• 0 Posts
  • 15 Comments
Joined 9 months ago
cake
Cake day: June 23rd, 2024

help-circle

  • The far right national government certainly isn’t good, but you’re right that it’s probably not that far off from most other big european countries right now. Definitely research the specific region you’re moving to, there are often extremely large differences between regions in european countries when it comes to political leanings, general tolerance and economic opportunities and it’s not always as clear-cut as “big cities good, countryside bad” or “north good, south bad”.










  • “Cocktail” is more specific. Originally, it was identical with what’s now called an Old Fashioned, i.e. spirit, sugar, bitters and water/ice. Later the term started including other alcoholic drinks like sours, martini etc.; I’ve seen people claim in discussions that’s it’s down to the amount of ingredients (e.g. a Rum & Coke is not a cocktail, but rum, cola and lime (Cuba Libre) might be) or a specific care exercized in preparation, but I think it’s ultimately arbitrary.

    Anyway, one of my favourite drinks is the Twice Up (whisky and water mixed 1:1, works great with many other spirits). Hard to call this a cocktail, considering adding water to whisky is just a completely normal way of drinking whisky in Scotland. The Scottish just pour the water freehand instead of measuring an exact amount.


  • I got really into cocktails a few years ago (or “mixed drinks”, if you want to be more technically correct). No way I’d be able to keep up at a real bar, even if I probably know more cocktails than many of the bartenders I’ve personally interacted with (TBF I haven’t been to a bar since I really got into cocktails, and before I got into it I just went wherever it was cheap). Fixing drinks is at best half of the job anyway, and I’m rubbish at the people stuff.


  • In a lot of ways, our current way of living has made us more resilient. Malnoutrition, frequent serious diseases and a high amount of environmental and food-borne poisons (soot, heavy metals, the snake oil that often passed as “medicine” back then) don’t make people stronger, they make them weaker. Our civilization diseases like obesity and allergies are their own issue, but they still beat dying from syphilis or influenza at age 30.

    As far as propaganda goes, they had plenty of propaganda as well - it might have been cruder than today, but they also had less access to dissenting voices.

    The health trend is definitely pointing downward in places like the USA, though. Let’s hope most of Europe can avoid the worst of that …