firehose

RT

Argentinian prosecutor drafted arrest warrant for president before he died RT A draft warrant for the arrest of Argentinian President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has been found at the apartment of Alberto Nisman, the prosecutor found dead one day before testifying against Kirchner's alleged role in covering up a deadly bombing. and more »

The latest Michelin guide to the best restaurants in France comes out on Friday (Feb. 6), but the results were announced earlier this week: there are now 26 three-star, 80 two-star and more than 500 one-star restaurants in the country.

As always, this time around there are chefs who have lost their Michelin stars, which hold a special place in haute cuisine, especially in Europe. Some take the demotion in their stride; some, like Gordon Ramsay, burst into tears when they find out; and others even hand stars back, saying the accolade is more trouble than it’s worth.

But for many chefs in France, where the Michelin guide has been rating the quality of restaurants since 1900, losing your stars is a crushing blow. Le Monde critic François Simon, who compares the “secret” decision-making of Michelin inspectors to the inscrutability of the Chinese Communist Party (link in French), expressed his sympathy to those who were demoted this time around. “It is hard to imagine what that means in this environment,” he said. “It’s like losing face. It’s terrible.”

This year, La Côte Saint Jacques in Burgundy went from three stars to two. The owner, Jean-Michel Lorain, wrote a letter on his restaurant’s website (link in French) lamenting the loss, noting that the inspectors only complained that the seasoning was a bit off on some of the dishes. “Well, it seems that these few grains of salt will be enough to change our ranking!” He went on:

I am, of course, sorry personally, but also for my family, my daughters, my parents, who will be very disappointed, and for my team who work so hard around me with such passion and desire… What do we do now? Certainly not start to get depressed and give up. On the contrary! We will continue to move forward, create new dishes with even more desire and passion. We will still surprise and delight your taste buds.

The pain and soul-searching evident in Lorain’s open letter is not unusual. One chef in Nice who lost his Michelin star last year thought it was because he decided to add insects to the menu. “People have said to me that it doesn’t fit in with the criteria of the guide and of French gastronomy,” David Faure said.

The most shocking reaction to the loss of Michelin stars was Bernard Loiseau, who committed suicide in 2003 after a French newspaper reported that he was on the verge of losing his third star—which sadly turned out not be the case. Business at Loiseau’s restaurant went up by 60% after he won his third star in 1991. That third star, which came 14 years after he won his first, gave him the fame to get his company listed on the stock exchange, which allowed him to pay off the debts he accumulated by opening his own restaurant in Burgundy.

The loss of a star can see takings drop by as much as 25%, according to The New Yorker. In France, food really can be a matter of life and death.

U.S. News & World Report

US to destroy its largest remaining chemical weapons cache Washington Post PUEBLO, Colo. — The United States is about to begin destroying its largest remaining stockpile of chemical-laden artillery shells, marking a milestone in the global campaign to eradicate a debilitating weapon that still creeps into modern wars. The Pueblo ... US set to begin destroying its largest remaining cache of chemical weapons at ...680 News all 62 news articles »

State officials: Pa. lagging in measles shots amid national outbreak Tribune-Review With a measles outbreak affecting more than 100 people in 14 states, Pennsylvania health officials worry that children statewide are not getting their measles vaccines on time. About 95 percent of American kindergarten kids had the recommended two doses ... and more »

There are two Danny Meyers. There is the ground-breaking restaurateur who opened Union Square Cafe, a restaurant that held the title of New York’s favorite for the better part of a decade, in his early 20s. And then there is the founder of Shake Shack whose fast food empire doubled in value when the IPO launched late last week. Meyer, already a wealthy man from his many successful fine dining restaurants, holds a 21% stake in Shake Shack that is now worth roughly $330 million.

The path from elite restaurant to premium fast food was laid over 20 years as Meyer expanded from Union Square, up Park Avenue and then over to Madison Square, the site of the hot dog cart that became the first Shake Shack. Along the way, Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group started Gramercy Tavern, one of New York’s first farm-to-table restaurants that used the volume and purchasing power of the restaurant in back to develop a tavern up front where small dishes were served to diners looking for a more casual, affordable version of the farm-to-table experience.

The success of Shake Shack’s IPO, the acceleration of Chipotle’s sales, and the growing number of imitators in the fine casual category who understand that customers equate sustainable agriculture with better taste is putting more and more pressure on the American food chain to harness small-scale farming.

Ground-breaking restaurants can be crucibles where converts are made on both sides of the swinging door. Gramercy Tavern taught Danny Meyer that his service-centered approach to fine dining could be scaled toward no less a fast food staple than the burger. Others have also learned the lesson of scale and looked toward making the same declension in other parts of the food chain.

Behind the Counter

What Danny Meyer was to farm-to-table restaurants in New York City, Josh Applestone was to grass-fed, organic, pasture-raised butchers. Trained in the first wave of restaurants that put ingredients before process, Appleton eventually found his way to becoming a butcher through his experience breaking down animal carcasses in the kitchen. A vocal, visible and entertaining figure—he had a starring role in Julie Powell’s memoir, Cleaving, that followed up her Julie & Julia book and movie hits—Applestone became the face of the artisanal meat movement when he opened in 2004 his Hudson Valley-to-Brooklyn butcher shop, Fleisher’s. 

Applestone also initiated a host of hipster butchers into the mysteries of his craft, housing them in an Airstream trailer on his property, before leaving Fleisher’s last year to focus on his own sustainable second act, The Applestone Meat Company.

These apprentices went on to found similar joints to Fleisher’s where the food has a long backstory and a short shelf life. Many of Applestone’s graduates chose to open outposts in hipster enclaves in smaller cities around the country.

It turns out the challenge facing the meat business doesn’t come from the consumer side. Americans like meat. They didn’t need a primal food craze to convince them of that. But in places where the animals don’t come with a provenance, the butchery trade doesn’t attract new entrants because the labor economics just plain suck.

In Minnesota, where there are 280 indy meat processors, a skilled butcher makes $23-an-hour, but the supermarkets and national chain retailers only pay $8-an-hour. Not surprisingly, those wages don’t attract many ordinary young folks to want to pick up an knife and learn this highly technical (and dangerous) skill

In Minnesota, husbandry still attracts many small producers. The USDA says the land of 10,000 lakes has 4,000 farms raising and slaughtering fewer than 10 cows a year. Those 4,000 farmers from Duluth, Fargo, St. Cloud and Wisconsin, go to a guy like Whitman Baird, a rare 34-year-old in the butchery business in Minnesota who makes most of his money servicing these small farmers and, one whole month out of the year, breaking down deer for the Cabela’s set:

“Most of our business is custom cutting,” he said. “A farmer raises three beef; they put one in the freezer, give each a half to their kids for Christmas; the neighbors buy one.”

And that business is booming. “Especially in the fall time,” he said. “Everyone wants to fill the freezer.”

The alternative meat industry needs better infrastructure. Even in the heart of the craft food industry, the Bay area, small producers are not plugged into an effective distribution network. There are broken links in several places. 

Restaurants and butcher shops take animal carcasses whole, in halves or quartered. But, as the food site civil eats pointed out two years ago, 

“As of February 2013, there is not a single meat processing facility in the Bay Area that will deliver a whole, half or quarter beef carcass to a restaurant or butcher shop. Ranchers aren’t really equipped to make the deliveries themselves. One needs a refrigerated box truck with a meat rail inside of it – something that very, very few ranchers have.  Same for restaurants and butcher shops – most chefs and butchers are not in the business of going out and picking up the products they purchase, particularly large bulky items that need to be kept cool at all times.”

Reforging these broken links in an economically viable, even attractive, way is the focus of a number of these second-act butchers. The New Yorker recently profiled Anya Fernald of Belcampo a $50-million, venture-backed, vertically-integrated, farm-to-table, sustainable meat company in California. Belcampo is built on a very California lifestyle appeal driven by  the Paleo diet and its exercise-cult adherents who are part of the Crossfit craze.

One reason that Belcampo is vertically integrated is to counter agribusiness which has been too successful in the US. Fernald’s vision is to create a company that can control every aspect from pasteur to plate to capture every dollar of margin in what amounts to a high-end business for lifestyle consumers:  

Belcampo, which has its offices in Oakland, California, and its core landholdings near Mt. Shasta, owns a farm, a slaughterhouse, restaurants, and butcher shops, and grows most of its own feed. “Tyson figured out that vertical integration is the key to profitability,” Fernald says. “That’s the same thing we’re figuring out.” Tyson, the apogee of the industrial meat system, was founded during the Great Depression and succeeded in making meat plentiful, cheap, and commonplace. Belcampo, born in the teeth of a historic drought that is devastating California agriculture, in a country flooded with three-dollar-a-pound skinless, boneless chicken breasts, wants to restore meat to its status as a luxury: delicious, expensive, and rare.

Back East in Connecticut’s Tesla towns, Ryan Fibiger is perfecting his own formula for his Craft Butchery in Westport, CT. “I came into this with a finance background but quickly became passionate about butchery,” says Fibiger. “I discovered that this is an incredibly complicated business. To do it right has taken us almost four years to figure out just what the actual business model is.”

Fibiger trained at Fleisher’s and first opened a new-look butcher shop in a town where higher price points tend to attract the customers rather than drive them away. Understanding that he was as much in the education business as he was a purveyor of meats, Craft Butchery eventually opened a cafe next to the shop to feature prepared foods and let his potential customers experience their better meat before buying their own cuts and bringing it home.

The danger in an upscale town where homes have $100,000 kitchens that mostly hold take-out containers and prepared foods is that the restaurant business—where the margins are higher—will overwhelm the butcher shop. Fibiger is on guard against losing his focus. At Craft, he says, they lead with their core product, the meat.

“You look at the menu,” Fibiger says, “and you can see that there’s a conscious effort being made to use what’s not selling in the meat case. If we were to conclude that we could make more money selling a ribeye through the cafe than through the meat case, that would be an internal problem. But we never sell items like that through the cafe. That’s the way we differentiated it so you’re not robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

Integrating small-scale producers with the large market that craves their products turns out to be a terribly complicated business. Fleisher’s success—and the many other craft butchers around the country—is encouraging more to engage in animal husbandry as an avocation or a hobby. But the meat produced doesn’t have to be ostentatiously expensive. In fact, it can’t be if someone like Fibiger hopes to create a business of meaningful, not local, size. 

Nose to Tail to Truck

To do that a middleman like Fibiger has to crack the nut of logistics. “We absolutely need to gain control over our supply chain,” he says, “to gain operational efficiencies and economies of scale to make our unique product accessible to a wider group of customers and demographics. The catch 22 is that the process of bringing local, humanely raised meat to market is expensive and requires some scale in order to control the costs.”

To get to that size, Fibiger has merged his business with Fleisher’s, gaining two stores and a Red Hook processing facility. He’s also signed on a location in another Connecticut town, this time Greenwich. The new chain of four locations will be Fleisher’s Craft Butchery and now all Fibiger has to do is bring both ends back toward the middle.

Like Danny Meyer, Fibiger is looking to grow without getting overwhelmed by success or become just another food chain. Demand for Fibiger’s meat is a double-edged sword. “Other than the obvious affirmation that there is a sizable market for our product,” he says, “there are some negative impacts that we’re witnessing.  Namely, the more mainstream something becomes, the more confusion there is about who the experts are, who is authentic and who is just on the bandwagon.”

In other words, it’s not enough to be a hipster butcher anymore. The industry has to grown up. You have to create a broader footprint, build efficient logistics beneath it and provide the air cover of a strong reputation. “One of the reasons Craft sought out a merger with Fleisher’s,” Fibiger explains, “was because we saw a our niche marketplace starting to cut corners and emulate the efficiencies of big agriculture. That’s not what we want our niche to represent and we think it actually serves to dull the differentiation that we’ve spent years creating.  At a relatively young ten years old, Fleisher’s has led the charge in our niche market and still represents the standard.”

journovampire sends this report: New record company figures out of France suggest that artists are being paid just 68 cents from every €9.99 monthly music streaming subscription – as major labels keep hold of 73% of payouts from the likes of Spotify. They’re followed by writers/publishers with a 16% share, and then artists – mostly paid by their labels – who get 11%.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

.bashrc generator:

Generate your .bashrc PS1 prompt easily with a drag and drop interface

What It's Like to Run Your Own Brewery [Link] I think there are some nice parallels between between opening a brewery and developing an app. There are clearly large differences. Brewers have infrastructure costs in the $100,000 range and working in a coffee shop will get you arrested. But this, from Andrew Nations, really caught my attention as a parallel between the two: "Most breweries are struggling with staying relevant. A new brewery is opening every single day in America. Consumers have so many different options." There's plenty of similarities, like the unexpected market forces, long days, and tons of responsibility but there are also a lot of uniquely different "thrills." I think app development feels much more like being a professional gambler these days. An expert can make a good living but they are likely just a few bad moves away from disaster. I'm reminded of this 2013 article about brewing (since deleted from Boston.com and preserved by archive.org): Mostly a brewer is someone who spends 40-50 hours a week in a loud, ass-hot factory pushing around liquid.

literaryreference:

emir-dynamite:

Highlights from Bostinno’s MBTA tweet roundup.

My train home from work usually gets in at 5:45 and today it got in at 6:35, and then the subways were also fucked and I was super late to rehearsal.

It’s really sad how unequipped the MBTA is to deal with snow. I mean, it’s not like this is Washington DC or whatever; snow is a thing that happens here. But I guess they’re underfunded and there’s not much they can do.

oddkittenart:

princessjanecrocker:

fuckdemonsgetmoney:

fishwrites:

nattosoup:

tmirai:

pinkcookiedoedoodles:

Things that have actually happened to me.gif

Think about this the next time you even dare suggest an artist lower their prices.

Me when people at cons say $5 sketches are ‘too expensive’ or are upset that I now charge $10 for full figures.

Honestly I have never seen a tumblr artists’ commission prices and thought “too expensive.” I understand it’s a fan community, but when the average retoucher charges 100$/hour and artists are charging like, 20$ max for like a FULL COLOURED THING PERSON THING??? i’m like WHAT??? I CAN”T EVEN FUCKING DRAW A BLOB that would take me 500 years why is it 20$ and i just sit there being like. so. what if i bought 20. or whatever.

the point is I think tumblr should look at creative services and what they charge. I shot casual grad photos as a favour for someone and it was 70$/30 minutes. FANDOM ARTISTS ARE GIVING IT TO YOU EASY LSKDJFLSDKJ give them your money as fast as you can i don’t think this is sustainable nad you should get it while stocks la

please remember that tipping someone when you commission them is absolutely something you can do! artists have to set their prices to what the market average is on this site (which is woefully low) so tipping an extra £5 or £10 can really help. consider it next time you commission someone.

If anything I wish I had more money so I could make it rain on them.

I usually don’t reblog stuff here but this is too real.

omg wire no

bowtiemoustache:

Guy Fieri Eating in Slow Motion to “Killing Me Softly”

zzthebean:

kaithulu:

gulreth:

I got a new phone and recorded a video of my bird.

is your bird a villager?

I want bird.

treesofarden

obsessedwithskulls:

An Evil Dead Necronom-nom-nom-icon cake :P

cake can do anything

ionatain:

toxicmp3:

i’ve been screaming at this all day

what bjork song is this

spaceexp:

One of the many large caves found on Mars

via reddit

A 20-meter-deep collapsed lava tube on Pavonis Mons (Peacock Mountain).

Source: NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter via Wikipedia, HiRISE/University of Arizona

This is a cropped version of a HiRISE image of a lava tube skylight on the martian volcano Pavonis Mons. The original caption for the photo on the HiRISE web site is as follows: Earlier this year, the CTX camera team saw a crater containing a dark spot on the dusty slopes of the Pavonis Mons volcano. We took a closer look at this feature with HiRISE and found this unusual geologic feature. The dark spot turned out to be a “skylight,” an opening to an underground cavern, that is 35 meters (115 feet) across. Caves often form in volcanic regions like this when lava flows solidify on top, but keep flowing underneath their solid crust. These, now underground, rivers of lava can then drain away leaving the tube they flowed through empty. We can use the shadow cast on the floor of the pit to calculate that it is about 20 meters (65 feet) deep. The origin of the larger hole that this pit is within is still obscure. You can see areas where material on the walls has slid into the pit. How much of the missing material has disappeared via the pit into the underground cavern? Later this year, HiRISE will acquire a second image to create a stereo pair. Seeing this feature in stereo will help us unravel the mystery of its formation. Written by: Shane Byrne (17 August 2011)

aerofish:

Oh god yes.

Have you heard about Yuko Ota’s new design? Seeing is believing! Add these eye-catching Shoujo Life earrings to any outfit for a fun look! The 2-inch double layered acrylic charms dangle from stainless steel french hooks.

Huffington Post

This Republican Senator Is Fighting For Your Freedom Not To Wash Your Hands ... Huffington Post While many GOP lawmakers were busy deciding whether they think parents should vaccinate their children in the midst of a freak measles outbreak, freshman Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) has concerned himself with another case of freedom-inhibiting overreach ... Where some see dirty hands, others see libertyWashington Post all 146 news articles »

RoccamOccam writes with the following news from The Register: Internet giants Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Taboola have reportedly paid AdBlock Plus to allow their ads to pass through its filter software. The confidential deals were confirmed by the Financial Times, the paper reported today [Paywalled]. From the Register's article: Eyeo GmbH, the German startup behind Adblock Plus, said it did not wish to comment. So far more than 300 million users have downloaded its software, it said. The add-on is free to download, with Eyeo generating revenue through its "whitelisting" programme. Companies can request their ads to be unblocked as long as they comply with AdBlock's "acceptable ads" policy. Large companies pay a fee for the service.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

submitted by BuntinTosser [link] [38 comments]

It's unfathomable.

This is it. This is where the Toronto Maple Leafs' season hit rock bottom. You know the hockey gods have turned on your team when Carter Hutton makes the most unbelievable save anyone has seen in years on you.

Pack it up. Go home. This is your save of the year.

cupcakes-for-breakfast:

Spiced Affogato | be RAVENOUS

OH HAI

DAME!

Dame freaking Lillard! https://t.co/yIUEzLh2dJ

— Trail Blazers (@trailblazers) February 4, 2015

Damian Lillard appears to still be letting out anger over not making the All-Star team. Rudy Gobert and the rim were the latest to feel the wrath.

Email: “Hey, Chuck, what do you think about meninists?”

Chuck: “They seem nice enough.”

Email: “What?!”

Chuck: “They’re always polite. Never say a nasty word to anybody. They’re not as hardcore as the Amish? Like, I think they can drive cars and use technology. But like the Amish, they build great sheds –“

Email: “Do you mean Mennonites?”

Chuck “…”

Email: “You mean Mennonites.”

Chuck: *clears throat* “I probably mean Mennonites. Yes. Yeah. Wait. So What are you talking about?”

Email: “Well, there’s this group out there of men –“

Chuck: “Oh, that’s never good.”

Email: “– and mostly it seems like a grab-bag of your MRA types who want to make fun of feminism and just generally be dicks to women –“

Chuck: “Somebody out there is already going to bring up that ‘dick’ is a gendered insult and it is hurtful to men.”

Email: “Probably.”

Chuck: “Then again, maybe men should just toughen the fuck up about it and if they didn’t want dick to be an insult, maybe they should stop trying to thrust themselves — literally and figuratively — into subjects and situations that have nothing to do with them and want no part of them. Anyway. Continue.”

Email: “That’s pretty much it. They kinda did exactly that — the ‘thrusting themselves into’ thing — with this #LikeAGirl meme campaign based on an Always ad that ran during the Super Bowl. The goal of the ad being to change the connotation around that phrase — Like a girl — and spin it into something positive.”

Chuck: “That sounds nice. I’m assuming these meninists shit-shellacked it all up. Like a pair of toddler underoos spackled with mess.”

Email: “Yeah, no, pretty much. They had their own hashtag — #LikeABoy — and also a lot of jerky lackwits trolled the #LikeAGirl hashtag and, as they are wont to do, were poopy butts about it to women.”

Chuck: “So, you want to know my thoughts.”

Email: “I guess? Like, there’s a subset of meninists who claim to be feminist, and that’s just ‘their word’ for being a male feminist, but for the most part, it seems to have been co-opted by a loud and noisy group that hates feminism or thinks it has somehow been victimized by feminism.”

Chuck: “Men who think they’ve been victimized by feminism are like burglars who sue the homeowners they were burgling because they stubbed their toe on a fucking coffee table. Listen, you probably already know my thoughts on this. Meninism is not a thing. It’s just some shitty meme by troll dudes who feel somehow spurned, or who smell the shift in power coming and like fish dying on a beach after the water has receded, are flopping about and gasping for air. As I’ve noted before, any disparities or issues that primarily affect men are real and need to be dealt with, but these aren’t the groups dealing with them. These are the groups responsible for their own misery. A lot of men’s rights are actually also women’s rights, and the toxic dudebro testosterone culture harms itself more than any woman or group of women ever could. Men who are feminists are just feminists. They’re not ‘equalists‘ or ‘egalitarians.’ They’re certainly not meninists, which is, again, not a thing. It’s just gulls squawking. Mammals shrieking because they don’t have thumbs and can’t pick up that stick to scratch their itchy backs. It’s all very silly. If you’re going to do anything with meninists: ignore them, or openly mock them. Do not give them the podium, though, because anybody who identifies as that is not interested in having a proper goddamn discussion. Taser them and keep walking.”

Email: “Fair enough.”

Chuck: “If anybody’s going to be upset about any commercials from the Super Bowl, try being mad at Nationwide for that dead kid commercial. HEY, YOU SURE GOT A NICE KID THERE, Nationwide said. I SURE HOPE NOTHING HAPPENS TO IT. As they slide an insurance policy across the table.