K Views Mark (Elsa's Dad) Davis, Man of Leisure @MarkDavis8919 · Sep 11 she saved your life with advice, which you followed. what ever happened to your coworker? Bill Ellmore 𝕏 @BillEllmore · Sep 11 Sad to say, I ultimately had to fire her for poor performance. It was difficult

burgerdrome, 8 months ago to random

I love my smart TV. I love the way it takes a long time to boot up because it's trying to refresh the advertisements on the home screen. I delight in the way it randomly restarts because it's downloaded an update without asking me, each of which makes the TV slower and slower with every subsequent install. I adore the way it buries the apps that I want to use, and that I use without fail every single time, below the apps that it's being paid to promote and which I have never touched in my life and would never use without the cold metal of a glock pressed hard against my sweating temple. I am infinitely thrilled by the way the interface lags constantly, due to the need to have one thousand unnecessary animations rendered on hardware ripped wholesale from a ten year old phone. I feel myself borne aloft on wings of pure joy when I am notified that my data will be collected and analysed to determine my useage patterns. Even now I am writing this from a field of beautiful flowers and soft luscious grass as I lie and look up happily at the bright blue sky, smiling happily to know that this is the future of technology

BlueWaveSurfer, 9 months ago to PetBirds

😂
#Birds & #Fruits

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peteramthor, 9 months ago to random

Ran into WAY to many of the "didn't happen" types over my decades of gaming. It only got worse when the online communities started growing. Thankfully a good chunk of them stay in their shithole echo chamber forum while I keep on blocking them everywhere else.

Da_Gut, 9 months ago to tisseksplayspace

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samhenrigold, 9 months ago to random

feel like i lost brain cells from this interaction.

mattblaze, 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago) to random

This may be obvious, but I recently started routinely adding "-youtube" to google searches. This eliminates most pages with links to garbage YouTube-monetized videos that try to attract people looking for basic instructions on how to do simple things. Greatly improves the quality of search results.

PanDaemonium, 9 months ago to BurningMan

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overholt, 9 months ago to random

The oldest printed book in the Huntington Library isn’t its Gutenberg Bible, but a Chinese Buddhist text nearly four centuries older. https://huntington.org/videos-and-recorded-programs/thousand-years-books-printed-1085

zhang.dianli, 9 months ago to food

A while back I introduced you to the greatest #snack #food of all time. I got three more cans of it because it was so good, but also got two cans of a related snack as a trial.

It's better.

By which I mean it's much spicier. The #peppers they use are hotter than the original. I love this stuff!

Top view of the opened canister.

zhang.dianli, 9 months ago to random

"Little Fish Peanuts" is the name. The ingredients are "little fish" (they look like anchovy or sardine hatchlings), roasted peanuts, and roast peas (plus salt and spices). No idea yet what they taste like. But I suspect really good!

Rear of package, detail view. "Little Fish Peanuts" is the name. The ingredients are "little fish" (they look like anchovy or sardine hatchlings), roasted peanuts, and roast peas (plus salt and spices).

zhang.dianli, 9 months ago to China

As imported #Capitalism broadens the divide between the #haves and the #HaveNots in #China, reminiscence for #Mao-era #revolutionary times rises. Which, to my jaded eyes, is immensely funny to watch as #capitalists take full advantage of this reminiscence and market materials from the time or which hearken back to those times.

Today's purchase is such an item. It's 1l of fairly basic #Chinese #liquor, at 45%ABV (90 proof)—fairly weak and low-grade liquor by Chinese standards—stored in miniature recreation enamel tin mugs, 125ml each (roughly 3 shots equivalent each) printed with revolutionary-era slogans on the side. The contained liquor is blandly inoffensive, of the "light scented" variety, sweetened with sugar, flavoured with #bamboo leaves and #gardenia, as well as two other ingredients I can't recognize. It isn't the best liquor I've ever tasted, but at the equivalent of five bucks for all you see here, it's a pretty good deal for the money.

Another entry in my collection of #Maomorabilia. Only this time I can drink it and have it make me feel good!

The top seal of one of the enamel mugs.
One of the mugs opened showing the contents.

zhang.dianli, 9 months ago to tea

A while back I promised @tea that I would do a photo essay when I finally cracked open my 庐山云雾茶 (Lushan cloud and mist tea). Today is the day I make good that promise. Details in the individual photos' alt text, but in general the pictures progress from the leaves through washing, brewing, and final service.

The double-walled glass with the glass leaf basket is my go to preparation medium for daily drinking. I have nicer tea sets for special occasions or when I just feel like pampering myself, but nothing beats the unique blend of convenience and performance I get from this.

#tea #Lushan #GreenTea #Chinese

Immediately post-wash. Lushan tea is very robust and doesn't have a lot of acrid bitter. The wash in this case was literally a straight wash-through: hot water poured through the glass basket mostly to get rid of dust. There was no more than perhaps five seconds of "brewing" while waiting for the basket to empty.
Brewing the leaves, side view. By this point the brew is about half-complete. Again, Lushan tea is very robust for a green, so the brew cycle is short. For this quantity of leaf perhaps a minute total. Note that the liquor has an orange/green colour. This is, again, typical of the type.
Brewing the leaves, top view. The leaves have fully plumped out and this photo was taken immediately before lifting the glass basket out to serve. That odd liquor coloration is more visible here with the vertical view through more of it.
Service, side view. Basket has been removed. The tea is ready to serve. The taste is full-bodied with a large amount of the non-acrid bitter and a very nice flowery sweet finish. The aftertaste of a decent grade of Lushan tea rivals a mid-grade Tieguanyin for duration (!).
Service, top view. Comments otherwise identical to the side view. This shows off the interesting liquor colour. With this particular tea, after this first brew, I'm pretty certain I can get four good solid pulls out of it before the liquor starts weakening and collapsing in bouquet and flavour. Lushan tea was my first detailed exposure to tea from planting through harvesting and processing and thus will always have a special place in my heart. There are other teas I like better for special occasions, but I always return to Lushan tea when I can find it (I've since moved away from the foot of Lushan) for drink-a-day.

ErikUden, 9 months ago to random

A man in Saudi Arabia has been sentenced to death for his tweets, and surprise: Elon Musk is NOT funding his legal bill as promised because there's a good chance that the necessary data to identify this man came from the second largest shareholder of Twitter: the Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal.

Musk has been awfully silent about this as you can't really make your “freedom of speech!!” argument when you assist with killing a retired teacher for the regime critic posts they made on your platform, only possible because that regime owns a huge chunk of “your” platform.

zhang.dianli, 9 months ago to random

Two more oddball (to westerners) potato chip flavours: Lime and Fried Crab.

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turbobureaucrat, 1 year ago to random Russian

A little #tea diary.

In this thread I will document my tea tasting journey.