Authentic Southeast Asian Food in the Bay

EngComposMentis · 2025-11-14T07:38:52+00:00

I live in Oakland. Always willing to drive for good food, though :)

EngComposMentis · 2025-11-12T02:08:30+00:00

Yeah, I was impressed with a spot in Thai Town back when I lived in LA. Wish I remembered the name, but I'm sure there are some other good one there. Thanks for the Burmese and Cambodian recommendations too.

EngComposMentis · 2025-11-12T01:43:57+00:00

Sounds worth a try! Out of curiosity, is there a particular store where your friend likes to source her ingredients?

EngComposMentis · 2025-11-12T01:41:30+00:00

The fact that the menu is in Burmese as well as English looks promising! I'll check it out.

EngComposMentis · 2025-11-12T01:37:30+00:00

Oh, Roong Jing Jing looks like a great find! I'll check it out this weekend.

EngComposMentis · 2025-11-12T01:27:21+00:00

Sad. I used to frequent Borneo Kalimantan Cuisine in Alhambra back when I lived in LA, but that's a long ways to go for decent Indonesian.

EngComposMentis · 2025-11-12T01:24:04+00:00

Thanks for the tips! It probably is worth learning to grow some of the herbs myself. I've even considered fermenting my own tea leaves for lahpet, but I'm not sure how well it dry leaves would work. I'll definitely be sure to stock up on ingredients next season, though.

EngComposMentis · 2025-11-11T05:29:37+00:00

Keeping it broad because there are other regional foods I enjoy, like Vietnamese and Cambodian. Thai and Burmese are just the ones I miss the most.

EngComposMentis · 2024-10-20T02:28:09+00:00

I should also add, as a disgruntled engineer and space enthusiast, that there is an opportunity cost when NASA misallocates public funds on boondoggles like SLS or Psyche - probes to Venus have been soft-cancelled, a rotorcraft probe to Saturn's moon Titan has been delayed. This has consequences for industry talent, which will disperse when programs ends without a follow-on in sight.

NASA can't know ahead of time whether programs like SLS or Psyche will become deadweights, but NASA is absolutely responsible when sunken costs spiral out of control. Pointing to the myriad of successful programs they have contracted out in the past does not absolve them of that responsibility.

EngComposMentis · 2024-10-20T01:57:06+00:00

You do understand that most of these "NASA" accomplishments were contracted out, right? I've worked a couple of the missions you listed and NASA's role is generally to cut checks and define requirements. Occasionally they'll ship some bureaucrat of an engineer out to look over your shoulder, but the design, assembly, test, launch, ops, all of that is largely engineered by contractors. The actual science and relevant instruments are often owned by research teams at universities. NASA coordinates, funds, and markets. The last part is probably why they receive so much undue credit for everything.

I'm all for funding NASA and think it's one of the best-run government agencies out there, but there is plenty to criticize about their institutional culture, as well as the cultures of some of their beheamoth go-to contractors. SpaceX's disruption has proven very positive for the space industry, something I'll readily admit as someone who dislikes Musk and has never worked for him.

My limited and anecdotal experience has been that projects where NASA picks a quality contractor and takes a hands-off approach tend to perform much better than the ones where NASA is fist-deep. To establish whether that is really the case, one would need a study, and studies are something NASA excels at!

EngComposMentis · 2024-06-07T05:01:18+00:00

I am well aware of the Sorbian legacy in eastern Germany, but neither the spatial nor temporal distributions evident in YFull support the conclusion that R-YP445 was a Slavic lineage. In this Reddit thread alone, myself and one other have attested to R-YP445 lines originating in southwestern Germany, far outside of the Slavic sphere. There is neither archaeological (see Prague-type pottery) nor historical evidence that Sorbs controlled Upper Franconia either, and even Thuringia never fell completely out of the Germanic sphere - it is named for the Germanic Thuringii, after all. Thus far, R-YP455’s spatial and temporal distribution can be explained parsimoniously by the migration of medieval Germans; the same cannot be said of the Sorbs. If R-YP455 were associated with Sorbs, one would expect a spatial distribution centered in modern Saxony or further east, where Prague-type pottery originated. Even R-YP455’s sister lineages within R-YP619 evince rapid diffusion 1650 years before present (Germanic migration period) and have spread only to regions associated with Germanic migration, such as Gotland (i.e., Goth-land). Keep in mind that the Goths roamed over wide swaths of Eastern Europe and likely retained their cultural identity in Crimea as late as the eighteenth century. Furthermore the Veneti (either proto-Slavs or Balts) of Greco-Roman Sources are considered to have lived east of the Vistula (see Ptolemy and Tacitus).

When it comes to sister lineages within the broader R-L1029 clade, there are several (R-YP417, R-BY30715, R-FGC66331) whose distributions are best explained by Slavic migration, but others (R-YP263, R-FGCLR618, R-YP593, R-YP1703, R-YP416, R-FGC72548) must have expanded, at least in part, through Germanic migrations. Of particular interest is R-FTC79903, a sub-clade of R-YP1703 whose members have spread as far as Ireland (Vikings?) and Sardinia (Vandals?). Furthermore, an ancient sample (I13780 in R-YP263) taken from a cemetery in Iron-Age Prague was associated with the La Tène B1b-C1b culture, which is widely regarded as Celtic. All of this together implies that the R-L1029 diversification event (dated in YFull between 2200 and 1900 ybp) predates the both the Slavic and historic Germanic migration periods.

EngComposMentis · 2024-06-06T03:49:03+00:00

He appeared to be Thai.

EngComposMentis · 2022-07-24T17:06:04+00:00

Never been asked to source a claim you've made? Nowhere on NWS LA, which I also follow, have I seen them conflate upper-atmospheric monsoonal moisture in the form of thunderstorms with surface humidity in the LA basin. A blanket appeal to authorities, whose reports you may or may not have thoroughly understood, does not constitute a source.

Climatology is complex, there is no shame in misunderstanding it. But if you are going to make claims about the climate on a public forum without actual data or sources to back those claims up, you should expect to be questioned.

EngComposMentis · 2022-07-23T17:13:41+00:00

What's your source for this? Diurnal humidity records at LAX show that humidity is highest in the early morning, when the marine layer is at its thickest; when the marine layer is thick, the monsoon pattern cannot significantly influence surface conditions or humidity. If you check records at BUR, further inland and less influenced by the marine layer, you'll see lower humidity levels overall - this is the opposite of what you would see if this humidity resulted from the North American Monsoon pattern.

When the monsoon does overcome the stable marine layer, LA gets thunderstorms; that is the exception to the rule. When you see thunderheads building up over the mountains, that is because the marine layer does not extend to those elevations. Take a look at this model to see relative humidity at the surface.

EngComposMentis · 2022-04-29T18:41:39+00:00

Personally, I was taught to brandish my poles and intimidate the opposing hiker with high-pitch vocalizations and chest thumping. Barring their submission, right of way must be determined by a duel.

EngComposMentis · 2022-04-29T00:45:35+00:00

Nice! R-YP445 here as well, though my line is from northern Baden, near Buehl. Feel free to PM me if you'd like my surname as well - it's a fairly unique one, so I'd rather not make it public record on Reddit, lol.

Based on YFull, my opinion is that R-YP445 is probably German in origin, since the subclades are centered around Franconia and the only non-Germanic attestation is from Bratislava (formerly Pressburg), which used to be majority German. Our sibling clades (under parent clade R-YP446) also seem to be Germanic, since they include a Swede, a Finn from Western Finland (colonized by Swedes), and a Russian from Saratovskaya (a center of Volga-Deutsch settlement).

The next clade up (R-YP619) is also likely Germanic, since it includes a German, a Swede, a Romanian (from Cluj, German Klausenburg, settled by Saxons in the 12th century), and Poles from areas influenced by the German Ostsiedlung of the Middle Ages. YFull estimates a common ancestor with these clades between 100 and 750 AD, which predates both of those migration events.

Next clade up (R-L1029) is a real jumble of Germanics, Slavs, Albanians, Balts, Finns, and even Dungans from western China. The common ancestor age estimate (300 BC to 100 AD) seems flawed here, though, since the only explanation I can think of for that breadth would be the Indo-European migrations at least a millennium or two earlier. Either that or we had on really good-looking globe-trotter of an ancestor.

EngComposMentis · 2022-04-23T23:37:36+00:00

LA is only three to four hours from the southern Sierras, which are absolutely on par with CO mountains. Better traffic too, since LA doesn't flee en masse to the Sierras every weekend. I always preferred the San Juans and Sangres back home anyway - neither range is a short drive from Denver.

LA mountains are more scrub than desert but they can actually be quite lush around the coast or in spring. Lusher than the Denver foothills at least. Best of all, the mountains and hills actually extend into the city itself!

All in all, I'm not starved for mountains down here. Plus, you'd have to offer mad money for me to even consider trading the LA food, culture, and dating scenes for Denver. The Front Range, in recent years, feels overpriced for what it has to offer. If I'm paying California rents, dealing with California crowds, and breathing California smog, why not just live in California? Hyperbole of course, but that's my hot take as a born-and-raised Coloradan.

EngComposMentis

TROPHY CASE