I have a rather impressive collection of thrifted equipment I use for my morning latte. Each piece has required a little bit of investigative repair in order to get it working just right, but I've recently been stumped by my newest addition, a Bodum conical burr grinder.

My current espresso machine is a single boiler Breville with a standard portafilter (no diaphragm or valves in the portafilter, so the resistance needs to come from finely enough ground coffee.)

My question is this; is it possible to calibrate the Bodum grinder at all? It's finest setting is apparently not quite fine enough to provide the right resistance for the espresso maker, so I've needed to regrind my coffee with a blade grinder to get the right consistency.

Cheers in advance!

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

This is the fourth movie we discuss of Academy Award Winners. It won for Best Original Screenplay and Kate Winslet was nominated for Best Actress.

IMDb
Letterboxd
Wikipedia

Did the movie deserve its nominations and awards? Feel free to add any thoughts, opinions, reflections, analysis or whatever comments related to this film.

The rest of the schedule is:

• 27th of November: West Side Story (2021)

The end of the year is approaching fast and I still have some educational budget to spend. Therefore I would love to hear your suggestions for educational resources to spend some money on.

I'm open for all suggestions, but I would love to dive more into low level programming. I spend most of my work time as a backend dev. And it is nice for a change to something else than REST-endpoints.
At the beginning of the year, I bought the amazing Crafting Interpreters by Robert Nystrom and I'm enjoying tremendously.

So any recommendations going into the same direction or similar deep dives into topics like OS-dev, Game dev/graphics (tiny renderer comes to my mind) or writing emulators would be appreciated.

To get the discussion started, my top recommendation for his year would be Crafting Interpreters by Robert Nystrom.
If you are interested in the inner workings of interpreter and compilers and want a nice "program-along" book get it. I would recommend the paper-version, it is a beautiful book.

I have self-hosted my email for many years, but am finally encountering some straws that may be breaking the camel's back. A few email providers are now rejecting my server's mail, Microsoft in particular (@hotmail, @outlook). (In case you're wondering, I already set up SPF, DKIM, DMARC, etc. and none of that is the issue.) Self-hosting was fine, and the technical admin work was never really an issue. I'm just tired of the external factors that are beyond my control, like belonging to an IP range that is scored badly by some random blocklist company.

So, I'm now shopping for a good email provider. Privacy and security are important to me, and I am more than willing to pay for email, so all the usual "free" email providers are out of the question. (Update) Also, client access (IMAP, SMTP) is a must.

For now, I am eyeing

• Fastmail Standard plan @ 5 USD / mo
• Proton Unlimited plan @ 10 USD / mo

Proton is looking to be my choice among those two, as I like the replyable email aliases feature. 16 times the storage doesn't hurt, either.

Any other recommendations in the same vein as these two, and in the same price range?

Recently a close friend of mine was riding a bicycle along a city street. They had the right of way. A careless driver making a fast turn either did not see my friend (somehow... it's not like there were obstructions) or did not even bother to look. The driver and their 2000-pound steel machine slammed into my friend, throwing them off the bike.

The bike was completely destroyed/unusable. My friend was scraped up, and shaken, but by a miracle did not hit their head or have to be hospitalized. They were lucky: the car was traveling fast enough to kill. The driver was apologetic and paid for my friend's bicycle and medical bills. But this should not have happened. My friend could have died or been permanently paralyzed.

I don't know all the details. But I do know that intersection. This was so ridiculously avoidable.

• Had the bike lane been fully protected with a clearly visible (but not sight-line-blocking) concrete curb or at least a bollard at the intersection, the driver probably would not have taken the turn so fast, or would maybe have been more generally aware of cyclists. They may have had time enough to stop before crashing into my friend, or the impact may have been small enough not to hurt them.
• Had there been a raised crosswalk or had the entire intersection been raised (as a speed table), requiring cars to slow down, the driver would definitely not have taken the turn so fast. The driver may also have been more aware of pedestrians/cyclists and more likely to yield.
• Had there been a curb extension shortening the crosswalk (in this case a pedestrian crossing island past the bike lane, I guess), the driver would probably have subconsciously taken the turn more slowly, as they would probably have felt more enclosed within the intersection.
• Had signal priority been given to cyclists/pedestrians, the driver probably also would not have made the turn at that point in the light cycle, and would probably not have hit my friend. (I'm pretty sure my friend was going straight on green, but if they were making a right turn, then had no right turn on red also been enforced for cars, the driver would probably not have made the turn at that point in the light cycle, and would probably not have hit my friend.)

(This wasn't a parking-protected bike lane: the city had just removed parking from that side of the street and left it fully unprotected. If it were parking-protected, I would also suggest that two parking spaces be removed approaching the intersection to ensure that the driver could see cyclists in their peripheral vision. As it stands, I have no idea how this person did not see my friend. Gross negligence. They should not be allowed to operate a motor vehicle.)

Driving shouldn't be considered such a mundane thing. When someone steps into a car they should be aware that, at any point, they could kill someone. But really infrastructure is an easier, more repeatable, and less exhausting solution than trying to change attitudes directly. Probably had any one of these infrastructure changes been implemented, my friend would not have been hit by a car. Had more than one or two been implemented, there would realistically never be a cyclist collision here.

It irritates me that my friend's life was put in danger because a driver was being careless. But also that they were able to make a careless mistake. And incidents like this remind me that traffic safety is not a theoretical problem. At any time, without warning, the life of someone you care about could be immediately taken away because we have a culture that normalizes driving a dangerous vehicle with basically zero oversight; and because our roads are designed for car throughput and not to be safe for vulnerable people.

Someone called me "militant [about traffic safety]" once. This is why.

After giving This is How You Lose the Time War a five star review, I started scrolling through other reviews and I found thoughtful, well reasoned arguments for the other side. This is a thoroughly crafted well written book that is not going to be to everyone's taste.

The premise is two opposing secret agents, saboteurs, time and history manipulators who work for conflicting civilizations become aware of each other and start to exchange letters. It becomes a love story.

The nature of the work each main character does to manipulate history across many centuries and many parallel universes makes the narrative confusing. I can't imagine it done effectively any other way, but I also like other confusing time shifting stories where the story starts to make sense later.

The characters only meet through their letters with a couple of exceptions, so some say the love story is unbelievable. For me, it reflects the extreme isolation and loneliness of their work and how even minimal tenuous companionship of a peer would satisfy a gaping need.

The writing includes extravagant romantic feelings and poetic literary allusions to go with the science fiction and time travel aspect. I appreciated it, but people who like romance and poetry don't always like science fiction and time travel and vice versa.

The authors lean into the epistolary format. It's not exclusively letters but a significant percentage of the writing is the letters these two characters exchange.

The creative forms the letters take were fun for me and seemed like a valid extrapolation of actual historical spycraft if you assumed much greater ability to manipulate matter. However some people find them over the top.

It is an exuberant, enthusiastic book that is fun if you like it and possibly cringy if you don't

I'm interested in domain names that are remarkable in the sense that they are short or easy-to-remember.

This idea for a topic started because I find myself window shopping for domain names. Thing is, the only use I have for a domain is for my personal website. That's why I hesitate picking up these fun quirky domains.

What are some interesting domain names you've encountered?

Do you think it's worth it (in terms of utility and/or entertainment value) to have a more remarkable domain name for a personal website?

OK, I'll admit it. I didn't think Las Vegas was going to be that exciting. I was proven wrong. What a race!

But F1 still owes me money for the Thursday night FP1/FP2 debacle!!

Anyway, the final race of the season is at Abu Dhabi, Nov. 24-26. Which is already next weekend! Didn't even realize we had a double-header.

Add awesome game deals to this topic as they come up over the course of the week!

Alternately, ask about a given game deal if you want the community’s opinions: e.g. “What games from this bundle are most worth my attention?”

Rules:

• No grey market sales
• No affiliate links

If posting a sale, it is strongly encouraged that you share why you think the available game/games are worthwhile.

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