When coffee snobism, techbros, subscription services, unnecessarily energy and packaging intensive processes and venture capital collide, you know the result will inevitably be WTFifying.
I am once again asking the men to stop inventing stuff that doesn't need invented
For the avoidance of doubt, they make coffee, freeze it, package it in plastic pods, package that in display packaging, package that in insulated postal packaging, send it to you, you store it frozen, and then when you want a coffee you put a pod in a cup and add boiling water
Want an "impossibly convenient" latte? Just repeat the process by impossibly conveniently melting the capsule (how, where?) and magicking up an impossibly convenient cup of hot, steamed milk which we have yet to invent an impossibly convenient frozen capsule for 🤷♂️
To make impossibly convenient iced coffee you first have to melt your frozen coffee! Howling! 🤨
Not only can enjoy "a great cup of coffee anywhere" (just so long as you go everywhere with a cool bag and kettle) but can carry your stupid frozen coffee pods on the plane, so you can enjoy knowing they're melting away while as you decline that airline filter coffee
What better way to round off a Sunday evening than talking once again about sewage. Specifically, part 3 of the Edinburgh sewer story - the great untold engineering feat of the 1970s Interceptor Sewer Scheme.
To recap, in the 1950s, Edinburgh's sewage scheme was to collect all the effluent and then pipe out to sea and hope for the best. After the big Victorian schemes to intercept the waste going into the Water of Leith, the system had progressed along these lines as the city grew
The system basically prevented raw sewage entering the major rivers and burns and conducted the waste, sewage and runoff from the natural drainage catchments of the city towards the Forth.
It was directly as a result of the EC (as it was) Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive that this practice ended and secondary treatment of the sludge was finally commenced
There is a building in Craiglockhart that frequently comes up in property listings (as it is now converted to a lot of retirement homes) with the romantic and ancient sounding name of Perdrixknowe
The name is straightforward enough, Perdrix is the French for Partridge, Knowe is the Scots for a hillock or a mound (from the English Knoll). Often a knowe specifically meant a gather place for fairies.
James Steuart, in his history of Colinton Parish, records that the Partridge Knowe, or Patrickes Know (Perdrix frequently became Patrick in Scots placenames) was the rise in the ground to the north of the Craiglockhart and Craighouse hills.
Every time you see a proposal for a new station it's a big car park and access road, a couple of fugly lift towers and a bus shelter stuck on the platform as an afterthought
A Scotrail one anyways
That's Inverness Airport by the way. For comparison here are recent proposals for East Linton and Reston