Monthly Archives: November 2021

Selling Sunset Season 4

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The Netflix’s reality TV show “Selling Sunset” is about selling real estate in Hollywood women who are simultaneously juggling their careers, relationships and of course love life. And what almost inevitably happens… drama.

This new season is no different…. Full of drama… Full of arguements… Full of excitment! In terms of filming, I get the feeling they are filming the show probably during summer and early fall of 2021. During this time, people were starting to go back out to eat at restaurants. You can see quite a lot of restaurant workers wearing masks in the show. Surprisingly though and maybe through editing, you don’t see many people wearing masks walking around.

What I find most interesting about this show is how they managed to connect one of the agents to Simu Liu. With the success of Marvel’s Shang-Chi, the show even had Simu Liu come on the show looking for a house. I guess a celebrity requires a celebrity real estate group to find a house in LA.

Steady State Roasting

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November’s Trade Coffee comes from a roaster out in Carlsbad, CA called Steady State Roasting. The beans are Ethiopia’s Guji region. Frequent readers will recognize that I’ve actually received many roasted beans from this region in the past. The lattes I make are generally very delicious and always a solid choice.

However, this bag is slightly different. I find that the normal latte recipe gives a watered down espresso taste. This watered down taste takes away from the latte. Even the normal “coffee flavor” of the latte doesn’t have the normal strength typically tasted in the lattes. As a result, I’ve been decreasing the amount of water needed to brew inside the Aeropress to get rid of this watered down effect. So far, after a few tries, it’s made the latte very strong (typical) but suprisingly hasn’t really brought out more of the flavors. Puzzling….

319 Coffee Roasters

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October’s Angels Cup comes from 319 Coffee‘s Spring Blend. I’m not sure why there’s a “spring blend” when it’s currently Oct/Nov and Fall/Winter. As a blend, the beans come from Ethiopia, Brazil and Columbia. Aside from the relatively non-descript packaging, the aromas are amazing. Everytime I open the bag, I smell fruits and nuts. Making my latte, I taste sweet honey and berries leading to a very caramelly nutty aftertaste that lingers at the back of the tongue.

Portrait Coffee

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October’s Trade Coffee comes from Portrait Coffee. The beans come from Ethiopia’s Guji district. Making my latte, the fruity flavors are amazing. Fruity berries mixed with a subtle sweet cholate milk flavors makes this particular bag of beans really delicious. The Guji area of Ethiopia never fails to disappoint.

OKLO Aurora Nuclear Reactor

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I saw this video on YouTube about a new kind of nuclear reactor called Oklo’s Aurora (wiki). To be fair, I have heard of companies pursuing the niche space of making “clean/safe mini-nuclear reactors” in order to generate eletricity for 1000-10000 households. I even read that Bill Gates is also working towards a small reactor (link 1, link 2)!!

Listening to her talk about the technology and reading (link 1, link 2, link 3) a little more about it… this is much smaller than what Bill Gates is working towards. What is awesome about the reactors is the intent to use “spent nuclear fuel” to power the reactor and generate even more energy from the spent fuel. You’re literally using waste no one wants to touch in order to generate power shaving off the half-life of the fuel from potentially millions of years to something at least manageable. What I find also interesting are the concerns related to theft of spent fuel. I do suppose consequences are severe if the radioactive fuel was stolen and/or misused for evil deeds.