It's not your fault.
I am Shawn Liu. I weigh about 145 pounds.
I co-founded Harvest. I update this blog sometimes.
@mrshawnliu
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Weather apps are more often used than productivity or learning apps. Weather. #idon’tknowshit
Via Play Before Work: Games Most Popular Mobile App Category in US | Nielsen Wire
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What I learned Today: Coffee
And this whole time I thought I know something about coffee – just because I frequent a few hip spots in the city and buy single origin beans from small roasters. Teresa from Dallis Bros Coffee came into our office today and straightened us out.
Some things I learned today:
- The roasters matter, but roasters can’t make magic out of ass beans. Good beans come from good farms, and Dallis is serious about the farms they buy from.
- Everything matters when making a cup of coffee – the water, water’s temperature, how you grind the beans, the beans, the brewing method, the cup’s temperature, you, etc.
- Quality over quantity. Teresa saw our coffee machine and commented that we’re better off using a French Press to make large quantity. She reminded us that good coffee is like drugs – a small, but good hit is better than a bunch of junk. Something like that. Teresa is a great instructor.
- Uh, I’ve been making my coffee wrong. Let’s just leave it at that.
- Coffee packaging – there needs to be some kind of vent so the beans can release CO2. Pretty paper packaging (like Stumptown or Coava) means that oxygen is getting into the bag, which leads to shorter shelf life (coffee gets stale faster).
- Through the act of weighing, grinding beans, pouring hot water over and waiting for that coffee to brew – you smell, touch, and see the transformation of coffee – and then you get to drink it. It’s a ritual. A fantastic, rewarding ritual.
- You use a handful of rice to clean your grinders (!).
- I have never tried Dallis before, and their coffee is fucking good. And they’re a New York roaster (in Ozone Park since 1913!).
I’m throwing out our coffee machine. As soon as we get a proper French Press. And a scale.
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The Story of Amanda Hocking
Just read a NY Times Magazine profile on Amanda Hocking, author of the popular Trylle Trilogy book series – which I will not read, but might have to bring my children to see in the theatre one day.
Amanda’s story is similar to those of many authors – she wrote several books, kept submitting, and kept on getting rejected over the course of seven years (she completed her first novel when she was 17). Her breakthrough, however, did not come from a book agent’s discovery. She got her break because of the e-books self-publishing platform by the likes of Amazon. In just over one year, she has published 9 e-books and sold over a million copies, grossing over $2 million.
It sounds simple to write a young-adult “paranormal” romance novel. Simple as in, if I just put my mind to it – read a couple of popular ones, get the formula down, lock myself in a cabin for a few months – I can crank one out just as good as any. Well, self-publishing is as easy as ever, and many have tried to publish their young-adult romance novels on Amazon, but there is just one Amanda Hocking.
It might seem easy, but writing is hard, and telling a good, compelling story is even harder. And for those who can write and tell a good story, it’s really difficult to have the persistence to keep on writing, day after day, like a job, even after years of rejection, and then to have enough energy and courage to self publish. None of that is easy.
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I like creativity. I like to cook. And most of all, I like to be free. With the Foundation, I can do whatever I want, whenever I want to. You saw the kitchens. It’s a machine. The organization is too perfect. It is predictable. I don’t like that. I want to start a new phase where I don’t know much.
Ferran Adriá, on why he’s closing down El Bulli – and replacing with El Bulli Foundation, a gastronomic think tank of sort, in this NY Times video with Mark Bittman. Also: a fascinating article about El Bulli’s staff meals and “simple meals”. Also good: Food for Thought, edited by the artist Richard Hamilton. -
Expressions. Mexico 4, USA 2. Photo by Lucy Nicholas. (Taken with instagram)
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Louis CK on being a good dad.
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They call this Operation Iraqi Freedom, but where is our freedom?
Asked Imtiyas Sheriff, one of more than seventy-thousand ”third-country nationals” serving on US bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Many of them recount having been robbed of wages, injured without compensation, subjected to sexual assault, and held in conditions resembling indentured servitude by their subcontractor bosses.”
The Invisible Army, by Sarah Stillman
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I don’t understand half of the things you say but I laugh anyway. - Ashkahn Shahparnia (Taken with instagram)
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4 (Taken with instagram)
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Taken with Instagram at The High Line
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