I’ve had it farm fresh in Bali and at a swanky cafe in Penang. The shared characteristic was how smooth it is. Tastes different, not necessarily better or worse. Depends on what you’re after in your beverage.

In Penang, we had it with a normal espresso to compare. After drinking the Luwak coffee, the espresso lost all it’s flavour… It did something to our sense of taste!

Going through a factory you can tell there’s no chance the poop makes it to the final product. In fact, none of the cherry meat is used, only the bean, so I question what effect the digestive process has. Maybe the preparation method is different? I haven’t been to a normal coffee factory to compare.

The conditions the Luwak are kept in vary wildly, apparently the worst practices are in Vietnam. The Luwak are super cute , amazing fur, ones kept as pets were fun to interact with. The size of two house cats. Nocturnal, so I’ve only seen them active once.

I liked the coffee but not so much that I want to support demand for it. The Luwak is a totally unnecessary step in making what is already a great beverage regardless.

Operation: Inner Space

🧑‍🚒

To add to @[email protected] 's points, Australia isn’t afraid of foreigners, it has very high migration. You might be confused because of the government’s reprehensible treatment of asylum seekers. Yes it was colonised by England, but internally, diversity is the most celebrated aspect of Australia.

Australia has been dubbed ‘the lucky country’ because despite a lack of smarts (manufacturing and other value added economic activity), we’ve always been able to dig things out of the ground and sell it (coal, wood, gas, food, gold…). Though Australia never developed a serious manufacturing sector, it has pivoted to a service economy instead, with that sector’s highest export being higher education.

The lessons to learn from Australia is be rich, be on the other side of the world away from the world wars, and have high welfare spending (plenty of room for improvement though).

Sunt iarăși eu, Picasso!^Oh!

As the oldest Millennial (just scrape in), I insist they peaked at Dragon Ball. A half beaten to death pre-teen launching himself through the bad guy to defeat him? Epic stuff.

(Married at 22. You can marry young and be in your 40’s discussing Dragon Ball with internet strangers!)

Yes, to me, the nuance is what’s important here.

“You’re welcome” implies you did something good, and you know it. “I am good for doing this for you. You owe me!”

Whereas “no problem” implies it didn’t cause you any trouble. “Doing this for you was not detrimental to my life. You owe me nothing.”

I already had the motivation to drive correctly, getting upset wouldn’t improve that motivation, just make driving more difficult.

I pride myself on being a safe and courteous driver. We all make mistakes, especially when learning.

When I started driving again recently after a 20 year hiatus I was getting upset when I made mistakes; running stop signs, forgetting indicators, etc.

But then I realised all I was doing was making it hard to concentrate, which could lead to more errors, maybe even a fatal crash.

I quickly adopted this “Oops that was illegal but it’s fine” attitude. Notice my mistake, and move on.

Free as in freedom (libre), not free as in free beer (gratis).

We stayed in a few different places across BC and Alberta. I can remember they all had drip coffee machines, but I can’t actually remember if they were equipped with kettles, too! That being said, the addition of drip coffee makers could have been for American tourists (I did make good use of them though).

I think it’s a default item everywhere except north America.

As part of reviewing a stay, Airbnb always asks if the place had a coffee maker. I’ve only ever ticked yes in the US, Canada, and Indonesia.

(edit: I should clarify, it asks if there was a coffee machine, but it DOESN’T ask if there was a kettle, showing the US-centric app design.)

Digital nomad in Indonesia here. People are friendly, food is great, scenery is beautiful, and weather is cool but not cold this time of year. I wouldn’t live here full time, but I wouldn’t live anywhere full time (because I am a nomad!).

I don’t agree with many of the laws here but that is true of pretty much everywhere.

I’m in Indonesia. When the rebrand announcement happened I checked x.com and it was indeed blocked. But twitter.com worked fine (I mean, worked just like you’d expect a garbage dump to).

I checked a couple days later and it was the same. Now both work correctly.

If twitter.com got blocked it must have been for a very short period and at a weird time. I can’t imagine a redirect from a previously unrelated website triggering a block.