You probably know the drill, but in case not - you get an unlimited supply of one specific beer to drink when marooned on an island - presumably til death.

I love California blondes. I want to try some others that ~ loves, and thought other folks might like to do the same.

Firestone Walker 805 for me. You?

edit: just to say, oops, not dessert...desert.

I went to the local farmers' market on Saturday and was impressed by both the mushroom guy and the stand selling venison. I've only been able to find venison a few times (don't have any hunter friends), and the times I've made it before, it's gone into chili. So, I bought a pound of stew meat, a half pint of Cinnamon Cap Chestnut mushrooms, and some produce to finish out a stew. I braised it all up last night in some beef broth and red wine. That may have been a mistake, as the venison basically came out tasting like stew beef. Process went a little like this:

• chop up the venison into bite-sized chunks
• brown the venison in a bit of butter
• add more butter and some flour to make roux
• add a splash of red wine and about a carton of beef broth
• add mushrooms, potatoes, garlic
• realize I'm out of onions, so add onion powder
• reduce until gravy-like

All in all, it was tasty (the mushrooms were great!), but the venison was basically very tender, $9 / lb stew beef. Did I treat it wrong by using beef broth, or is that just the way it tastes?

Any other puer tea fans?

This is a 250g beeng ("cake") of pressed sheng puer tea by Bitterleaf Teas from the Jingmai area of Yunnan, produced last spring, so it has settled into itself quite nicely.
Dressed
Undressed

Don't know what puer is? Puer tea is a Yunnan, China specific tea that is very unique. It is processed differently than the more common white, green, oolong, and black teas. It is valued for its capacity to be aged for years (to decades) transforming through oxidation and fermentation into something much darker, earthier, smoother, and funkier. It is also consumed young for its fresh, floral, fruity, pungent, bitter, vegetal, and/or pleasantly musky green tea-like qualities. Traditionally, this type of tea was pressed into these cakes for ease of transport, and that tradition has held up (also makes it easier for modern shipping due to the dramatically reduced volume of the tea upon pressing). I use a letter opener to pry away several grams of the tea, and brew using gongfu methods. ( If you're curious, I posted more about this over here on the creative tilde )

This is a very nice tea packed with floral aroma (hence the name "In Bloom"). Great tea from a great producer. I can't say enough good things about Bitterleaf. They can be a bit pricey, but its because of their dedication to producing teas from high quality material.

And holy crap this is well made. I hear it gets better in the later seasons, too! It makes me upset that we don't have more science fiction television of this quality, but also glad that I finally found this show. Hopefully I can get caught up quickly and join in with the rest of the world for the season finale. How do you all feel about The Expanse and other contemporary science fiction television?

I've read the docs and I personally have not seen this topic come up yet.

I've been weary/afraid to post any more of my own content since my very first post here on ~Tildes. Are there currently any unofficial rules for self-promotion? We all know Reddit once had that stupid 10:1 (or was it 5:1?) ratio rule before they chucked it. I don't want to feel like a selfish person or a spammy person if I submit content that I created and/or links to accounts that promote myself as a brand.

Looks like it's been about a week since @Flashynuff's post, so I figured I would make one for this week. As seems to be tradition, I'm going to borrow @Whom's description :)

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something!

Feel free to give recs or dicuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

This seems like a tricky one to me, as it largely depends on the community as a whole deciding to go with a particular tone.

One example of a site that has an expectation of serious conversation is Hacker News, and this makes it a great place to get thoughtful discussion without snarky comments (but with its own biases and echochamber effects of course).

What I don't want to see Tildes become is the meme-posting, reference-laden, low quality noise of some subreddits, or the content-free fluff of Imzy.

How can we strike this balance?

I believe that France has the best chance to take the whole thing away. However teams like Spain and Brazil can also easily put up a show. It would be interesting to see as there are no clear favourites in this World cup.

I was going through the responses to /u/Kat's Tildes Survey Results and it looks like a good bunch of us use Discord, me included. I decided a Tildes discord server might be of use. It's not officially endorsed or anything, but I thought there might be interest. Any suggestions would be great :)

Server Link

So I'm moving soon and I was just curious about how those of you who move around a bit go about finding new people to hang out with. I usually just try to find the nearest gay bar and go from there. But I'm curious what all you people do.

Hey I think I'm caught in a time loop so I'm gearing up and making some contacts. Post something I couldn't possibly know about you so I can post it tmrw morning (today) to surprise you into letting me get in touch on short notice. I'm working on figuring out my possible range of travel and it would be good to have people. Thanks!

edit: woke up this morning (Tuesday) like a regular person, so I think the loop ended. I got four days total. I didn't bother my roommate about it on the last run, so she doesn't even remember me being weird about anything. I'm a little disappointed, but it's probably good that I can go on to live my life now. Send me a PM if this happens to you. I didn't learn much but I'll be quick to believe you if that's something that would be helpful.