90% of good coffee is good water and grinding the beans fresh every time. I
use filtered water. The beans are medium roast, nothing special. I make it
with a Bialetti stovetop espresso maker, pour it into a 32 ounce thermos and
fill it up the rest of the way with hot water. The result is strong and
flavorful without being overpowering, and reasonably economical.
2) Online engagement and addictive interface
I notice a lot of posts in Gopher and Gemini spaces bemoaning the deliberately
addictive nature of social media. To me, part of the problem is that social
media isn't very social. And taking the corporation out of the equation as
much as possible doesn't necessarily change anything. SDF is certainly more
active than a lot of similar communities, especially in terms of Gopher sites.
But community is what happens not when everyone is off in their own space
doing their oiwn thing, but when people come together. With Gopher, even the
ability to link elsewhere feels clumsy and superfluous. The isolated Usenet
groups that are still active and mostly free of spam - those are definitely
communities, but most of them are even smaller than SDF's currently active
Gopherspace. And most attempts to get something of this nature off the ground,
like the various Tilde orgs, only seem to do really well if they connect
themselves with a physical locale. In some ways the time seems right for a BBS
resurgence, at least if properly packaged and presented.
As far as addiction, I like my interfaces efficient. I want to be able to sit
down at the machine, do my thing, and get back up and go back to doing other
things. And if I do spend any significant amount of time at the screen and
keyboard, I don't want it wasted by bloat, gaslighting, marketing surveillance
and covert agendas.
3) Speaking of Usenet
For everyone advocating NNTP, how about getting NNTP support back in Citadel?
That's been moribund/absent for some time now. Great way to have a consistent
and easy to use unified interface for local and networked discussion. And
there's still a text client under the hood.
