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Ten months ago, I presented a fairly fascinating and esoteric reel of tape, recorded by a retired mailman. I speculated at his name, based on what he said, but had no definitive answer to that, as there was nothing written on the tape or box.

Last weekend, though, while rearranging some of my thousands of un-listened to tapes, I came across one which had the name "Bob Hopp" on it, as well as some extraneous information (above). Sure enough, it contained another in what may be a series of audio diaries (I did not find any others yet).

In this case, the tape dates from December, 1975 through May, 1977, and the contents are more varied than the first, giving a better picture of this Aurora man's life.

As to those variations: For one thing, there are multiple moments, during the holiday sections of the tape, where he is joined by his grandchildren, and he seems to enjoy them mightily. There are also some religious thoughts, points of view on life, and, near the beginning, some music recorded off the radio (All in the first portion of the tape).

I think I would have liked to have met Bob Hopp.

Download: Bob Hopp - Bob Hopp's Audio Diary, 1975-1977
Play:

And now, to something nearly undefinable. The following little snippet of tape - less than four minutes long - came housed on a large reel in a box full of tapes which (mostly) involved some branch(es) of the telephone company, way back when. I've shared parts of this collection before, including the training tape of handling difficult calls.

This tape is labeled "TASI Demonstration", and I'm guessing it has something to do with this definition of "TASI" You will hear two phone calls, twice each, first with both ends of the call, then one of the speakers, isolated. After those four items, there is a fifth call, which I'll let you experience without further comment.

THEN, for the last 45 seconds, there is an even odder little montage of sound, which I'll also let you experience without further comment.

Download: Unknown - TASI Demonstration
Play:

Here are two images for this tape, one of the label on the tape, and the other of the list inside the container:

Well, this is one way to start your day I guess. After sitting down at my desk, one of the first things I spy on the official PT twitter feed is this Op-Ed from Touch Arcade’s Eli Hodapp.

It’s pretty self-explanatory just from the headline:  Overnight, Apple seem to have decided that they no longer need the iTunes Affiliate Program. Hodapp posts an image of an email he received from the Partner Program email address. I can confirm I have the same email as well – the program will end on October 1^st, 2018.

Apple cite that the new App Store is apparently so super-awesome they don’t actually need us to highlight the good games for you anymore. I would respectfully beg to differ, but it’s not like we’re in a position to argue.

What this means for Pocket Tactics

I’m not going to lie, it’s annoying. The affiliate revenue is not insignificant, although it’s nowhere near what it was in days gone by. Since Owen sold PT to Slitherine, and especially since our little group was acquired by Network N, we’ve largely gone back to the good ‘ol fashioned advertising model that we all know and love.

As an example, you’ll have noticed a couple more ad units have appeared on the mobile version of all the websites. Hopefully it’s not too much but let me know if you have any thoughts on that. The iTunes money is something I’d rather not lose, but it hasn't been our main source of income for a while.

If you want to help

We don’t have a Patreon like Touch Arcade, nor do we run our own events like Pocket Gamer. All we can really ask is that you white-list us on any ad blocker you may be using, and just keep coming back to the site and taking an interest in what we do. I dare-say we are still highly relevant to your interests, no matter what you may think of me or the past couple of years.

This definitely marks the end of an era for sites like ours, but we will adapt. We’ll still try to tell you about games that are actually worth your time, and we’ll still be trying to find new ways to bring people to Pocket Tactics, because business.

Thank you to everyone who’s supported us via App purchases so far.

Remember, everything will be working as normal from now until October 1^st, so please do keep buying your apps via our links! Might as well get what we can, while we can.

Congratulations to Ewin Tang for his breakthrough at age 18! #QuantumComputing »

I recently bought a Game Boy Player without the start-up disc and went through this process with frustratingly little guidance available online, so I figured I'd lay it all out to save anyone else the pain and hassle:

The Game Boy Player add-on for Nintendo's Gamecube console requires a special launcher disc (Game Boy Player Start-up Disc) to function, normally, and it costs a fair bit (somewhere around $75 at the time of this writing) to get a complete package including the hardware and software disc. However, you can buy the hardware without the disc for substantially less (more like $25 at the time of this writing), since it's thought to be useless on its own. There is homebrew--known as Game Boy Interface (GBI)--that can replace the functionality of the launcher disc, but most of the ways to launch the homebrew are fairly costly ($30-50), require hardware modifications to the console itself and/or require a launcher disc of their own that can get scratched/damaged/lost and then you're SOL again.

However, there are a number of exploits available for common games, including Wind Waker, Twilight Princess and Smash Bros, among others, which allow you to launch homebrew on an unmodified console, and these are easy to utilize if you have a softmodded Wii. Just fire up GCMM (GameCube Memory Manager) on the Wii's Homebrew Channel and flash one of the exploits to your memory card. Then, perform the exploit on the Gamecube to launch an unsigned application named 'boot.dol' from the memory card. I have a copy of Smash Bros Melee, so I used the appropriate Home Bros exploit for my disc revision. Once it's loaded on the Gamecube memory card, I just start the game, go to 'VS Mode' and then choose 'Name Entry' and it loads the homebrew application.

OK, great so far. If I flash the default GBI application to my memory card, it fires right up and I can see the Game Boy Advance BIOS animation. There are some nice video options I can change, like zoom, etc. but it's stuck in nasty, flickery, line-doubled 480i. If you want the nicest, cleanest, most stable image, everybody knows you want "240p"/non-interlaced mode.

Now, this is where most of the other guides online stop being helpful. They typically expect you to have an SD card interface or modchip and they recommend using Swiss to change/set your video mode to 240p. This causes a couple of problems, though: 1.) only one homebrew application named boot.dol can live on your memory card at any time (i.e., so you can't have Swiss and GBI on the same card, typically), and 2.) even if you somehow get another homebrew application onto your memory card (more on this in a bit), Swiss can't launch another homebrew application from the memory card and then adjust the video mode on-the-fly the way it can with programs launched from disc, SD card, etc.

The simplest solution is to just use the speedrunning variant of GBI (known as GBI-SR; gbi-sr.gci in the GBI package), which forces 240p (yay!) but doesn't expose the other handy video options available with the standard GBI (booo!). This lets us drop Swiss entirely from the equation for this task, but you might/should still want to have it available in your homebrew toolkit for other purposes, and we can accomplish this with a little hex editing.

Just open the gbi-sr.gci in your hex editor and right at the top you'll see 2 instances of the word 'boot.dol' (you might have to scroll down a bit to see the second instance, depending on how many lines your hex editor shows). You can change that name to anything else--I changed mine to 'boob.dol' because it's a simple change that keeps the same length. Save and exit, and you should now be able to flash both Swiss and GBI-SR to your memory card without conflicts. Now, when you fire the exploit, it will boot into Swiss and you can choose your 'boob.dol' or whatever from Swiss' list of launchable content on the memory card to play GBA games in glorious, stable 240p or you can use any of Swiss' other awesome/handy features on your native Gamecube disc-based games.

Great detail »

Alien Still Hasn't Gotten Around To Listening To Whole Voyager Golden Record »

While out and about on the streets of Harajuku one early evening, we came upon Billimayu and Eiji, two students who we regularly feature on our street snaps. Today, they easily caught our eye with their purple-themed street styles.

At the left is Billimayu, sporting a partially-shaved hairstyle. The 16-year-old student is decked out in a purple vintage remake ribbed sweater with a cropped front and long back. He paired his sweater with purple camouflage pants from Rothco, vintage patent leather ankle booties, and a silver metallic mini-backpack from WEGO with a yellow-and-black fuzzy keychain. His accessories include vintage Fendi eyeglasses with a gold chain strap, a gold chain necklace, a black leather belt, rhinestone bangles, yellow chain accessory, and multiple rings. Premiere fashion label, Givenchy, is Billimayu’s fashion favorite, and he loves the music of Big Bang. Billimayu is active on Instagram and Twitter, follow him!

Meanwhile, Eiji’s purple-and-black street style features a black tactical vest with multiple pockets, drawstring side closures and chains at the back, which he layered with a black zip-up turtleneck jacket with mesh panels – both of which are from King Family and Gallerie. He paired his layered black tops with purple snakeskin semi-wide leg pants from Never Mind the XU, and black platform lace-up shoes from Demonia. Accessories such as Harley Davidson sunglasses with silver chain strap, a statement nail Warp earring, and silver chains rounded out the 16-year-old student’s ensemble. Eiji loves to shop at M.Y.O.B, and he likes the music of Kaiware Hammer. Eiji is also active on Twitter and Instagram.

Click on any photo to enlarge it.

By Jim Clark

While parked near the intersection of Kidder and Willow Ave. last week, police officers observed a vehicle speeding toward the intersection heading North on Willow.

The intersection is a four-way stop and is raised to slow traffic. This area is in a school zone and the posted speed limit is 20 mph.

The car reportedly bounced hard when it hit the raised intersection and then the car took off rapidly with the tires squealing loudly.

The officers activated their emergency lights and pursued the vehicle northbound. They observed the car turn right on Broadway without stopping at the stop light, then disappear after they turned the corner.

At the next intersection the officers observed two helpful citizens at the intersection of Broadway and Josephine Ave. frantically waving their arms, directing them to go down Josephine Ave., a one-way street.

The officers turned down Josephine Ave. and observed a vehicle traveling at a high rate of speed ahead of them. It reportedly turned right on Kidder Ave. and came to stop almost exactly where the police cruiser was parked when they first observed the car run its first stop sign.

The driver, later identified as Peter McIlroy, of Medford, opened his car door as the officers approached and began to exit his car.

The officers told McIlroy to stay in the car, which he did, but he attempted to exit the car several times as they were talking.

The officers reported that they detected a strong odor of alcohol coming from the driver. They also reportedly also observed the driver’s eyes to be glassy and his speech slurred.

McIlroy was asked why he ran the stop sign and was driving so fast, to which he reportedly replied that he did not know he was driving fast.

McIlroy was asked to perform a field sobriety test, but he refused to cooperate so he was placed into custody.

While waiting for the prisoner transport wagon, McIlroy repeatedly asked the officers to put him in contact with his lawyer in several different ways.

Each time he asked, the officers explained that he would get his phone call after he was booked at the station, but he reportedly did not understand their responses or was unable to comprehend them. McIlroy also stated that the officers were harassing him and all he was doing was walking home.

McIlroy was taken in for booking on charges of failure to stop or yield, improper operation of a motor vehicle, operation of a motor vehicle under the influence of liquor, and reckless operation of a motor vehicle.

"A pinball x farming simulator game" - Author's description

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I'm giving a production 101 talk at GDoC and here's a little preview »

To quote June Carter, it’s hotter than a pepper sprout out there, at least in much of the country. And yet, I still need to eat. Other than eating a huge chunk of Limberger to make everyone within 200 feet of you incredibly happy, what are you eating without cooking?

I am also reminded of a story a friend of mine told about the time he took some Limberger to work for lunch and the people around him literally thought an animal had died in the HVAC unit and were trying to find it when he came back to his desk.

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One of my favorite Super NES games is Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose!. It’s a fun, well-made game that’s filled with references to the show and popular movies.

In one scene, Buster and Montana Max end up on some train tracks with a train coming right at them. They speed up their handcar until it reaches 88 miles per hour, at which point they zoom off the screen in a trail of fire – a reference to the Back to the Future movie series.

I was recently playing the game in Japanese and noticed that the 88 miles per hour indicator was converted into kilometers per hour, and the two characters zoom off once they hit 140 kph:

That makes sense and all – Japan doesn’t really use “miles” or “miles per hour”, so it’s understandable that it’d be converted. But this got me wondering: if it’s 140 kph in the Japanese game, is it also 140 kph in the Japanese movies?

Luckily, I have an old Japanese VHS copy of the original Back to the Future to check. So after fast-forwarding to the first time travel scene, here’s what we get:

Yep, it looks like the Japanese version of this Tiny Toons game matches the Japanese version of Back to the Future!

This game was released in other regions too, so I’m assuming that they all use the 140 kph version of this scene. If you can confirm this about your region, let me know – and let me know what your region’s version of Back to the Future handles the 88 mph thing too. I’m curious to see if some regions left it as-is while others converted it to kph.

As I’ve stated before, I thought Tammy Duckworth’s shot at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the growing left of the Democratic Party that socialism might work in New York but can’t in the Midwest, was misguided, not only because it is unnecessary but because it is bad political strategy even in its own region. Because of the media, people forget that there are large black populations in Midwestern states and a crucial way that Democrats win is that those people come out to vote. I thought this was a solid rejoinder:

As a black Midwesterner from one of its poorest and most reviled cities, I was struck not only by the deep inaccuracy of this view but also by the way it revealed a profoundly limited imagination of what’s politically possible. The views expressed by Duckworth, whatever their intended purpose, effectively wipe black and brown people — and our political priorities — from the Midwest’s landscape. You don’t need to be an expert in political communication to decode what’s happening here.

When you pit “the Bronx” against “the industrial Midwest,” you set them up as entirely different planets inhabited by wildly dissimilar creatures. The Bronx represents people of color living amid violence, poverty, and smoldering ruin. Meanwhile, “the industrial Midwest” conjures up storybook images of stout factories, plains unfolding into the horizon, and small, all-white industrial towns filled with people who just wish we could get back to the basics of family, church, and the dignity of hard work. These scenes rarely include black and brown people. That’s no accident.

It’d be great if we could just raise an eyebrow and laugh it off, but that’s impossible when it has actual consequences for people’s lives. When “the industrial Midwest” becomes synonymous with this mythic version of white people, the concerns of other groups go unheard and unaddressed. And if we think that democracy is a good idea and people ought to have a say in shaping their destinies, then banishing them from the discussion is morally criminal.

I agree. It’s also just Conventional Wisdom and Lord knows that CW can’t be easily turned toward truth or complexity. Moreover, it’s just a bad position to take:

The Midwest is pretty damn white, but it ain’t Happy Days. The region is dotted with cities whose populations resemble that of the Bronx; in these cities, people of color have suffered mightily for decades and make up an overwhelming majority.

It’s clear which “flyover country” the critics of the progressive movement have in mind: One where Detroit, Milwaukee, Chicago, St. Louis, and Cleveland, to name a few, never made it out from under the rubble of the 1960s and ’70s. But we are there, and our views are knowable.

A large body of national survey data lays it out pretty clearly. Black and Latino voters consistently rank both racial and economic issues near the top of their priorities. And Black voters in particular are among the country’s most economically progressive, with majorities supporting socialized medicine, a federal jobs guarantee, and minimum wage increases.

There’s no mystery why. There was, after all, that decades-long torrent of rising inequality and wage stagnation, and declining health to boot, that swallowed everyone but an elite few and saved its worst destruction for communities of color. And for black folks in particular, progressive economic views are tightly bound up with their knowledge that racism not only threatens their physical well-being, but can also make economic life pretty miserable.

The history of almost every black Midwesterner began in the early 20th century, when black families across the South fled to Midwest and Western cities to escape from a region that threatened to murder them or lock them into economic servitude. We can see how a legacy of fleeing persecution would sour anyone on the core system under which they live.

And with economic life looking nearly as dim for black Americans as it did 50 years ago, it’s completely understandable and predictable that large swaths of them want to see that system thrown away in lieu of something more radical.

For instance, as the Economic Policy Institute shows, despite making real gains in things like education and politics, black unemployment still hovers at about twice the rate for whites. And it’s harder to find a more damning statistic than this: According to the Institute for Policy Studies, it would take more than 200 years for the average black family’s wealth to catch up with the average white family’s.

And here’s the kicker:

Strategically, the Democrats need black Midwesterners to come out and vote. As Sean McElwee details in the Nation, a significant slice of black voters, especially in the Midwest, sat out in 2016 after paving the way for Barack Obama’s election just four and eight years earlier.

McElwee finds that “38 percent of individuals who voted for Obama in 2012 but then didn’t vote in 2016 were black, and 15 percent were black voters under 30.” Without them, the odds are dim indeed. Given what we know about the policy preferences of black voters, and their importance to the party, it seems like a no-brainer that the entire Democratic Party should be lining up behind a progressive platform that promises to improve their lives.

The bottom line is this: Progressives of color can win in the Midwest precisely because they exist in numbers large enough to do so. And where they don’t, it’s helpful to remember that political outcomes aren’t written in the stars. They’re authored on the ground and subject to a thousand different daily influences.

If Democrats want to win the Midwest, the answer is to have left-leaning policies and a hell of a ground game that gets voters of color out. This works differently in different states and congressional districts of course–what Joe Donnelly needs to do in Indiana is not the same as Keith Ellison in Minnesota. But despite all the voter suppression, a real enough problem, if you have a great ground game in Wisconsin in 2016 that brings out voters of color in Milwaukee, Democrats still win the state. But motivation was a real factor after two terms of Obama. We can’t let that happen again, especially when Republicans make it harder to vote all the time. A left-leaning message that focuses on the lived experience of everyday people is an important way to get people to vote.

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The City of Somerville has issued a directive to staff informing them that, to prevent potentially unsafe conditions created by National Grid’s lockout of 1,200 workers in Massachusetts, no non-emergency permit should be issued to National Grid during this time without undergoing an additional stringent review process. Citing the concern that an “outside contractor under supervision of National Grid staff unfamiliar with our standard operating procedures would likely create significant constituent impacts and could potentially result in unsafe conditions,” the directive sets a range of requirements and stipulates permits undergo review “until we are confident that the execution of the work will be fully in adherence to our standards.” The directive goes on to state that, “through years of experience, the gas company crews and their contractors have become familiar with our requirements, and we therefore have a comfort level in issuing Occupancy Permits. The current situation with National Grid, however, presents a changed condition.”

In many locations, including Somerville, the lockout has resulted in a work stoppage for gas main relocation and replacement projects; however, in some locations, National Grid is proceeding with work utilizing management staff and outside contractors. At this time, National Grid has no active work sites in Somerville and has not requested to start any work. However, the directive has been put in to place for the event that National Grid attempts to resume non-emergency work in Somerville prior to the end of the lockout.

~City of Somerville

"At some undocumented point in the early 00's there was a critical malfunction in the cyberpet factory. This meltdown led to the miss-creation of several unlikeable and unwanted cyberpets." - Author's description

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Gamasutra contributor John Harris explores the logic puzzle designs of the Japanese puzzle company Nikoli (which popularized Sudoku) and shares useful takeaways for curious game devs. ...

After Tammy Duckworth’s bizarre shot at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez earlier this week, I realized that the mainstream Democratic Party is scared of her. They are scared of the grassroots taking over. They are scared of a left version of the Tea Party. They are scared of their now nearly two generations of received wisdom in the aftermath of McGovern’s loss (and then the disastrous campaigns of Mondale and Dukakis) being thrown out the window, long past their sell-by date. They are scared of bold policy proposals that challenge their carefully considered moderate stance that appeals to potential Wall Street donors. This explains people like Chait, who find themselves increasingly adrift in a leftist dominated party and thus speaking out against great ideas like the federal job guarantee, seemingly intentionally misunderstanding that even in an age of low unemployment, the reason for this is to give workers power over their lives and place pressure on private employers to compete the government. I felt the same reading this editorial by Obama’s Homeland Security secretary Jeh Charles Johnson against the Abolish ICE movement.

Johnson’s argument is fundamentally ridiculous. ICE is not necessary for federal law enforcement. It’s only been around for 15 years and it’s not as if we didn’t have a semi-militarized border before that. He says elections have consequences, but that’s precisely what the Abolish ICE movement is working for–getting politicians to say that we need to abolish the agency and make that policy a consequence of the 2020 elections and a rallying point in 2018. Johnson talks about how Abolish ICE is destroying the chance for bipartisan immigration reform. What planet is he on? How is that possibly going to happen? What is the constituency for that in the Republican Party? The prospects for a bipartisan immigration bill is not Democrats outraged that ICE is separating babies from their parents. It died many times before on the shoals of Republican racism an now that ethnic cleansing is the official policy of the administration and congressional Republicans, there is no room for compromise. The realization that compromise on this issue is dead is why Abolish ICE is a powerful movement. When you are facing fascists, there is no room for compromise. But for Johnson–and for so many Clinton and Obama-era officials–this is not something that computes. For them, compromising with reasonable Republicans and shunning the left is always the right answer.

These are people are now behind the times. There is no room for old-school centrist Democrats in setting the policy agenda anymore. Lead, follow, or get out of the way. That doesn’t mean a primary challenge to Tammy Duckworth is in order or anything–she did her centrist party mission by dismissing AOC but she’s been a perfectly fine vote so far. She will learn in the next 5 years. The only road ahead for the Democrats is as an anti-fascist party with a bold agenda that combines racial, economic, and gendered justice. For those who fret about that, understand that actual fascism is descending upon America, that the Supreme Court is in the first of a multi-year process that will likely repeal a century of progressive law, and that the future of democracy in this nation is in doubt. There is no room for mealy-mouthed DLC compromise any longer, if there ever really was. It makes about as much sense today as centrist politics did as the fascists took power in Europe.

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Embracing the Kobayashi Maru -- inviting security students to cheat on an exam »

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microsites stored within their own URL fragment, how it works

Meet Arisa, an 18-year-old Japanese beauty school student whose curly ombre locks and outfit easily caught our attention on the street in Harajuku.

Arisa is decked out in a rusty orange ribbed top, tucked into a black pleated skirt, and cinched with a black leather belt from Gucci. She rounded out her look with black socks, black leather heeled tassel loafers, and a black leather drawstring bucket bag from Chanel.

For more on Arisa, follow her updates on Instagram.

Click on any photo to enlarge it.

By Joseph A. Curtatone

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries and letters to the Editor of The Somerville Times belong solely to the authors and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville Times, its staff or publishers)

We want you here.

You may wonder where I’m going with this, but – bear with me. It’s the most important thing I’m going to say here, and I want the message to be loud and clear from the start.

Recently some men in a van drove up to some mothers at the East Somerville Community School and threw trash at them, telling them, “We don’t want you here.”

I want to state exactly how wrong they were. I don’t know who these men think they speak for, but it’s not for the people of Somerville. This is a city where residents show up in droves for last-minute rallies in support of immigrants, a city where signs that read “hate has no home here” sit in our yards, and a city that proudly displays not just any banner, but a gigantic, colorful, can’t-miss-it banner proclaiming that “diversity is our strength.” So to the women who were targeted and their families, I want to be clear:

We want you here.

Apparently the women triggered the offending parties simply by their physical appearance. Consider how ridiculous that is. I’ve lived here for 52 years, and Somerville has never been some homogenous enclave where everyone looks and talks the same. Conformity does not rule here. We speak more than 53 different languages in our school district. It’s impossible for anyone to apply some sort of eyeball test for who does or doesn’t belong here.

And that just underlines how inane racism can be. The entire notion that you can drive around and accurately profile people or determine immigration status at a glance is preposterous. Collectively we realized that a long time ago, which is one of many reasons why we’re a sanctuary city. No matter the color of your skin; no matter the language you speak; no matter what, if any, religion you practice, you need to know:

We want you here.

And that brings me to the dog whistle that’s almost constantly blowing at the national level – the one that serves as a persistent invitation and excuse for hate. Just a couple of weeks ago, the President referred to immigrants as an infestation and did a dog and pony show shamefully exploiting the grief of families of people killed by undocumented immigrants (ignoring the fact that we could fill stadiums with families of those killed by people born in America). All that does is incite hatred and take away from the fact that we should mourn all murder victims and seek to protect all potential victims; not just the ones that are politically useful.

When you have a president who perpetuates lies about entire groups of people based solely on their race, nationality, religion, or immigration status, it becomes increasingly challenging to not make the connection between the current administration and the growing brazenness of hate-filled incidents like the one that took place here.

What those men who threw trash should have seen is women who care enough to walk their kids to school, moms who are their neighbors and fellow community members, women who are their fellow human beings.

So again, to every single person, family and child in our community, I say:

We want you here.

It’s a testament to how far off the rails we’re going that I even need to say these words. And I worry that we may be seeing more acts like this to come. This is the same school that was targeted by anti-immigration fliers at the start of the year. Intolerant, prejudiced people are feeling empowered; they’re being indulged and normalized. No one can predict when they’ll recede to the shadows again, but probably not soon enough.

In the meantime, to anyone who gets targeted by this kind of racial hatred, I implore you to reach out to the city, to the police, to our schools, to our local churches and to your neighbors. No one needs to bear this burden alone or in silence. Your community will have your back. Your city will have your back. I will have your back. No matter what the worst among us may say or do, you need to know one undeniable truth:

We want you here.

This is my go-to veggie burger recipe, and there is a secret involved. Here’s the deal. I’ve been making these veggie burgers for years. It’s a great base recipe, and you can tweak the patties with different seasonings and toppings, based on what you have on hand. I posted them on 101 Cookbooks first in 2007, after including them in Super Natural Cooking.

The Secret to a Great Veggie Burger

Here’s the trick – no bun. I’m going to argue that when you put a bean or lentil patty on a bun, you run the risk of building a burger that is too dry and bready. The ratio is all out of whack, with not enough ooey-gooeyness to balance the bread and mashed beans. It wasn’t until I sat down to write this recipe for the book that I had the revelation I needed: Turn the patty into the bun and stuff that with all sorts of good stuff. Problem solved.

Veggie Burger Recipe Variations

The other thing I’ve learned after making these for years, is that they’re easily adaptable for any friends who avoid gluten. In place of the breadcrumbs called for in the recipe, replace with puffed quinoa cereal. Or puffed rice cereal. Or rolled oats. Or gluten-free bread crumbs. I bet cooked rice would even work.

Streamlining the Process

In the years since writing the original recipe, I’ve had a few revelations related to streamlining (the already simple) recipe. I’m updating the recipe below with those tweaks down below.

Filling Ideas for Your Next round of Veggie Burgers

• Avocado Slices
• Cipollini onions – sweet and just the right size
• Sliced Roma tomatoes
• A sprinkling of smoked paprika
• Grilled vegetables
• Salted yogurt

Continue reading Ultimate Veggie Burger on 101 Cookbooks

"The city of NEW ICE YORK completely froze over, while you were asleep" - Author's description

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By Shira Laucharoen

Old cameras, reclaimed furniture, tape cassettes, and more were on display under the tents that lined the streets of Somerville’s Union Square. At the second annual Night Market, held on the evening of June 30, vendors specialized in vintage items and artisan goods. The Somerville Arts Council partnered with the Somerville Flea to produce the market, an ArtsUnion event.

“We’ve been doing the Somerville Flea for the last six years in Davis Square during the day on Sundays,” said founder of the Somerville Flea and organizer of the Night Market Greg Ghazil. “It sometimes gets kind of hot and sunny, so one thing we wanted to try to do was avoid that. Moreover, I had traveled from Thailand and went to Chiang Mai, where they had an extensive night market. I fell in love with the idea of rummaging through vintage antiques and oddities outdoors under the stars and under the light bulbs.”

The Night Market peddled a variety of wares, including stationary, records, posters, modern calligraphy designs, and colorful dresses. At one stand, Bridge It Studio presented laser-etched drawings, incorporating roses into the images. Pleasant Street Barn reupholstered and decorated furniture discarded on the side of the road, painting housewares with charming patterns. The store Merch Merch Merch offered an array of hand printed t-shirts, whose designs were informed by creator Amelia May’s musical sensibilities. Cyclical in Nature, a shop creating artifacts out of objects found in the outdoors, integrated feathers and sticks into its crafts. The event also showcased performances from local bands and musicians.

The Somerville Arts Council endeavors to uphold the creative life of the city through its celebration of art and culture. The organization created the ArtsUnion program, which encourages the cultivation of Union Square, 13 years ago, leading to the generation of markets, festivals, and tours in the neighborhood.

“Our mission is to support the artists in Somerville and reflect the diversity of our city. The Night Market directly supports artists by giving them a vending opportunity and highlighting them,” said Somerville Arts Council special events manager Nina Eichner. “We lower the barrier to entry because we are providing support for them. We have all of these immigrant owned restaurants and businesses in Union Square, and a mix of artists and vendors will be at the event. Keeping the city diverse in terms of artists and people who live here is really important to us.”

 

 

Wonder Girl turned City Woman…

[Video][Website]
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Iain Mew: Sometimes you want to carefully pick out a chocolate from your selection, and sometimes you want to take your whole ’80s city pop box and eat them a row at a time without even consulting the key.
[6]

Jessica Doyle: I did go on a city pop-listening binge after hearing this, and concluded that for all the cosplay there was something just slightly off about Yubin’s presentation. It may be as simple as me hearing lower-quality production and mistaking the less forceful sound for wistfulness. It may be that Yubin comes off as too confident to sell the listener-flattering idea of the strong façade being no more than a few millimeters thick. “Lady” might have worked better with a singer whose voice was a little breathier, a little wispier, a little [The Jukebox apologizes for this attempt to pass off Hyelim bias as an actual review.]
[5]

Thomas Inskeep: K-Pop goes city pop with this debut solo single from Yubin, formerly of K-pop queens Wonder Girls. This isn’t an exact replica — it’s more like a take on the City Pop revival, from SoundCloud artists like Night Tempo (whose 2016 remix of Mariya Takeuchi’s City Pop landmark “Plastic Love” sounds like a definite influence on “Lady”). The video even features scenes of Yubin driving along darkened city streets! That said, there’s also a bit of Stock Aitken Waterman here, especially in those ultra-’80s handclaps and the drums — Sinitta calling! And then, then, there’s the lyrics and Yubin’s sassy deliver thereof: “Stop beating around the bush,” she sings, “Be up front about it/I made time especially for you … There are tons of boys/Who lined up for me.” Lay down the law girl, and tell him what time it is! #Summer2018Anthem achieved.
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Julian Axelrod: There’s “disco” — the kind of half-hearted pastiche with empty Bee Gees harmonies and limp Chic guitar that’s become an escape hatch for boring artists of all stripes in the past few years — and then there’s disco. “Lady” has a million tiny details that prove it’s the real deal, from the swooping strings to the sidewinding pre-chorus melody to the programmed drums that wallop in all the right places. But the most important distinction is a palpable joy, and Yubin’s powerhouse vocal struts, shimmies, and soars with the liberation of a woman who’s truly free. When that guitar solo arrives to carry you up to disco heaven, you know you’re dealing with the genuine article.
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Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa: Yubin going full city pop is a bit of a surprise; Yes, Wonder Girls were the absolute queens of retro in the K-Pop universe, but Yubin is commonly known as the group’s rapper, and a solo single without a single line of rap, rather opting for the disco diva approach, is a bit out of left field. However, it’s in the execution of this concept, both sonically and aesthetically, where “Lady” really hits. Yubin simultaneously projects energy and sophistication in every note, and if this is the musical path she will take in her future solo endeavours, we’ll be definitely on board. 
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Will Rivitz: Now that vaporwave has been passé for long enough to appreciate through the more neutral lens afforded by a true retrospective, we’re finally in a place where we can appreciate the artists in the scene whose music is good enough to have stood the test of time and still be worthwhile five years after the scene’s peak — namely, Saint Pepsi (or the artist formerly known as Saint Pepsi) and absolutely no one else. Fortunately, Yubin’s future funk approximation lifts Pepsi’s vibrantly torpid ’80s cheese with aplomb, absolutely nailing the lushness that makes his sound still tantalizing. Cheap neon is better when it’s not ironic.
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Ryo Miyauchi: The glossy ’80s revival fueling Wonder Girls’s final full-length Reboot lured me into this then-new thing in my life called K-pop, but before I can tune into more from the retro queens, they unfortunately decided to call it quits. So it’s very satisfying to have Yubin from the group continue where the group left off with this glamorous city-pop anthem. More than the sound, I’m won by her confident sass. “I ain’t got time,” she snaps at her foolish prospects in romance, and her off-to-the-next attitude is one I longed to find in other songs by her peers whose claims to “bring the boys out” didn’t really resonate beyond pure pop gesture.
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Alfred Soto: I played this twice last night while gelling my hair and applying discreet pats of cologne to my neck, moving my shoulders to the beat. It’s got a welcome slink, and it does smell of Saturday night, but its recombination of several smooth dance sounds is more rehearsed than felt. So what. It’s Saturday night.
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Joshua Minsoo Kim: While labels like Matador allowed for Shibuya-kei to gain visibility for otherwise Japanese music-ignorant Westeners, city pop received widespread love from manners far more Internet-dependent: specialized blogs, YouTube algorithms, and freely available mixes (not to mention vaporwave/future funk, numerous reissues, and the rise of Japanese tastemakers and record store owners). While none of this seemed to happen with the help of streaming services, it was a natural extension of the musical trends that gained traction since the turn of the decade. The increasing popularity of new age and soft rock, as well as the general decline of scuzzy lo-fi pop, is well-aligned with city pop’s relatively pristine veneer and indulgent ventures into AOR, quiet storm, jazz fusion, disco, and funk. These shifts in prevailing musical tastes are a natural response to what happened musically during the mid-late 2000s, but also feel like a quasi-extension of postmodern sincerity and the (non-conservative) political/social ideologies of the 2010s. While Korea had some music that was analogous to City Pop — Kim Hyun-chul comes to mind — “Lady” is specifically aiming for what was happening in Japan during the ’80s (even more explainable considering the genre’s popularity within various Korean circles). In typical K-pop fashion, this is such a meticulously crafted pastiche that it takes on a new form from that of its source material. There’s an excess of riches here, yes, but it comes from a digitally glitzy sheen and not from moments where you can revel in individual instruments; everything here solidifies into a monolithic disco mass. The guitar solo at the end, for example, feels horrifically short — most city pop would allow for such instrumentation to take center stage and unabashedly continue for as long as it felt necessary. So while “Lady” is certainly catchy, the mixing and structure stifle what it wants to accomplish. Which is to say, this isn’t memorable in the way city pop is; it’s memorable in the way K-pop is.
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