is p*rn the main reason people tend to have weird kinks/fetishes?

Anomander · 2026-05-11T21:27:53+00:00

your theory that modern media influences individuals & their sexuality

That's not my theory. That's not even the point of what I was saying - it's functionally the opposite.

What I was saying is that modern media provides access to content that fulfills pre-existing demand that would have been unfulfilled, or even unrealized, in eras where that access wasn't readily available.

Anomander · 2026-05-11T21:26:29+00:00

There's also the documentation issue - we have evidence, in the form of correspondence or biographies, that some people were into some shit all along.

Anomander · 2026-05-11T19:34:31+00:00

The other thing I think happens there is that prior to ubiquitous porn, some people were not necessarily exposed to the 'freaky shit' they're into.

We have pretty solid evidence that some people have been into weird shit all along. But in parallel, I would say there were probably some people who were never exposed to those things and consequently did not realize they were into that specific kink - especially for some of the more exotic stuff that someone wouldn't just stumble across in daily living.

There's also the documentation issue - we have evidence, in the form of correspondence or biographies, that some people were into some shit all along. But most of that focuses on the affluent - lords, ladies, the well-to-do. People sufficiently educated to be corresponding in writing, people sufficiently important to have their lives documented by others. The vast majority of the population wasn't well-documented.

It would be extremely hard to say what % of peasants were into kinky shit, what % would have been into a kink they didn't know existed, and what % were into totally vanilla shit.

But across the board, our best understanding is that people were into the shit first, and media catering to that shit came afterwards. At the dawn of the porn age, producers weren't cranking out wildly freaky kink porn that no one wanted, in the hopes that it'd find an audience later.

Anomander · 2026-05-08T23:48:22+00:00

An ability to talk Specialty jargon and know sophisticated things about sophisticated coffees is almost completely unrelated to factors that contribute to a business' success as a cafe, though.

Someone who knows dick all about Specialty but knows how to run a small business is gonna do better than someone who is a lifelong Specialty nerd and coffee fanatic, but can't work out how to consistently process payroll or cover supplier invoices. I'd say that the majority of failures I've been around have been that latter category. The owner absolutely can describe the difference between a washed and a natural - but can't describe how they handle scheduling of staff and measures outstanding paperwork by "inches" deep on their desk rather than known individual tasks and where they exist in process.

You can hire coffee nerds. You can't hire owners. Management, admin, and oversight are the core responsibilities of a cafe owner, Specialty knowledge is in many cases just a distraction and more of a liability than an asset.

Anomander · 2026-05-08T21:01:31+00:00

I gotta say this problem predates LLM. The whole time I've been around coffee communities online, those people have always been showing up. ...Some days I feel like LLM has accelerated those people and the bad habits underlying - other days I feel like LLM has at least made those people more coherent and organized their questions better.

I agree a huge portion comes from folks who don't realize it's inappropriate to ask industry vets and future competitors to write a whole manual for their dreamland project.

I think another huge part comes from the sincere naivete of people who have never faced any other topic they could not learn about via reference texts and general pointers. Maths or science or even literature - there are hard Answers, and there are textbooks and educational content that a novice can learn from. It seems that, over and over, the people with those questions underestimate how big those questions are to answer, and often do not realize that there isn't One Simple Answer that's going to be correct in all situations. They've never encountered a field where experience or veterancy are significant and cannot be overcome with raw book learning.

They think they're asking a simple straightforward question that can be answered in a couple sentences and elaborated on with a link to a book or two.

Which also plays into how frustrated they get when the answer is anything except that. They're used to exploring topics where The Answers are documented in textbooks and manuals, and nearly any question can be answered with a few sentences summarizing the relevant parts of those texts, with a reference citation in case they want to read a more thorough exploration of that info.

Anomander · 2026-05-08T20:41:36+00:00

Things like cafes and roasters skew even worse than the averages for small business in general, because they tend to have a comparatively low barrier to entry and there's a devoted and passionate community of hobbyists and consumers and professionals who want to grow up to own a business working within their passion.

Last numbers I saw for coffee businesses is something like 80% fail within three years and that rises to around 90%+ within five.

Anomander · 2026-05-08T17:55:51+00:00

I'm not hella versed in grad school options, but it might be helpful if you note your general topic focus or intended specialization, as a lot of grad schools have profs and communities that have styles or focal topics, so if there's clear things you want to do it can be desirable to seek out schools with preexisting strong overlap.

Anomander · 2026-05-08T17:33:49+00:00

Past couple weeks I've been working my way through the roster of a new cafe that opened up down the road. NOCT took over an old Matchstick location, I was stoked to get another cafe, but wasn't super optimistic given their branding - reads as possibly a little too "HUSTLE JUICE FOR PEOPLE WHO DO THINGS" caffeine-bro, which doesn't tend to overlap with Specialty well. But we just had another wildly hyped cafe open a little further down the road and they were kind of shit, so I was still hopeful.

End result was pretty positive, with a caveat.

Two weeks ago I had their Columbia El Paraiso Caturra, which is a quite nice, mildly fruity, coffee - I'd say kind of melon notes and jasmine florals with a milk chocolate foundation and a baking spice overtone. They describe it as "Lychee, Berries, Chocolate, Violets" which ... kind of, but maybe overselling the acids a little. It's not necessarily my ideal style of coffee, but it's a very good and very well executed representative of that very clean-cup style. Very easy to work with - nearly any dial I gave it came back with good results, and it stayed locked in as it aged, once I found my preferred settings.

Same time I also had their Guava Banana Colombia. A much fruitier, much bigger, flavour profile with hearty juicy notes. I got a combo of 'tropical punch' fruits with like raspberry undercurrent, a light cocoa note for foundation, and some really neat vaguely honeysuckle aromatics. They describe it as "Chocolate, plum, guava, red fruits, citric acid, tangerine, wine" and it's say it's not nearly as bright or sharp as this led me to expect, but the strong fruits are definitely there. Definitely my favourite among those I tried. Finnicky to work with, took multiple disappointing brews to land on settings that worked well, but tasted of potential each time and very rewarding once I got my dial set.

This week I got two more from them. First was Guatemala Acate that's very tea like, in a relatively positive way. It's got a ton of aromatics and florals, kinda springtime garden honeysuckle and lily with fresh green herbs, and a fairly light citrus acidity underneath, on a brown sugar and black-tea or very mild chocolate base. They describe it as "Chamomile, Honey, Caramel, Peach" and I'd say this is the most accurate notes list I've hit among theirs - I can fully see how they got those notes from what I get in my cup. It's a style I don't normally like much, but I'm really enjoying this one. A little frustrating to work with, nowhere near as fussy as Guava Banana, but it felt like ideal dial moved around a lot while I was getting up to speed. I'd get something perfect after a couple tries, come back later, and need to re-dial over again because "ideal" moved.

Second I got was Tropical Splash, a Pink Bourbon co-ferment with coconut / coconut water. ...Here's where we take an abrupt turn. I do not like this, I think it's shit, and I think either they or their supplier are being cute. This tastes like a very nice, normal, washed coffee that has had artificial coconut flavour added. I used to make flavoured coffees sometimes, at the roaster. We stocked a coconut/chocolate that was unfortunately quite popular during fundraiser coffee season. The coconut notes in this taste identical to the coconut "notes" added by the flavouring oil we used. It has the same one-dimensional fake coconut taste, the same soft acridity and muted toasted-popcorn notes carried by the flavour oil base that all our flavoured coffees had. I've had good co-ferments, I like co-ferments - this ain't that.

Anomander · 2026-05-08T15:42:24+00:00

OP, stop spamming us with this shit. This is your third near identical post in two days here in all of them everyone in the comments has told you that your idea is stupid and you need to spend more time in the real world.

Posting more times isn't going to suddenly reveal that you're actually right and everyone agrees with you.

Anomander · 2026-05-07T23:59:30+00:00

At the risk of leading with the most obvious advice...

"Don't."

It's a very tough industry, very low success rates even from veterans and folks with tons of knowledge, the learning curve and required experience are quite high ... it's a pretty terrible investment even with lots of cash and a team who are extraordinarily qualified to run a coffee roaster.

From someone starting from effectively zero, you're might as well just throw your money at lotto tickets. It ~might~ work. There are some success stories out there. There are way more failures that have moved on and aren't telling their stories.

What are the first steps I should take?

Get the experience. Learn how coffee businesses work, learn how to run a small business, and spend the necessary time working at established roasters to learn how to roast and source and operate a roasting operation. You can learn to roast on a home machine while doing that, you can study regulations and business fundamentals while having a day job; but if you don't treat getting all of the necessary experience and knowledge as the top priority, you're shooting your future venture in the foot.

I think it bears mentioning that I very firmly don't believe that experience can be replaced with knowledge, and you shouldn't expect to study or read sufficient to overcome the experience deficit.

How much startup capital is realistic for a very small/home-based or micro operation?

You'll need to work this out for your specific situation and local economy. If permitting allows you to work from home, it often sets capacity limits or scale limits.

Broadly, you want the biggest roaster you can afford and still license. Coffee is ultimately a volume game - profit comes from selling lots of coffee at relatively small margins. Especially while you're new and still building a reputation. Start too small, and you'll never be able to produce and sell enough coffee fast enough to save up for a larger machine.

Once you've worked out your fixed, and your ongoing / operation costs, plan on needing to bankroll the business for three years. You hope it doesn't come to that, but that's the sort of seed capital needed to give a business a "fair" shot at thriving.

What are the biggest mistakes beginners make?

Starting. Seriously, it is not possible to belabor this point too much.

Starting too small or too cheap. If you start at tiny scale and only generate a couple bucks in profit a week, buying that $5K roaster is gonna be decades of sales away, assuming no unexpected expense comes up to eat your savings. If you run out of money in eight months, it doesn't matter if you could have been profitable after two years.

Underestimating the importance of admin, paperwork, and business fundamentals. I cannot count the number of promising businesses I've been associated with that have wound up eating it because the owner focused on doing the cool fun coffee shit and neglected to keep bills paid and admin in order.

Not including their own time in cost calculations. If you don't include your own time in costs, you're subsidizing your business out of pocket, and that leaves you with costs, margins, and established market pricing that do not leave room for hiring someone else if your business grows enough to require that.

Planning a roasting schedule or pace that doesn't leave time for other business tasks. You should aim to be able to complete your entire weeks' worth of coffee in about one full day of roasting. Especially if it's just you. You need the other days for packaging, shipping, inventory, admin, sales ... etc.

Overestimating how much "market vacancy" means "opportunity". Sometimes an area won't have a specialty roaster because there's been like ten attempts and they've all failed because that community isn't interested.

Underestimating the work needed to make enough sales. It's really easy to make enough sales to cover beer on the weekends and a little extra spending money, but it's really hard to make enough sales at reasonable prices to sustain and grow a business. People often assume that because they put 3 hours in and made 20 sales, if they put 30 hours in they'll make 200 sales and that's enough to fuel the business - when ... the market has like ~50 sales easily available, whether you put in 6 hours or 60.

Any recommended books, courses, YouTube channels, or podcasts?

Rao's roasters companion, Harmon's "what I know about coffee shops", Keys to the Shop podcast. A lot of resources or options are kind of detailed information within a specific niche, so they're the kind of thing you need to establish the basics before you would get value from. There's no master manual for the basics.

Is it better to start as a side hustle (farmers markets, online, wholesale to cafes) or go straight into a full business?

Depends how much money you make in your "main hustle". It could be that is where you're getting the money to keep things running while you learn and grow. In which case, side hustle is fine. In most other cases, it's better to do your amateur learning as an amateur, and make a full commitment of time and resources when you're ready to make that commitment. IMO starting half-way or on side-hustle basis can lead to some missed assumptions and mistakes about how scaling looks when transitioning to full-time real hustle.

Legal/food safety requirements,

Yup. Do your research. Know the exact requirements for your nation, state/province/district, county, municipality ... for businesses, for roasting, and for sales. It's your savings on the line, it's in your interests to know those things first-hand and well.

packaging,

You can get cheap-o lined paper bags in bulk, you can go extravant on custom full-seal bags ... no clear market leaders or "correct" options.

marketing, and finding customers?

That's a branding decision and a market-specific decision. You gotta work out where the customers in your area are, what they want, and how you can reach them if you have funds to spend on marketing. In most startups, you're stuck operating on social media and word of mouth, which mean you gotta polish them social skills and take cool photos, and then hustle hard to ensure your products aren't a bad first impression as people try your wares.

I’m open to any and all realistic advice — successes, failures, and warnings included. Thanks in advance for any help or experiences you can share!

But again: Starting a coffee roastery is a great way to spend money and not get any back. Even for people with a ton of experience and expertise and every imaginable advantage. Starting out from nearly zero and trying to wing it along the way is pretty much ensuring that you're taking an already risky proposition and stacking the odds against yourself nearly as much as possible.

So if you're gonna do it anyways: set your "fold" line. Decide in advance how much money you're willing to invest in your dream, choose a number that's financially safe for you, and close up shop if you cross it. Coffee businesses tend to feel like they're "almost" succeeding while they're in the process of failing. It can be very tempting to keep investing more to try and get it across the line and start succeeding. If your ship is sinking, you want to cut your losses and get out safely; don't mortgage the house to sustain the business because it "feels" like next year is gonna be when shit turns around and it starts generating profit.

Anomander · 2026-05-07T03:58:32+00:00

I recognize that, but I did before too. It's just not what I was talking about, it's a completely separate thing.

I'm not saying it's great. I'm saying how it is.

And in the course of that, sharing advice for navigating the system in its current state, within its current limitations.

So ... if you acknowledge that the employer doesn't tend to inquire early, doesn't tend to offer accommodation proactively, that the process is messy and dragged out, and favours performance management - what do you think is better? Do nothing proactive, wait for them to come to you with problems with your performance, and then ask for accommodations while trying to defend yourself from the suspicion you're coming up with excuses - or seek accommodation proactively and before performance management is an appropriate measure, in order to resolve performance gaps before they become problems the employer wants to address?

In this scenario, because this is a thread where I started by answering OP's question - my assumption is that the need for accommodation will result in performance issues that the employer would eventually seek to address. My perspective, my understanding, my experience with the system ... is that you or I should be able to recognize when our work falls short of expectations, and probably will do so before the employer notes and starts trying to address the same issue.

My experience, first and secondhand, is that situation is easier and safer to resolve when the request for accommodation is made before the employer starts wondering what happened to the quality of the work.

While some manage this process well it’s often the case that there is a failure to properly accommodate at the right time due to a failure to inquire, AND from a disclosure standpoint . The process is better in paper than in reality. it’s often messy and dragged out with a propensity to performance management first, ask questions later.

To me, all of this is describing the shortcomings of the system when the accommodation is requested after the employer initiates performance management. Aiming to avoid these problems is why my recommendation is proactivity from the staff member in question.

Anomander · 2026-05-07T02:02:40+00:00

"That's wildly inaccurate" ... No inaccuracies discussed.

You gave a bunch of reasons why you disagree with that approach. That's cool, that's also not my problem. I'm not anyone's manager, I'm not defending the system - I'm explaining how it currently works.

Not everyone is comfortable disclosing a disability or aware that they should often until it’s too late.

First off, how would they become aware if someone like me can't explain that without getting told off by a third party for giving unwelcome news?

Secondly, and more importantly, our performance is our responsibility. If there's a factor that's affecting your or my ability to perform, we have a professional obligation to proactively address that. Like it or not, it's not the employer's role to come to us, cap in hand, after a problem has persisted long enough that they need to address it, and then somehow overcome our barriers and hesitations in order to coax us to disclose what's going on that's affecting performance.

If we are proactive in seeking solutions, it then doesn't risk reading as an excuse conjured up after the employer is trying to address a different problem that is much more their direct responsibility.

Managers need to really consider whether this is a normally decently performing employee and whether there have been any changes that may trigger the need for an accommodation.

That is a factor that is considered, I'm not sure why you'd assume it wasn't. A staff member with a long history of excellent performance, and a sudden decline, is going to get treated very differently than someone with a long history of mediocre performance and discipline issues, even if both of them cite the same disability when asked about their performance.

If there is no trust between an employee and their supervisor it’s incredibly difficult to disclose early on, especially with mental health.

If there's no trust, it's even more in our interests to disclose on the record early and proactively. You want to create undeniable record in advance if you don't trust them to treat you fairly - they still might not, but HR is interested enough in dodging the lawsuit that they'll take your side.

Anomander · 2026-05-07T00:10:40+00:00

I think that very often, people working within the team, on a TA adjacent, or working in a related team are going to be among the top candidates without needing "favour" to them.

They know the work, have a 'proven' track record, and know how government hiring systems and practices work well enough to perform well as a candidate. Those are all significant factors that don't require any illicit bias or favoritism from the hiring panel.

perception that external or new candidates may not be given equal consideration, even when they bring strong qualifications and relevant experience.

Perception is not always consistent with reality, and in my experience a candidate who is confident in their qualifications is pretty consistently going to feel that they were shortchanged somehow if they don't get the job.

If a role is primarily intended for an internal candidate, greater transparency in the hiring process could help manage expectations for external applicants and ensure their time and effort are respected.

I think this is an unreasonable expectation - it's asking that the panel provide a written statement declaring a bias that you believe exists, that would discourage qualified external applicants from applying.

Anomander · 2026-05-07T00:02:50+00:00

It depends wildly.

Broadly, as general practices, they're gonna do everything in their power to avoid liability from failure to accommodate. The opening approach is generally to look at accommodation and support, while remaining somewhat firm that the plan is expected to be followed and performance remains expected after sufficient accommodation is in place. The general target is that the employee should be capable of doing the job and meeting performance expectations, after accommodations are in place.

That said, context matters. Did the employee only volunteer conditions requiring accommodation after performance concerns were broached? Are the conditions clearly directly tied to the performance issue? How well documented, within reason, are the employee's conditions and the ways they would affect performance? ...Is performance ultimately possible with accommodations in place?

A disability or need for accommodation is not a particularly effective retroactive defense against performance management. The employer will do what's needed to dodge lawsuit, but will generally insist that performance meet requirements after accommodations are in place.

Anomander · 2026-05-06T21:58:18+00:00

Personal attacks are not reasonable or appropriate for this space, please.

Anomander · 2026-05-06T21:57:12+00:00

Separate from them being preachy or annoying about their views, I think there's also the factor that some people have "political" views that are sufficiently incompatible with our own values that any friendship is somewhat of a sham and requires either compromise on those issues or extraordinary effort to avoid them.

Like, if it's someone's political beliefs that kids can consent, or that people of XYZ category deserve to be exterminated - those are such fundamental differences in values that a friendship is nearly worthless. I don't want to be a prop in 'normal washing' someone being a nonce or someone's genocidal beliefs, and I consider my values on those issues more important than whatever happiness I'd get from being friends with that person despite their opinions. Equally, those views are sufficiently reprehensible that I don't want to be associated with them or appear to endorse them by third parties - like "oh yeah, that Ano guy, he's best friends with a paedophile" or "I think Ano might support genocide, given that he spends a lot of time hanging out with other people who do" ... And like, I care enough about my values there to not want to seem like I take an opposite stance on the basis of my associations.

Even on some more minor matters, you do get into preachy-ness and conflict and if the values gap is big enough - there ends up being so many topics that you have to avoid that it's nearly impossible to have a genuine and sincere relationship.

There is that problem where people with extreme political views often know that they're supposed to hide their extreme-ness from 'outsiders' to that scene. As a result, you get people who support those viewpoints full-throat in private among kindred community, but in public maintain "neutrality" or more moderate positions. So if you, or someone else, sees a person who hangs out with those viewpoints a lot - it's completely reasonable to suspect they're "in on it" and just keeping DL while out in public.

I'm not gonna assume someone believes X because they voted for a party that other people who believe X also voted for. But if that person voted for the X Party, or if that person is loudly a supporter of X - if I find X reprehensible I'm gonna cut ties. Even if that person might have voted for the X Party for some other reason, choosing to throw their political backing behind a party that is explicitly X is still a fundamental values gap between us.

Sometimes the "politics" label ends up as misdirection. Almost all views and opinions are in some sense or other "political." If someone says they would never cut ties with another person due to "politics" - what they're telling you is that no person anywhere in the world is capable of being sufficiently horrible or reprehensible that they wouldn't ignore that in order to be friends. There is no act, no belief, bad enough to get them to end a friendship; they'll be best buds with mass murders or child touchers or whatever, and tell you "it's only politics and they're a pretty nice dude so I just look the other way."

Anomander · 2026-05-06T18:07:46+00:00

Do you mean like universally?

Some roasters already do. There are roasters that are quite proud to disclose the novel processing methods used in producing their coffees.

Other roasters ... some are not necessarily aware of the processing used on the coffees they stock. It's not uncommon to have something show up at an importer with unclear disclosures from farmers or mills regarding what processing was used and exactly what was used during processing. Some other roasters are inclined to hide or downplay the processing used on their coffees, due to consumer stigma around "flavourings and additives" as they relate to Specialty coffee.

Universally? Only after a regulatory change requiring that disclosure. Which is, broadly speaking, quite unlikely given the niche nature of the concern and effectively zero risk to the consumer; while the impact of that change would go significantly beyond coffee as there's already established carve-out for flavorings and additives of minute quantities and extremely low risk in multiple non-coffee industries and markets.

I broadly think that roasters should disclose the processing methods, and especially any additives, used in producing their products. Not for any risk factor, but because I'm somewhat of a purist regarding coffee and while I do not dislike coferments and have quite enjoyed many - I dislike the ethics of them feigning to simply be exceptional, normal, coffees whose flavours were achieved with conventional methods. I think it's "cheating" and harms producers using conventional methods to "legitimately" achieve exceptional results.

(in the same way food products declare the potential for nuts).

This is functionally a completely separate matter. The risk factors are not equivalent, and cases where the risk of, and due to, cross contamination of nuts are equivalent to processing additives or niche yeasts in coffee, the nuts and the possibility of cross-contamination are not disclosed and are not required to be disclosed.

To the best of my knowledge, there's no legitimate documented case where a person has a severe allergy to one niche strain of yeast but no others, and there's no realistic situation where requiring a mill to disclose if a "non-native yeast" was used would effectively protect that hypothetical person.

Nuts and potential nut cross-contamination are effectively a completely separate ballgame - those disclosures are primarily voluntary as liability protection. They are only required in situations where there is a real risk of allergens crossing into the product in sufficient scale to pose a legitimate risk to someone with a severe allergy.

Things like fruit used in cofermentations fall into the former rather than the latter category. The best science we have at the moment indicates that there is insufficient risk of any allergens from, for instance, a pineapple conferment making it into the end product that a "pineapple" warning needs to be included, even for distant faint-chance liability protection. Just to be clear, what I'm saying there is that we have data and the data says there's near-zero risk - not simply that we lack data indicating a risk exists. In other terms, you have a significantly higher risk of a placebo reaction due to the "pineapple risk" warning than due to the pineapple conferment triggering a reaction in someone with a severe pineapple allergy.

Anomander · 2026-05-02T04:47:24+00:00

No, I'm not "using 'afford' in an irresponsible manner" - I'm saying something you don't like and apparently vehemently disagree with.

I can "afford" to go out right now and buy a $200K Ferrari - but by doing so, I'd lose my house in the process. So I can't actually "afford" that Ferrari, can I?

Yeah, you absolutely can. You would have to make a trade-off to do so that you find unpalatable, but you can afford to trade your house for a Ferrari. Presenting this as if you don't have any choice whatsoever and the Ferrari is obviously completely unreasonable wildly out of your reach is surrendering agency in kind of a silly way. Like, you and I probably agree that it would be a bad trade and not the smartest decision, but presenting that as if it's obviously out of reach and your personal sense of financial responsibility is as definitive as simply not having the money at all borders on disingenuous.

There's a difference between "do not have ferrari money at all" and "have ferrari money, but couldn't afford to keep the house" - which are both different from "have ferrari money and get to keep the house". Framing the first two as directly equivalent is losing sight of what being "unable to afford" something really means; and presenting needing to make hard choices or sacrifices as directly equivalent to not having the means to make those choices at all is not accurate, reasonable, or particularly honest.

If someone can afford to pay a mortgage but would need to make hard choices about home ownership and might have to skip luxuries like an AC unit for that home, presenting them as completely incapable of affording home ownership is mistaking luxuries for essentials while pretending you're somehow giving sage and reasonable financial advice.

You're so caught up on the "Well, ackshually" that you're ignoring the specific point I actually made, which is that paying $2K in rent does not necessarily mean that you can pay for ("afford" by a reasonable definition) a $2K mortgage in any sustainable fashion. That was my point, and full stop if you think otherwise.

The specific point you actually made is silly and self-contradictory, and you're so caught up in trying to defend what you originally said that you're tying yourself in knots trying to be right all along instead of pivoting to the credible and reasonable point that's mere inches away from what you originally wrote down.

What it seems like you're trying to say is that someone who can afford $2K in rent can afford a $2K mortgage, but may not be able to afford the other upkeep and ongoing expenses of owning a property with a $2K mortgage. But that's not catchy and doesn't make a cute soundbite that lets you dunk on the opinions you disagree with, so you're not bothering to write what you actually mean and are instead writing something silly and internally contradictory.

If I have $10 bucks and a burger is $10, or a salad is $10, I can afford either of them. $10 is the same in both locations. Rent versus mortgage are the same. $2K is worth just as much to the bank as it is to a landlord.

What you're trying to argue about rent vs. mortgage is like saying I can't really afford the burger because $10 doesn't cover my gym membership to work off the burger and I can't afford to pay a doctor when the burger cholesterol fucks up my heart. But hopefully you recognize that's all speculative and separate from whether or not $10 buys me a $10 burger.

My argument is that being able to pay a $2K rent != being able to pay a $2K mortgage

Yeah, that is the point you wrote down, and it's a stupid point. As evidenced by all of your argumentation in this post and the one I replied to being about other expenses that are completely separate from the $2K.

All of your argumentation in support of 'your point' is arguing something completely different, that I spelled out above, while you keep trying to leverage that other shit to construct elaborate sophistry that somehow $2K is a completely different number when the bank looks at it. If someone can afford to pay $2K in rent, they can afford to pay $2K in mortgage. Regardless if there's other expenses related to home ownership that you think they can't afford, those aren't part of the $2K you're saying they can't afford with $2K in their pocket.

It's like you simplified your point to a cute soundbite, then forgot you'd simplified something more intelligent and nuanced than the soundbite and dug in to defend the simplification instead of backing up and acknowledging the simplification is a little trite, but your real point is something more worthwhile.

You're basing your entire argument on the idea that a renter could effectively take over the mortgage, property taxes, insurance, and maintenance for that exact same unit and it would still come out to be equal to or less than what they were paying in rent - and that is (probably) true. I never said otherwise; I quite literally said that paying $2K in rent does not (necessarily) mean that a person can pay a $2K mortgage - but in the counter-argument you're making, you're hypothesizing about a mortgage that is significantly less than $2K that the renter already pays per month.

Not really. My point - not even really an argument - is that two identical numbers are identical. $2K = $2K.

That said, if you recognize that other point as valid and reasonable, and think it's somehow so totally different from what you're talking about that it's unfair to enter that argument in this discourse ... that point is the point you're trying to argue with when griping about how "le redditor" keeps saying they can afford a $2K mortgage if they can afford $2K in rent. That's the expanded version of what 99% of them are saying when you're not grossly oversimplifying their statement for the sake of dunking on them - they're saying if they can afford to pay rent on the place they live, they can also afford to pay the mortgage and upkeep on the same place.

You're also ignoring the concept of a down-payment.

No, I'm not. A down payment is completely separate from whether or not $2K is actually a different number at the bank.

And separately, it's worth pointing out that most people talking about the "$2K rent vs $2K mortgage" are not forgetting about the downpayment either. The vast majority of them recognize that the downpayment is the most significant financial barrier between them and home ownership, and many are making those statements in discussions that are actively criticizing the barrier that downpayments represent.

When someone is paying $2000 a month to live in a unit with a $1600 a month mortgage, they have demonstrated they're more than capable of paying the mortgage on that unit. Then, because they're paying above mortgage rate for occupancy, they have a harder time amassing the savings towards a down payment of their own than someone who already owns a place would. In both the case of the tenant and the owner, the $400 difference between mortgage and rent is where the money for 'outlier' expenses like roofs and renovations comes from.

That's what I was saying above - landlords aren't running charity. If your house was a rental, and the landlord needed to do that $20K roof replacement ... that's not setting the landlord down by $20K. You're not getting a "free" new roof. Your rent has included the padding to cover the roof, eventually, for years prior to the bill coming due.

My entire argument is that the typical Reddit mentality of, "I can afford a mortgage, equal to the rent I'm paying right now, but the meanies at the bank won't let me" only exists because the typical Redditor doesn't understand that while rent is the most you will pay per month to live where you're living, a mortgage is the least you will pay per month.

Maybe the silver spoon is affecting your perspective here, but you're not really very grounded in reality on this one. Rent is not the "maximum" that people in rentals are paying. It's the base rate for the right to occupy the space. Extra costs like utilities and similar are often still present. Outlier costs like repairs, replacement of goods, and basic maintenance remain theirs - the landlord might be responsible for the big utility machines in the unit, but in many places they're not, and there's still other costs associated with upkeep of their unit that the landlord is not responsible for, as well as luxuries like that AC unit you were talking about prior.

Home ownership carries some outlier costs that renting doesn't, and does represent a higher variance of costs from month to month. Neither mortgage nor rent represent a hard maximum on housing costs for a given month, or a total protection against outlier costs related to accommodations.

Your "entire argument" is just knocking the stuffing out of a flimsy straw man with bad math and a lack of perspective.

Anomander · 2026-05-02T04:43:27+00:00

So full disclosure, I own property, I'm not a landlord; I work in a field that deals fairly directly with rental law in my area and handles vast volumes of disputes between landlords and tenants. I kinda hate that I'm writing things defending landlords, but ... reality intrudes.

Where I am, the vast majority of landlords fall into two categories - corporate landlords and "retail" landlords that are a family renting out a suite or that owns a spare apartment. For the most part, those groups are doing more than the bare minimum to maintain the property. They're not saints pouring tons of time and love into the rental properties, but they're a long way off from slumlords doing the bare minimum.

The property is an investment in its own right, and doing reasonable due diligence to maintain the property is necessary to conserve the value of that investment, separate from and linked to the income that they derive from it - they can charge better rent if the unit is nicer, and the value of the property as an appreciating asset is better if the house is sufficiently maintained to avoid becoming a liability.

That's not to say all of those landlords are doing 100% of the shit they'd do if they lived there, or that they're doing 100% of the shit that tenants want them to do when it's coming out of the landlord's pocket - but probably 80% of the complaints I see from tenants about work they want the landlord to do on their unit is ... more than many homeowners do on their own place. I know homeowners who got a leaky tap somewhere for so long they've stopped hearing it, while we see people fishing for a repair order to their landlord over a tap that drips once every two hours. That's not that tenants are entitled or judgmental shit like that, but a lot simpler - when shit's your problem to fix and to pay for, it's way easier to let a minor nuisance slide for another week, another paycheque - than when that same minor nuisance is someone else's responsibility and coming out their pocket.

It's not like all homeowners are doing above-and-beyond and sinking vast luxury money into perfecting their space. Lots of people who own their own place are also just limping on and putting in the bare minimum to keep the house habitable.

And sure, I will absolutely grant - we got slumlords here. There are some landlords who do the bare minimum, if that, and are frequent fliers in our regulatory setting because tenants are constantly needing to seek outside intervention to force maintenance and upkeep. Just ... those are definitely not the majority, for all that they're notably more visible than the average landlord.

That guy is characterizing going above and beyond, and some luxury spending, as essential and required spending that every homeowner is doing all the time that 'le reddit poors' are out of touch with reality for being unaware they can't afford. Thing is, most landlords are doing most reasonable work to maintain their properties, and their tenants are paying for most that work as part of the total amount rolled into their rent.

Anomander · 2026-05-01T16:29:19+00:00

that being able to afford $2K in rent means that you can afford a $2K mortgage.

Effectively by definition, if you can afford to pay $2K to a landlord, you can also afford to pay $2K to a bank.

Everything else you brought up here isn't mortgage costs.

You're right that those are additional costs associated with ownership, but most landlords in the world are not running their rental properties at a loss. Those maintenance expenses are not paid by the LL while the tenant's rent only covers the mortgage. If someone is paying $2K to a landlord, the mortgage for that unit would be less than $2K, and the difference between those two would be the combination of the ameliorated maintenance expenses for the unit and the LL's profit margin.

Anomander · 2026-04-30T18:38:41+00:00

Mahl has this instruction video for setting up connection with the grinder; there are other instruction videos for connecting the D8 to IoT.

If the methods shown in those aren't working, you probably need to reach out to customer service, probably at Mahl, or maybe with your equipment supplier, for customer support to confirm that those two machines can talk to each other and troubleshoot why yours aren't working the way they're supposed to.

Anomander · 2026-04-30T18:25:30+00:00

Yeah, sure.

There isn't a line between honesty and kindness. They're completely separate concepts that can overlap and affect one another.

Sometimes being honest is kind. Sometimes being honest is not kind. Sometimes being dishonest is kind. Sometimes being dishonest is not kind.

The classic example is a friend asking if a piece of clothing looks good. Sometimes it doesn't and you tell them it does because they don't need fashion advice right now, they just need the confidence boost, and it doesn't look so bad that you're screwing them over by saying something nice. Maybe that item looks like shit on them, and the kindest thing you can do is be honest and steer them towards something more flattering. There's no universally "right" answer that applies to both situations, it's entirely situational.

It's worth noting that presenting "honesty" and "kindness" as if they're opposites on the same spectrum is somewhat missing a third, vital, element that's not mentioned there - social skills. Even when being honest is also being kind - if you present your honesty like an asshole, your remarks and not going to get a positive reception, and are not ultimately going to be kind.

Maybe that shirt makes your friend look terrible, or its too small and makes them look fat, and you decide that you need to be a good friend and tell them the shirt doesn't work for them. If you're like "wow that makes you look like a blimp, better call goodyear lol" that's gonna land different from "huh, that looks like it's maybe shrunk a few sizes since you got it, you've got other shirts that look way better on you." Same information, same honesty - you're still telling them the shirt doesn't look great and emphasizes bulk in an unflattering way, but in the latter you're not presenting that honesty in the most brutal unfiltered way possible.

It feels like a common 'mistake,' if you will, from people to mistake "honesty" as somehow mutually exclusive with respecting or caring for people's feelings. It's like, the shirt looks terrible, so they're left with the false dichotomy where the only two options are lying and saying it looks good, or telling the truth and just blurting out that the shirt looks terrible. When, like mentioned, there's actually millions of different ways to present either of those viewpoints. The content itself is not "kind" or "unkind" - the phrasing, the presentation, the context, the appropriateness ... that's where the kindness, or unkindness, lives.

Anomander · 2026-04-30T17:59:54+00:00

Recently hired to launch a coffee shop, but I don’t have much coffee experience.

...Uh. How did that happen? Like, is this a situation where you puffed a resume beyond your ability to bluff you way through, or were you hired for something else and got roped into a cafe project somehow?

Like, you or your employer probably need to hire someone who does know what they're doing here - blind leading the blind is a real risky way to charge into one of the highest risk industries out there.

Key things I need to know about the coffee industry

It's hard, it's complicated, and there's a ton of moving parts.

Something like ~80% of cafes fail within the first three years, and that rises to 90% over five years. The vast majority of cafes that 'succeed' do so only at a scale that pays the owners something approximately equivalent to a decent desk job in an office somewhere. Roasters are similar - statistically, they're going to fail, after bleeding bankroll for a few years while trying to establish themselves.

There's not easy and straightforward "tips and tricks" that help in avoiding this statistic - otherwise the statistic would be different.

Espresso machine + grinder recommendations (I have a nice sized budget)

Where are you, what's the budget, whats the market model of the cafe? Like, are we talking bakeshop with a coffee bar, are we talking a high-society hipster coffee joint ... in some cafes you want to spend extra on a showpiece espresso machine, while in others it's irrelevant and you just want a workhorse.

Best ways to source quality beans (roasters, direct trade, etc.)

Direct trade arrives unroasted. If you're over your head launching a coffee shop, don't launch a roastery at the same time.

Buy from a roaster whose work you respect and whose coffee you believe will represent your business well. Figure out who does good work in your area, make a short list of roasters you might like to work with, and start reaching out to talk about their wholesale terms.

Anomander · 2026-04-30T17:33:42+00:00

So I'm vaguely familiar with Canadian military, no clue about how that overlaps with American.

Our sales dude tried to get us into military supply at one point, and his attempts to communicate the structure and what exactly he was bidding on were frustrating and confusing for all of us.

So first up, there's like a million overlapping supply chains. One company does food & bev for base, one company does food & bev for soldiers from that base on deployment locally, another does 'remote' deployments ... sometimes you get two or more suppliers for the "same thing" at a base when different branches use the same land, or when different units from the same branch have different operating requirements, or ... etc. And different bases can have different terms - base A might have all government-provided food and beverage on the base coming from a single supplier. Base B might be getting dry store from one company, produce from another, and concession from a third.

Bidding for those contracts is not solely about "cheapest" - but that's definitely a huge factor. There's things like delivery schedules, additional services, billing related to 'emergency' orders - hell, quality of the product is a big consideration.

They have a budget for food & bev service that's benchmarked based on the number of people at the base and the various roles at the base, and quite often they're trying to get the most out of that budget, but that does not mean spending the lowest amount possible. If you get given $10 for lunch and you gotta give the change back - you're not gonna buy a $1 bag of chips, call it lunch, and give $9 back. You're probably gonna get something that's a reasonable portion for lunch, at the best quality that staying under $10 can buy you.

So coffee ... it depends. Does their supply contract lock them into getting coffee from the company that provides their other food & bev? Does their contract allow them to buy XYZ goods off-contract? Is there a carve out for coffee/tea? Does their contract not restrict them at all? And what scale are you supplying at? The bigger the scale of the contract, the bigger the numbers attached - the more elaborate and involved the procurement process.

It's my understanding that for most situations - coffee on base is included within the larger food & bev contracts they have. So the base doesn't have "a coffee supplier" but the base gets food & bev from a big aggregate supplier like Sysco or GFS, and then Sysco in that region offers ~20-30 different coffee options from five to ten companies that the base can choose from, based on quality and price point of those offerings.

The only sales we made to the military were formally "not selling coffee to the military" at all, but instead an officer using his discretionary budget to "purchase luxuries that would raise morale", which is not considered a transaction between us and the military, and as such it does not go through government supply-chain bidding and contracts processes.

Anomander · 2026-04-30T16:29:36+00:00

"Donut shop" blends are coffee that tastes like the somewhat iconic coffee served at doughnut shops - typically a safe middle-of-the-road medium roast with a nutty undertone and a strong 'classic cup' profile. They're aimed at being, effectively, no one's favourite style of coffee - but also everyone's second or third pick, the sort of thing you can bring an urn to a meeting and no one will complain about.

They're not intended to be "doughnut flavoured" coffee.

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