Well yeah, but you can get cheap fish for less than the wasabi. I meant more like, if you’re gonna spend some money on higher quality ingredients, may as well spend $8 for wasabi.

Most of the seasoning for sushi can be had for cheap and would still taste good, thankfully. Wasabi is more an undertone anyway

Yep. I’m a little too deep into sushi and it’s pretty funny that people will gatekeep ingredients.

The ingredients that Edomae chefs now use are extremely traditional. Essentially every single one was for food safety, not taste. Vinegar, wasabi, and sake in nikiri are all meant to prevent food-borne illness. The red rice vinegar used at high end restaurants was originally used because it was cheap. Fish is obviously readily available. Edomae chefs now use them because they prefer the taste— which I’ll agree with, I make it the same way— not because it’s sacrilege not to. Every one of the top chefs can tell you the history of sushi as a stall food meant to be accessible.

Even crotchety Jiro, who might chastise you for using soy sauce, deviates from tradition by using exclusively white vinegar and adding sugar. Yet the same gatekeepers love that guy (until you reach the super gatekeepers who are too cool for him because he got famous).

Sushi superiority is truly insane to me. I wonder if some assholes back then looked down on the “peasants” for trying to extend the shelf life of their food.

Sorry this comment is so long, I’m way too deep into this. It’s funny, two chefs I know are top five in Japan (thus, some would say, the world), respected beyond belief, and on my first visits they stayed well after close to talk to the dumb foreigner who wanted to improve his at home sushi. One doesn’t speak English and has one of his apprentices translate between us. I guess when you get far enough into sushi, you feel the need to ramble about it.

Yeah that’s exactly the price of mine too! A lot of people talk about how expensive it is, but it’s definitely cheaper than high quality fish which can cost as much or per pound, and you need a lot more than just a small rhizome.

Real wasabi paste sounds like a poor value, wasabi doesn’t age too gracefully when grated and you’d presumably pay a markup for the packaging and grating

For those who live in areas with good Japanese grocery stores, I highly recommend looking for some rhizomes and grating it at home. Super easy, less than $10 for several servings, and lasts a couple weeks. If anyone is interested but doesn’t wanna Google it, feel free to reply or DM me and I can send my grater/process.

There are a lot of foods that aren’t quite as good out of their home country, but American grown wasabi is excellent. I’ve had someone tried to gatekeep me but like, I coincidentally am very into sushi and am reasonably friendly with a couple ***/Tabelog gold sushi chefs that I visit when in town, some of the best in the world with access to the highest quality ingredients. I’m not eating the wasabi directly but I can’t tell a difference between theirs and the American one from half moon bay. It’s definitely worth trying if it’s available in your area, you aren’t missing anything by doing it yourself and it takes minutes.

An active box office community. I don’t really watch movies but I enjoy the data and the discussions about why movies are performing that way. @ClarkZuckerberg@lemmy.world tried to singlehandedly keep it afloat for some time, but it didn’t work unfortunately.

I imagine it’s like sports statistics but with a lower barrier of entry, and sometimes you watch a film franchise you enjoyed die in real time.

where the prequels are an elaborate ad to sell more Starwars toys

This is clearly not true, Lucas cared a lot about his story and universe. I say this hoping it helps effectively communicate points later: statements like that detract from your premise because they’re obviously false to an audience that knows and cares. It would be better (from a rhetorical standing) to double down on the poor storytelling allegations by acknowledging it as true instead, then going on to say that they were cinematic incoherence regardless.

I haven’t seen a single one of the prequels in over a decade except RotS (which I thought was an interesting story but a poorly made film), but my dislike of the prequels is because they’re not good movies. My dislike of the sequels is that they were not good and were made to maximize profits.

THe orginals do hold up, because Starwars was about classic adventure story. The character of Luke Skywalker… It’s the sort of timless story, just with a spin on it beeing a sci-fi world… The prequels and sequels completley missed that aspect of basic stoytelling.

This is where I completely disagree. Movies should not be aiming to do only the classic adventure story over and over again, and the prequels weren’t bad because of the story. They actually had a pretty classic story too: an evil being corrupts a well-meaning but slow-to-react institution filled with self serving or incompetent representatives by manufacturing conflict to seize power. All the while the forces of good are distracted and unfocused by the chaos— and too sure that their institutions will not bend to tyranny— until it is too late. With a solid director, the prequels could have been excellent, and also perhaps a prophetic warning about complacent democracies.

Even knowing extra verses of the song rather debunks it. The og version on Various Positions only includes a few, and isn’t about it either, but it seems all the verses are “canon” because he uses them at random. Well, it may not be at random, but I haven’t looked into why if not.

Yeah same. I first remember hearing it when Apple was planning that amazingly invasive local scanning of user images. Now it seems to be everywhere.

I’m not against it though. CP could’ve described multiple things and this one is a lot less mistakable when you know. CP wasn’t particularly intuitive either— no easier to decipher, merely that with years of use many people knew it— so it’s an upgrade overall I think.

Another benefit is that it includes “abuse” in the name. That’s important and ensures the people who seek that stuff out won’t borrow the term like they did CP.

Sorry for late response! I think it’s mostly commonly noticeable as a finishing salt but it’s a pretty good salt in general.

So! I’m not an expert and here’s just my thinking. Salts have different flavors and the worldwide distribution of Maldon makes it easy to reach for when you need a flavoring salt for cooking. It has good flavor and will always suffice as a sea salt in recipes.

I have a lot of recipes I personally got from chefs. Super easy, you need only ask and they’re always willing to share the exact recipe. But unless they’re real specific, you get ingredients and not the exact brand of salt. And because it’s basically impossible to track down which [potentially local] salt they use, you’ll have to use what’s on hand and hope for the best— and that’s unlikely to go wrong with Maldon or diamond crystal.

They’re the standards for a reason, and I’m pretty that reason is consistency and availability. I’ve seen online that people will use a random granulated salt and it will either be too salty or taste off. I’ve also had chefs specifically note that they use Maldon for said recipe, so it’s a safe bet. Even when I know they used some difficult to acquire local salt, Maldon is good enough.

Yeah, I monologue sometimes, it’s my habit with forums. I’m glad you liked it, I often worry it’ll be more annoying to read than useful or enjoyable

Interesting, I’ll see if I can find Arabian Sea salt here. Sometimes I think I can tell the difference between regional sea salts but it might also just be placebo. The Himalayan one too because it’s pink.

I’m pretty sure color why they use the Hawaiian black salt but it does taste different. I’m quite fond of it. Looks like ours are similar in that they (probably?) derive their color from charcoal. Wikipedia says Indian black salt has a sulfurous taste and smell— that’s definitely new to me and explains the egg flavor. Sulfur isn’t hugely loved here but some traditionally “unwanted” flavors can make for great dishes, and some people online indicated they like it for acidic or Indian foods. Can’t lie, this is extremely interesting, I hope a store nearby has some. If not I’ll order online.

This will probably be the neatest thing I learn about today. Damn I love salt, now I do want to get into recreational salt tasting

Potentially unpopular but I don’t think it matters for pasta water.

I’m not that deep into salts but I keep a few on hand. The standard diamond crystal/maldon for cooking, as well as an unrefined sea salt for the same purpose. The standards are standard for a reason and they’re more than enough for my non-chef preferences, these and a random sea salt for the grinder are what I use 90% of the time.

I like fleur de sel or flor de sal for finishing, though I can’t tell the difference between the two (I believe it is region, but my palate is far from capable of differentiating much). I have a sel gris that came with a salt set that is meant to be used as a finisher, but fleur de sel is more popular and thus easier to restock. I use black Hawaiian salt as a finisher for Hawaiian dishes. The black salt, unrefined, and fleur de sel are good for eating the salt alone which is a guilty pleasure.

I’m actually pretty surprised to hear that some prefer saltier salt. The chefs I have asked like lower sodium and higher mineral contents because they have more flavor. That said both tabelog gold/*** sushi chefs I’ve asked heat the salt to remove moisture, which then increases saltiness by volume, so I guess I’m not that surprised. I do this for sushi rice for authenticity but like I said, my palate is solidly mid and I can’t tell.

What do you like those salts for? I’m not really a salt enthusiast and just use what has been suggested by the chefs I like. Don’t think I’ve heard of Arabian Sea salt and I’ve never used Himalayan myself, but I’m very much interested!

I’ve used this for years but I have a pretty high rate of asymmetry. It’s still a lot quicker to just quickly fix that than do it the way I was taught so I keep doing it.

Maybe I should practice doing it symmetrically instead of assuming I will always lopside it though

I’m not cool like everyone else here who got bargains or things that went up in value but for things that are more expensive than they seem to rational people, I have $6k headphones and up to $9k pens. Got them for a little under msrp (for the headphones, the cost of the pens went up).

Rational people don’t generally expect the prices of things like that to get so high, but they actually get a lot higher, I’m also not cool like the people who have those. There’s likely other things like this I can’t think of rn, but pens and headphones easily get the biggest “what’s wrong with you?” probably because they’re handheld non-jewelry

Seething with jealousy I am. I love the HP 33s but it’s currently priced more than I’d like. I don’t know if I’d actually use it, not a ton to use it on anymore, but wish I had one nonetheless.

Well shit, thanks. I used to do this (being long comments) on Reddit but long comments naturally filter out some readers. Which I get, cause sometimes I’m not looking to read a whole thing too, so it never offended me.

People on Lemmy seem to have longer attention spans though, shouldn’t be too surprised. This site has me returning to older habits of thinking through comments and spending almost 20 minutes typing haha, back on the other site I just stopped commenting in the years before the API changes since I’ve never been the type for quippy one liners. So yeah weirdly thanks, odd how it kind of feels nice to have these read again. I obv can’t text monologue irl (cause it’s not text) and I’m one for brevity with text messages

Not really. You’re making an allegation with no evidence, then incorrectly comparing it to you proving something you yourself may have done. That wouldn’t work if you were merely claiming someone else ate a sandwich, much less something like this.

An exercise— some taxi company made the app with publicly available software. A lot of Lemmy users seem to be developers and know how the notification system works for iOS. Is it then:

• Apple tracks all sentences typed and lets every single app know when something related to its purpose is typed so a notification can be served? And every single app developer in existence has hidden this knowledge?

• Apple tracks all sentences typed and lets specific apps know when something related to its purpose is typed? Why would they give this data to a taxi company and not larger companies that drive more profit? If they did give it to taxi companies and up, how do they prevent whistleblowers? Privacy intrusion on this level would be massive. People will leak military secrets to prove a point in video games, but not this?

• Apple tracks all sentences typed and only lets this taxi company know when “I need a taxi” is typed? This would be safest because it reduces the chance of a leak. And yet also tremendously risky to give this data to a taxi company, which probably isn’t overly secure, when this information leaking would cost them shareholder-angering amounts of money and poor press.

This conspiracy is moon-landing-is-fake levels of implausible. It would require airtight security and a level of secret keeping that humans are simply not capable of. No disgruntled employee of any company would have leaked this? Apple would risk meteoric reputation damage to slightly drive in app purchases that they’d then get a 30% cut of? Be serious.

I hate defending any corporation but the flat earth level conspiracies I see upvoted on Lemmy— with zero proof, or even waving away the thought of proof!— would be laughed at anywhere else. These takes also delegitimize real criticism because there may yet be something relatively implausible that they are doing, and noise like this muddies the water. Why not discuss the actual unethical things Apple does, of which there are many, instead of making stuff up?

Edit: oops, you did not make the allegation, merely defended it. I’d split this up into two separate criticisms for maximum effectiveness (the other one for the confidently-said zero-proof conspiracy, and this one for the implication that evidence for conspiracies is unnecessary) but no one’s gonna read it anyway so whatever.

I am somewhat disappointed, but I hope these are growing pains and that the community will improve. I don’t think Internet toxicity like I see is sustainable— who would want to only have interactions like that? It’s exhausting to read, participating must feel like a chore of unbelievable pointlessness. I can see a better Lemmy on the horizon where they get it out of their system, so to speak.

Commenters learning how to argue would go a long way. I took years of debate and honestly feel like one semester should be a requirement. There are respectful and effective ways to argue, but Lemmy users are more prone to unconvincing attempts to bulldoze. On Reddit that led to being buried, with quality arguments on the same topic getting upvotes. Here, the quality arguments are rarer so you only see the bad faith ones.

Still, I’m not giving up on Lemmy. I truly believe it can improve. But I can also see it driving away new users, or turning into an extremist platform like Voat. Now Lemmy is nowhere near the cesspool that Voat was so I’m optimistic.

That’s actually pretty much the issue I have with the discussion here, I hadn’t really seen it put to words. I’ve read what should have been respectful disagreements turned into what I feel are autopilot arguments with name calling peppered in. It often feels like people are waiting to get a response so they can go in, but they don’t always read the response first. I assume it’s for the benefit of the “audience,” but it frequently strawmans them too, as you noted. Compared to a point-counterpoint setup which is more interesting and actually has a chance of convincing someone, the oddly common Lemmy discourse feels kind of pointless. Like, who is it for?

When I first came here, I believed the talk about how the discussions were high quality so I said more. I don’t think I ever ran into the people who churn out dissatisfying arguments but I also only very rarely got good talks. That combined with the bottom-tier fights that happen with controversial subjects? I see why most people only lurk.

On the subject of controversy though, my current guess is that most people here are so similar that any deviation on strong subjects leads to a need to crush opposition as fiercely as possible. I sometimes feel it happening to me, which is the clearest sign that I need to step back and reevaluate to make sure I’m not falling into the same vice. It’s also part of why I don’t engage in controversial discussion— there’s no real point, and I’m here to have a good time not fight people.

I use it for quick reading material while doing other stuff and to monologue. I’m a spectator that likes to give my lengthy opinions unprompted, but otherwise open comments purely for reading material. This colors my thoughts hugely.

I like that it’s not Reddit. Didn’t like that company. I have found Lemmy users to be a lot more willing to stand up against corporations and boycott acceptable products due to ethics— something very lacking in society now and a massive contributor to the disrespect companies treat consumers with. For enjoyers of certain niches, it has good content and good people. For me, the community is a much needed reprieve from a world that feels increasingly consumerist and accepting of evil.

I don’t think the discussions are very high quality. They don’t contain as much useful information or corrections as Reddit, which due to user count had more relative experts. Misinformation is nearly as bad here but less insidious because Reddit misinformation was sneakier, but it’s more obnoxious so it elicits more confusion than annoyance like it did on Reddit (which is better, to be fair). Comment sections feel repetitive due to lack of unique ideas or analysis, and they usually will not delve further than knee jerk reactions to parent commenter knee jerk reactions. So much so that I strongly believe that, if Lemmy was fed into an LLM, 95% of comment sections could be more efficiently created by bots. It’s a lot less civil than most of the new internet, vitriol and bad faith arguments that never acknowledge the other commenter’s statements are common. Lemmy is wildly tribalistic with little room for disagreements, even minor. This makes for poor reading material.

So it does remind me of the older Internet, before the forced civility and mainstream use that leads to deeper discussions. I sound critical but a lot of this is nostalgic, and I like it. While I’d love for Lemmy to improve, these flaws are familiar and some part of me is glad to see them again. Reddit was kind of feeling stale and sterile by the time I left, and I expect it’s significantly worse now (and quite possibly actually mostly bots). And the benefits, primarily the anti-consumerism, is refreshing.

Honestly speaking, I wouldn’t say Lemmy is good and I could never suggest it to “normal” people. But I like it, and it makes for solid quick reading material, which alone offsets the negatives.

Oh, and the questionable quality discussions here make it easier to stop reading comments and reconnect with real life. This past week I found myself actively watching the waves on a beach. Back on Reddit I used years worth of beautiful places as a backdrop for what felt like more interesting information on the app, and sometimes came off as an ass for doing so. I would never return to Reddit for that alone, and I think it’s part of why I’m okay with Lemmy staying this way.