busybee fluffy rambles

Yesterday I participated in the IndieWeb sensitive data pop-up, or at least the first half of it (I had to disappear for my refrigerator delivery). It was really great to have some further discussion about what people want out of this stuff and how we’re all going to agree to get it.

Authentication stuff

One of the biggest pain points that keeps on coming up is there being no support for people to be able to get private posts without having to log in or be notified about them in side channels. Lots of people are doing things like making pages with unguessable URLs and then doing side-channel notification, but that’s unwieldy; fewer folks are doing things with actual login mechanisms.

It’s pretty hot in Seattle.

First, advice from someone who grew up in the desert:

• Drink lots of liquids, but don’t drink just plain water because sweat loses electrolytes
• A good way to cool down reasonably quickly is to hold ice against a major artery or vein, such as your wrist or armpit, or against your sternum (but be careful about overdoing it in that case)
• A breeze can help but at a certain point you’re only blowing hot air around and heating it up even more
• Avoid caffeinated or alcoholic beverages

I finally had Impossible Burger alt-meat in a burger tonight. My impressions of it:

• The raw “meat” has a weird uncanny-valley look to it, and also a rather… smell. A bit offputting, but only in comparison to beef.
• When cooked up, it does look just like beef, but it tastes and smells of, well, pretty much nothing.
• The mouthfeel is just like beef. Really good texture on it.

This isn’t the first time I’ve eaten Impossible Burger itself; I first tried it when Poquitos had it in taco form, back when it was still a brand-new “coming soon” thing that was only available to restaurants. Back then I felt like the flavor was really good (although being in tacos it was so heavily-spiced that it’s more that it didn’t have a flavor that overpowered the cumin and chili and so on), and I felt like the mouthfeel was a bit mushy.

oh god i’m old

Werner doesn’t seem to have a lot of time left.

There’s still a lot of MSG discourse happening in certain pockets of the Internet; right now it’s mostly on food YouTube, where folks are primarily saying that people who claim an MSG sensitivity are racist and/or relying on bad pseudoscience. And, as usual, using the same two strawmen of

1. Lots of foods have glutamate in it
2. Did you know that American junk food has MSG in it too?

For 1, yes, lots of foods have glutamate in it, but not bound to sodium.

For 2, yes, that’s why it was eating junk food in college (Doritos and the chili-flavored Fritos, specifically) that led me to realize what was causing my near-daily sensory overload migraines.

Anyway, recently I bought some “country style” bulk sausage at a local butcher which ended up having MSG in it, and rather than throw it out or try to return it, I figured I’d use it to perform an (admittedly extremely unscientific) experiment. Namely, a couple days ago I fried up a small amount and ate it, and while I felt a bit of the classic MSG effects it seemed like it might have been psychosomatic. So today I made a full patty of it and ate it for breakfast… and holy hell that was a bad time. I’m still recovering from it a couple hours later.

So, yeah, I’m still pretty sure MSG causes me problems, and I’m still gonna keep avoiding it.