kakapo

Prik nam pla is the quintessential thai seasoning/dip and at its simplest its just diced chile soaked in fish sauce. Adds an umami hit to just about anything, but dishes with fried eggs like pad krapow work well. But you can take it further. Tomatoes don't feature much in thai food but they do crop up in some mainly northern regional dishes. If you soak them in fish sauce you get a double umami hit. Slow roast or gently char first and then soak and you've got a triple hit. Rice, fried eggs and these tomatoes makes a pretty great breakfast.

Stick some chiles and garlic under the grill until the skin is charred but not burnt to a crisp. Larger chiles work best, but you can try a mixture and throw in some birds eye chiles if you like it extra hot. Let them cool and take garlic out of skin. Chiles are fine leave the burnt skin on, but chop them up. Mash up with pestle and mortar to a coarse paste. Add a pinch of salt and a pinch of white sugar. Add just enough vinegar, ideally coconut but any white Asian vinegar will work, to cover and mash all together. You've now got burnt chile vinegar that is infinitely nicer than sriracha and works with just about any noodle dish as a condiment. Also works well with Thai braised meat dishes like Pa Lo.

This involves a bit of prep but is pretty straightforward. Make a thai dressing. Start off with equal parts by volume: salty (fish sauce, soy at a push) sweet (palm sugar syrup, but white sugar will do, reduce amount) sour (lime juice, or maybe tamarind at a push) Pimp it with chile, ideally fresh but dried can work. You could also add in finely sliced garlic, shallots, ginger, lemongrass or any combination. Adjust seasoning to your own particular taste. You can at this point give the dressing 20 seconds in a medium hot clean wok/pan to help bring the flavours together, but I usually miss this out, less washing up. Also if you get the timing wrong your lime juice will go bitter. Dress a salad. Add in a protein. Chopped up fried eggs or tinned tuna are both good, cheap and easy. Garnish with coriander. You've now made either Yam Khai Dao (eggs) or Yam 'Tuna'. Serve with rice. This hits a sweet spot of just enough work to feel like you're not a slob, but is still quick and easy and will make any day feel a bit better. It's also reasonably well balanced if you don't overdose on the rice.

I liked records by Lucy Gooch and TR Jordan this year and just noticed they're on the same label, Past Inside the Present. After I had finished vomiting my own appendix out of an eye socket at the thought of an American ambient label naming themselves with a BoC reference I thought it might be an idea to check out some of their roster. So I had a look and quite frankly it's the whitest thing I've seen since attending the National Socialist Trainspotters of Tyneside conference in 1988. http://www.pastinsidethepresent.com/artists.html To calm myself at the awful heteronormative whiteness of it all I immediately went and listened to Bleep's top ten albums 2020. However, I'm still interested in any recommendations beyond the obvious (36, r beny, Benoît Pioulard). Thank you.

People should wear hats more. Its absurd going around with a naked head all the time. It's like wearing crotchless leather chaps. Fine for the privacy of your own home, less great for picking the kids up. More hats for everyone, in quantity and frequency. My cat refuses to wear a hat and she's an arsehole. Don't be a twat, wear a funking hat.

Classic album. Boomkat have outcunted themselves with this self regarding wankery though: When you make a record that doesn’t conform, expect to divide opinion. ‘Like Weather’ was released in 1998, on Rephlex - run by Grant Wilson Claridge and Richard D James - an often great label that had a following that couldn't quite deal with electronic music made by a girl - let alone one that used vocals. Everything those lads couldn’t fathom about ‘Like Weather’ is essentially what makes it untouchable; one of the greatest, most effortlessly esoteric pop albums ever made, not in the lineage of IDM or Trip Hop, genres it has so often been awkwardly lumped in with, but something else that cant quite be categorised - even two decades later.

That's an over simplification that doesn't ring completely true for the UK. Yes, the new clause 4 marked a shift to the right for New Labour, but there'd been attempts within the party to re-draft it for the previous 40 years. The adoption of third way politics was largely a rebalancing between the social democratic and the democratic socialist tendencies of the party, that had always been there, and a mish mash of thatcherite/liberal/socially conservative policies sprinkled over the top that have always appealed to a big section of the British working class in any case. The whole identity politics thing is the bastard child of American politics, media, academia and the unique racial history of the country that has steadily been imported in a UK specific form by the right as culture war politics have proven effective. You can blame Tony Blair for a lot of things but you can't really blame him for that. One of the stupidest things Corbyn did was to engage with this i.e. calls for an inquiry into colonialism had as prominent a place in the last manifesto as housing policy. But this position was coming from his and party instincts as an old labour internationalist fighting for the underdog (as long as they're not jews obv) refracted through the lens of having a thick as pig shit apologist like Seamus Milne as your main adviser, as much as the identity politics of the younger/student side of the party which again for obvious reasons will always find themselves outside of the Overton window. It's why Keir Starmer is dodging the culture war as far as possible, it's a battle he can't win i.e. see his responses to the BLM protests and toppling of statues in the UK.

I now know why the Romans used a sea sponge on a stick, you live and learn. I'm pretty sure when I was growing up the children's brush was a lot softer than the adult brush. I remember being excited about finally being allowed to use the adult brush and then really disappointed with the results, but a quick look on amazon for child's toilet brush isn't giving any results, have they just gone the way of the bidet and out of fashion?

Not directly on my arsehole no, I'm not an idiot. Just a quick up and down the crack to clear out any toilet paper in the usual way.

Why do they make toilet brushes out of such harsh material? I appreciate that they will last longer and are easier to clean, but after the week I've had the chafing is getting unbearable.

It happened again. In a way I was lucky as I couldn't get to the toilet in time, which meant I was fully clothed and it was contained. I blame nominative determinism.

I haven't shat myself this week. Not as regular in timing or consistency as I would like, but we're moving in the right direction.

This looks like a 'modest fashion' bikini, and I'm not allowed to wear religious garb after the incident with the burqa and the 2 ft long salmon in Morrisons.

This looks like there has been a face swap.

I kind of like the idea of being completely naked underneath. And after the literal shitshow I experienced last week, a self containing item of clothing has some appeal.

Anybody into boiler suits? Thinking of picking up this one by Engineered Garments, maybe in navy though.

America isn't dead. America is a rattlesnake constantly shedding its own skin.

To be honest it was worse than either of those scenarios. I've had a bit of an upset stomach for the past week, and just unleashed explosive diarrhea into my pants, no forewarning gurgling. Ran to the toilet, and explosion number 2 happened just as I had loosened my pants and was lowering them. Items covered included the toilet cistern, toilet seat, back wall, shower curtain, the bath itself, the floor, all my clothes and I even managed to bullseye the waste paper bin with a rare vaguely solid bit. If there was a film called 'Everything's covered in liquid shit, including myself' then I would have been all set for the describe your last shit with a movie title thread. Thank god cats live in the moment otherwise I would have had to have her put down.

Just shat myself. Not prone to this happening, took me by surprise. Big enough mess that I had to strip down and get a shower. Cat just sniffed me and looked at me in disgust while this was happening, which to be honest is a bit hypocritical considering I cleaned up after she was poorly.

Yeah, that's a bit of a worry, not been online since August.

The Christmas tree look is horrendous, but it has a dimmer and presumably goes all the way to off. I usually recommend a fully featured semi-modular as a good starting point for a modular system, and the best for that has arguably been a 2nd hand moog grandmother which can usually be picked up for £600. This is coming in at a similar price point and it's hard not to recommend it in place of the grandmother, you are getting a lot for your money. This plus a digital oscillator of choice and sequencing and you've basically got a powerhouse system for about a grand. Or as an alternative Bitwig/Live plus experts sleepers or equivalent. Or this plus 2nd hand Analog 4. Or polyend tracker and a midi to cv. Lots of very good options for a relatively modest outlay of 1 - 1.2K.

I would love to (not) see a live show of this material presented in a really visceral way like the 2016 tour.

The cat was unimpressed with track 3, but she's back in the studio and singing along to track 4.

UK slang, means good.

It's not possible for a band to produce ambient, least of all one with 30 members. Ambient is produced by individual male auteurs, with occasional collaboration allowed, preferably other white men. Please use the correct and preferred terms. Manbient can be substituted for ambient if the individual is particularly worthy of respect i.e. older than 40. Otherwise: Banbient Womanbient Tranbient BLMbient Japanbient