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Okay, American immigrant to the UK here to explain all the mistakes from Paul Hollywood happening here: there is one fundamentally American ingredient required to make a s'more correctly but which is basically not available anywhere at all in the UK, and that is graham crackers. A plain digestive biscuit close-ish, but still a very different beast.
From Wikipedia: A graham cracker is a sweet flavored cracker made with graham flour.
The next ingredient (which is also extremely traditionally American but slightly more variable) is typically Hershey's chocolate, but you could probably swap this out in the UK with any plain chocolate bar.
Last ingredient is big marshmallows, the kind you do the chubby bunny challenge with, like the size of your thumb and twice as thick.
A proper s'more, the most traditional possible variety, involves to graham cracker squares, two slab segments of Hershey's chocolate, and one to two marshmallows depending on your preference for filling and gooeyness. You put a slab of chocolate on one of the graham cracker squares. Your marshmallows should be toasted, usually over a campfire but if you're doing them at home over a gas stove burner is fine, but the fire part is critical. You can toast them to whatever degree you like, some people like them nice and golden brown but still kind of firm in the middle, me personally? I want that bitch to CATCH ON FIRE, I want it gooey and sticky as hell in the middle, crispy and burnt on the outside. Slap that motherfucker on your graham cracker and chocolate square, top with the other one so your marshmallow and chocolate are sandwiched together by graham cracker on the outside. You do this with your freshly toasted marshmallow because ideally it will be hot enough to start to melt the chocolate so it sticks to the marshmallow and the graham cracker and, combined with the gooey marshmallow, it keeps the whole thing together, and for that reason some people will let them sit for a hot second to let the melting process happen (especially if like me you have chocolate on BOTH graham cracker squares, not just one, because you're a sugar fiend), but if you are a young child you do not have that degree of patience and you eat that shit immediately, unmelted chocolate and all. Consume your summer camp delight like a tiny club sandwich, get gooey sticky marshmallow and chocolate all over your hands, and enjoy.
Important note: this is a kids treat. It is a traditional summer camping trip dessert. It should be something any ten year old with adult supervision and access to the ingredients can make (and make a mess of). They're called s'mores because kids always "want s'more". If you are using a blowtorch, chocolate biscuits, and merengue, you are so far beyond the bounds of s'more-hood that you have thoroughly lost the plot. If you offered Paul Hollywood's concoction to an American child and called it a s'more, they'd tell you flat out that not only is it not a s'more, it looks dumb and you didn't do it right because it's not gooey.
the point is the mess. the point is getting to make a food, at age seven, whose two basic food groups are 'sugar' and 'fire'. the other point is that this food item is so crumbly, chaotic, sticky, on fire, and prone to being dropped (outside, in the dark, while you are surrounded by other children who are also sticky and on fire) that your supervisors cannot accurately monitor how many smores you personally have consumed. the point is also that you may get away with a smore that is five blocks of chocolate and two marshmallows if you move fast and let nothing stop you.
if you haven't accidentally yet unrepentantly eaten a chunk of twigs or dirt or a bug that got enmeshed in the creative process around smore number 3st, you are too old to have any legitimate input into what makes a smore.
There's 2 other points that I think are important.
The first is that you don't pull the marshmallow off the roasting stick and somehow put it on the chocolate. Your staging area will look something like this, with the graham crackers and chocolate already set out (though not usually on the fire like this, for us it was always someone's lap or a picnic table or something)
And when your marshmallow has reached appropriate roasting perfection, you use the graham crackers to slide it off the stick.
and ideally, as a CHILD you are using a literal stick. Like you walked around and spent time looking for The Perfect Stick off the ground while the adults set up the fire. It has to be thin enough the marshmallow will fit, sturdy enough that it won't bow, long enough that you won't burn yourself roasting your marshmallow. And preferably doesn't have a lot of bark that's sloughing off, OR so much bar sloughing off you can peel it all back and get to the clean stick under it. If you're smart, you might stick the tip into the fire first to "wash" it/burn off anything that was still lingering, but. well, most kids don't.
When you bite in, the marshmallow and chocolate SHOULD ooze out all over you. If you don't kinda look like this eating it, you've probably done it wrong:
The description of the marshmallows as being either brown on the outside but still firm on the inside or fully melted but burned on the outside is missing the true art: fully molten in the middle, without the black burns. Not to say OP is wrong for preferring the burn! But there is a technique for perfection and it goes like this:
You find a spot, not above all the logs where everyone sticks their marshmallows by default, but at the heart of the fire. Ideally between a couple logs already glowing gold. Something like here:
Below the leaping flame. Near the logs. There's probably only one or two spots good enough for this on any given fire, but that's okay because everyone else is up above. They will get their marshmallows faster. They will be either firm or burned or both. That's not your goal.
Rotate the marshmallow slowly. Ideally come in at an angle so the part closest to the flame is the side, not the tip. The spot closest to the fire is the spot that turns a crispy golden brown, and you want that everywhere, on the tip and around the circle.
You keep going, slowly turning, for several minutes. Several people will rotate in and out of the higher sections, getting their fast delight. Eventually, your marshmallow will start sagging badly, risking falling. Maybe it does fall and got start over. But eventually it will be golden brown all over, and so liquid it no longer clings to the stick. It is ready, finally.
You say "who hasn't gotten one yet?" And deposit it onto their waiting graham crackers and chocolate. You've made an excellent marshmallow. It isn't for you. Get another while you're over by the bags and go back to the heart of the fire.
That's your evening. One, slow, perfect marshmallow at a time, given to whomever still wants s'more. You're making art for children to stuff into their mouths cheerfully. You're watching the movement of the fire and the heat of the logs, like you would if you were maintaining it — maybe you would be, maybe you were the one who built it — but right now that's not the goal. Let someone else put more logs on, while you take only the one stick and find the best spot for it to live.
You will, eventually, finish a marshmallow and find that nobody moves to accept it. Maybe they're all eating right now, or maybe they've gone through so many they're hesitating. Eat your masterpiece then. Enjoy it, the hardest and most perfect result from a fun and beautiful moment. Go back in for another, until you've run out of marshmallows and the fire is too low or until even you are done with s'mores, until you have made enough.
"We don't want a gooey mess" pfft even the artistry studied at the feet of my father is inherently a gooey mess. That's the whole point!
In light of recent events, I have begun submitting bug reports when I see mature content labels applied inappropriately to posts, especially if an appeal has been rejected.
for what it's worth: after a few months of submitting help tickets as 'feedback' when i saw a post inappropriately flagged as mature, i tried following this suggestion instead. today i got my first-ever response from tumblr support on this issue, letting me know that a post i'd submitted a ticket before has had its mature content flag removed.
This is legitimately brilliant. Bug burndown reports (the rate at which your software team can close bugs) is a major metric for most software houses.
It takes an extra step in our part, but this is part of what makes it effective. It's not one click, one reblog activism and it hits them where they care: their damn KPIs.
I have been awake for approximately 22 hours straight.
I would like to speak to management.
(The weather is too nice. It's sunny and warm but cool and the air is nice and fresh because I had my windows/sliding doors open all day. I am Invigorated)
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Every time you catch yourself going, "Fuck, are humans just inherently evil and naturally inclined to selfishness and harm???" you HAVE to remember that that's literally a core ideal of Christianity.
So if it feels inescapable and like evidence of it is everywhere, whether at times or always, that might just because you're in a Western country where you're surrounded by Christians who believe that, fundamentally, in their worldview. And also they talk and make art about it all the time and run the vast majority of news outlets. And spent over a thousand years burning any art or texts that disagreed with them. Etc. etc.
If you're gonna come to as drastic and painful a conclusion as that, at least take the time first to make sure you're not working with biased evidence (surrounded by too many people and cultural products that believe original sin is real)
And if it turns out the feeling WAS partly the result of cultural Christianity, then hey, that's great news, because it means there's that much (and it really is SO MUCH) less evidence that humans inherently suck. Which is good, because we don't
ignore that cultural trauma, ask an archeologist / paleontologist.
how often do we find human remains / burials attributable to a peaceful death of old age, or at least to disease / wild animals? and attributable to human violence, i.e. with traces of weapon impacts?
to use an old quote, the last ape became the first human not when he picked up a stick to reach some fruit, but when he used that stick to bash another ape over the head and take away his fruit.
I disagree with pretty much all of that, actually. Modern archeology is only just in the process of pulling itself out of hundreds of years of racism, bias, colonialism, disproven assumptions, widespread graverobbing, and massive, blatant pseudoscience; many ideas and publications in the field that older than about 20 years are of highly questionable provenance.
I personally am much more convinced and compelled by newer theories that, if any piece of technology made us human, it was not the weapon - it was the carrier bag, the story, and/or fire. (But not fire with the primary purpose of violence, mind you - fire with the primary purpose of heat and food and sanitation)
Here's a quote on this from one of my absolute favorite thinkers and writers, Ursula K. Le Guin:
If you haven't got something to put it in, food will escape you-
even something as uncombative and unresourceful as an oat. You
put as many as you can into your stomach while they are handy, that
being the primary container; but what about tomorrow morning
when you wake up and it's cold and raining and wouldn't it be good
to have just a few handfuls of oats to chew on and give little Oom to
make her shut up, but how do you get more than one stomachful
and one handful home? So you get up and go to the damned soggy
oat patch in the rain, and wouldn't it be a good thing if you had
something to put Baby Oo Oo in so that you could pick the oats with
both hands? A leaf a gourd a shell a net a bag a sling a sack a bottle a pot a box a container. A holder. A recipient.
The first cultural device was probably a recipient. . . . Many
theorizers feel that the earliest cultural inventions must have
been a container to hold gathered products and some kind of
sling or net carrier.
So says Elizabeth Fisher in Women's Creation (McGraw-Hill, 1975).
But no, this cannot be. Where is that wonderful, big, long, hard thing, a bone, I believe, that the Ape Man first bashed somebody
with in the movie and then, grunting with ecstasy at having
achieved the first proper murder, flung up into the sky...? I don't know. I don 't even care. I'm not telling that story. We've heard it, we've all heard all about all the sticks and spears and swords, the things to bash and poke and hit with, the long, hard things, but we have not heard about the thing to put things in, the container for the thing contained. That is a new story. That is news...
It sometimes seems that that story is approaching its end. Lest
there be no more telling of stories at all , some of us out here in the
wild oats, amid the alien corn, think we'd better start telling another
one, which maybe people can go on with when the old one's fin-
ished. Maybe. The trouble is , we've all let ourselves become part of
the killer story, and so we may get finished along with it. Hence it is
with a certain feeling of urgency that I seek the nature, subject,
words of the other story, the untold one, the life story.
-via Ursula K. Le Guin, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. Originally published 1986, new edition with forewords and commentaries published 2024.
Oh also if any technology did make us human, archeological evidence currently very strongly argues it was when we harnessed fire and invented cooking.
Fire is literally the reason our brains are larger than any other species of ape's, because harnessing fire meant we spent radically less energy spent on digestion - and those excess resources instead changed the evolution of the human brain.
Also fire is probably the reason we're not fully covered in hair anymore, evolutionarily - because we evolved in equatorial Africa, where not wearing a fur coat everywhere was an evolutionary advantage due to, you know, the temperature of it all. Once we could make our own heat to survive the cold nights and winters, less insulation was a huge evolutionary advance in equatorial regions especially
Cooking may be more than just a part of your daily routine, it may be what made your brain as powerful as it is
Wherever humans have gone in the world, they have carried with them two things, language and fire. As they traveled through tropical forests they hoarded the precious embers of old fires and sheltered them from downpours. When they settled the barren Arctic, they took with them the memory of fire, and recreated it in stoneware vessels filled with animal fat. Darwin himself considered these the two most significant achievements of humanity. It is, of course, impossible to imagine a human society that does not have language, but—given the right climate and an adequacy of raw wild food—could there be a primitive tribe that survives without cooking? In fact, no such people have ever been found. Nor will they be, according to a provocative theory by Harvard biologist Richard Wrangham, who believes that fire is needed to fuel the organ that makes possible all the other products of culture, language included: the human brain.
Every animal on earth is constrained by its energy budget; the calories obtained from food will stretch only so far. And for most human beings, most of the time, these calories are burned not at the gym, but invisibly, in powering the heart, the digestive system and especially the brain, in the silent work of moving molecules around within and among its 100 billion cells. A human body at rest devotes roughly one-fifth of its energy to the brain, regardless of whether it is thinking anything useful, or even thinking at all. Thus, the unprecedented increase in brain size that hominids embarked on around 1.8 million years ago had to be paid for with added calories either taken in or diverted from some other function in the body. Many anthropologists think the key breakthrough was adding meat to the diet. But Wrangham and his Harvard colleague Rachel Carmody think that’s only a part of what was going on in evolution at the time. What matters, they say, is not just how many calories you can put into your mouth, but what happens to the food once it gets there. How much useful energy does it provide, after subtracting the calories spent in chewing, swallowing and digesting? The real breakthrough, they argue, was cooking.
-via Smithsonian Magazine, June 2013. Emphasis mine. In the time since this article was published, what was considered a "provocative theory" in 2013 has become a matter of increasing scientific evidence and scientific consensus.
Richard Wrangham lays out his theory as a whole in his 2010 book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human.
For more current summaries on the history of fire, and scientific and archeological evidence for its role in human evolution:
Evolutionary fire ecology: An historical account and future directions.
August 2023. BioScience, volume 73, issue 8, pages 602–608. Permalink: https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biad059, paywall-free.
The discovery of fire by humans: a long and convoluted process.
By J. A. J. Gowlett. June 2016. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, volume 371, issue 1696, epage 20150164.
Permalink: doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0164, paywall free.
Or, less scholarly:
It takes a lot of calories to power a human brain. Find out how cooking and gut microbes help us make the most of our food.
Humans are not defined by our capacity for violence.
Current archeological evidence suggests that humans are, if anything, defined by the hearthfire.
By cooking. By our ability to keep ourselves warm. By our ability to provide for ourselves and each other. By humanity's millennia-long quest to beat back the ravages of starvation and hunger.
By our millennia-long quest to make our lives, and the lives of those we love, more and more into something we can live
I haven’t yet but one day I will just go through as much as your dr stone and stanxeno posts as I can in one committed go and probably mass like and reblog. So just a heads up x)
this conversation would be so much easier if we could hear each other 😭 or use the ipa. i'm gonna be honest your way of representing pronunciations in writing deeply confuses me. I have been DECIPHERING your additions. I think I just got that when you write "Z" you mean the sound "zee" and not the sound "z".
Anyway when I said that: "in english it can be either (although more commonly/standardly “zee”)" I totally meant to write "zeh" not "zee", sorry for the confusing typo, oops
Btw english isn't my native language lol so I have limited exposition to which way ppl tend to pronounce the "xen(o)" prefix in english. For "xenon" for example I've definitely heard "zee-non" more often than "zeh-non". but it doesn't matter. like senku would say 一ミリも興味ねえ (did senku ever actually say that or am I frankensteining his speech?). both are used and valid. (I personally tend to say "zeh")
No, "Z" can have other vowels attached to it, and it's really the same IPA symbol as the X, I believe. It's a voiced aveloar fricative; mechanically the same sound.
But English has frankly significantly more phonemes than letters, and both X and Z have multiple pronunciations that overlap. So "Z" sound and "X" sound don't...mean a lot.
Therefore, to me it becomes a "which way would you spell this with the surrounding vowels."
People often (incorrectly) pronounce Xeno's name like this, and to me, that is Xeno's name with a "Z" sound, because it's literally his name with a Z instead of an X. But it's the ジーノ situation, which was clearly not what the Japanese naming was going for. So "it doesn't have a Z sound" to me because when the Z is present, it's wrong.
There's really no way that the way Xeno's name should be pronounced in English would be spelled with a "Z."
Xeno would be pronounced like the first pronunciation here, or as a shorter version of this name. The second link in that sentence, and the second pronunciation, are what a lot of people use that comes out like "Zee" which is. A pronunciation? But it's not standard, and it's listed as the second pronunciation because it's not preferred (interestingly, MW does pop up zee-non over zen-on for xenon specifically). What people actually use probably depends a fair bit on their education and a fair bit on where they grew up. America's a big country.
Xeno as a name especially would come out with a short vowel, not a long one, which drastically changes how English spells it to favor the "X," and is thus to me, an American, an "X" sound.
(Also, well. We don't do "zed" in America. The letter Z is pronounced "zee" here, so when we're discussing what letter his name starts with it's probably getting mixed up easily)
Hopefully this was helpful and added context?
Thank you. Writing this up killed like a full hour of my shift. I can make it through this.
I am so not going to be able to sleep once I'm allowed, am I?
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I understand ppl (especially japanese speakers) confusing xeno’s name’s first letter for a Z because that’s how it’s pronounced but it’s still funny ofc. Like. He’s the Dr. X. We see it written quite a few times. He has a big X on his face. He brands his creations with X. Because that’s his thing that’s his letter. HE HAS A BIG X ON HIS FACE
But it's not pronounced with a Z? It's pronounced Xen-o, not Ze-no. You can hear it in the Japanese anime with the way Stanley in particular says his name. It's definitely an X sound as far as English is concerned.
I have written about this. Because "Xe" as a shorthand drives me up a wall and into a creek and through a riptide.
It would be transliterated with a "Z" because ゼノ would be "Zeno" in literally every major Japanese romanization form. But that's not. To get the Zeno sound, it would have to be Zino, which is usually transliterated as Jino.
So I get why Japanese speakers spell it that way. But it's just. It's not the way his name is pronounced.
It's a relatively common pronunciation, but it's not standard. It's the second pronunciation in dictionaries (arguably a mispronunciation, but I will give prescriptivism a nod).
Oh reading your linked post I see what you’re saying. I think? I’m still somewhat confused. I think we both know the same things but put it differently.
When I say it’s pronounced zeno I mean ゼノ. So zeh-no, not zee-no (which yes would be ジーノ).
But that doesn’t really matter here. I don’t care about whether it’s pronounced “zeh-no” or “zee-no”, that depends on the language; in japanese it’s “zeh” and in english it can be either (although more commonly/standardly “zee”).
I’m saying it’s pronounced with a “z” sound, not a “ks” for example; whether in japanese or english it’s not “kseno”. There’s no “k” sound at the beginning. In a language that pronounces it “kseno” for example nobody would confuse his initial as “Z”.
It's definitely not standard to say "Zee" for Xen prefixes, but it might be more common in your region.
"Zeh"' to me is definitely an X sound. I would not spell that with a Z, pretty much ever. I'm not sure I'd think of it as a Z sound. In Japanese it sounds more like "Zey" than "Zeh" OR "Zee." The syllable should break on the "n," not on the vowel.
Personally, this is an area where IPA would come in handy.
Anyway. I think Japanese fans sometimes spell it Zeno not because it has any kind of Z sound, but because...that's how the katakana of Xeno's name is transliterated by all standard systems. It's not about the sound, it's about "that's what letter our letter is."
I understand ppl (especially japanese speakers) confusing xeno’s name’s first letter for a Z because that’s how it’s pronounced but it’s still funny ofc. Like. He’s the Dr. X. We see it written quite a few times. He has a big X on his face. He brands his creations with X. Because that’s his thing that’s his letter. HE HAS A BIG X ON HIS FACE
But it's not pronounced with a Z? It's pronounced Xen-o, not Ze-no. You can hear it in the Japanese anime with the way Stanley in particular says his name. It's definitely an X sound as far as English is concerned.
I have written about this. Because "Xe" as a shorthand drives me up a wall and into a creek and through a riptide.
It would be transliterated with a "Z" because ゼノ would be "Zeno" in literally every major Japanese romanization form. But that's not. To get the Zeno sound, it would have to be Zino, which is usually transliterated as Jino.
So I get why Japanese speakers spell it that way. But it's just. It's not the way his name is pronounced.
I understand ppl (especially japanese speakers) confusing xeno’s name’s first letter for a Z because that’s how it’s pronounced but it’s still funny ofc. Like. He’s the Dr. X. We see it written quite a few times. He has a big X on his face. He brands his creations with X. Because that’s his thing that’s his letter. HE HAS A BIG X ON HIS FACE
But it's not pronounced with a Z? It's pronounced Xen-o, not Ze-no. You can hear it in the Japanese anime with the way Stanley in particular says his name. It's definitely an X sound as far as English is concerned.
I have written about this. Because "Xe" as a shorthand drives me up a wall and into a creek and through a riptide.
It would be transliterated with a "Z" because ゼノ would be "Zeno" in literally every major Japanese romanization form. But that's not. To get the Zeno sound, it would have to be Zino, which is usually transliterated as Jino.
So I get why Japanese speakers spell it that way. But it's just. It's not the way his name is pronounced.
It's a relatively common pronunciation, but it's not standard. It's the second pronunciation in dictionaries (arguably a mispronunciation, but I will give prescriptivism a nod).
I understand ppl (especially japanese speakers) confusing xeno’s name’s first letter for a Z because that’s how it’s pronounced but it’s still funny ofc. Like. He’s the Dr. X. We see it written quite a few times. He has a big X on his face. He brands his creations with X. Because that’s his thing that’s his letter. HE HAS A BIG X ON HIS FACE
But it's not pronounced with a Z? It's pronounced Xen-o, not Ze-no. You can hear it in the Japanese anime with the way Stanley in particular says his name. It's definitely an X sound as far as English is concerned.
I have written about this. Because "Xe" as a shorthand drives me up a wall and into a creek and through a riptide.
It would be transliterated with a "Z" because ゼノ would be "Zeno" in literally every major Japanese romanization form. But that's not. To get the Zeno sound, it would have to be Zino, which is usually transliterated as Jino.
So I get why Japanese speakers spell it that way. But it's just. It's not the way his name is pronounced.
people will describe their incredibly nebulous sexuality to you that they’ve never been able to define and the whole time you’re thinking that sounds like bisexuality brother
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I'm several chapters behind so I don't feel like I'm getting the full picture of what's up in Yuumori lately. I'm thrilled that it seems like we're gonna keep digging into the Morigang's issues with dehumanizing William via constantly putting him on a pedestal to the point of worship, because wow does that need to be addressed lol. What I'm curious about is where William is at mentally/emotionally right now. He's seemed maybe a little...idk, passive maybe?? throughout part two so far? It would be nice to see him put his foot down and be like "hello, I am a human adult! quit worshiping me like a god and babysitting me like a child! I'm going to go hang out with my husband now!" Is he...okay? Anyway this is sort of rambling and honestly I'm mostly just poking you to talk about Liam however you'd like to because I always love reading your thoughts on him. 😊
I think William is walking a bit on eggshells around his brothers' trauma at the moment. He hurt them, and even if it wasn't intentionally, they were hurt, and they're scared, and a big chunk of that is because of his intentional actions.
It's a little hard to tell someone to stop fussing over your safety when you have, historically, been so incredibly careless with your safety that you've traumatized the people you love most. William is getting better about worrying about other people's feelings!
He has been up to things, but it's been petty quiet. Asking Moran to do...something, because of course Moaan will listen to him. Doing this work with Mycoft to suss out the situation on the ground. Working to help Mick and his father. So he's been doing stuff, it just hasn't been very hands on.
Of course now...now all that's out the window, because he's in danger anyway, and so is Sherlock, and so is MI6. And we all know William gets feral when the people he loves are in danger.
Manifesting Feral William, come on, come on, come onnnnnn.
Getting asks about this series again is really helping me form thoughts. Not only because I have to articulate them and engage with them, but I have to track what's been happening better to talk about it.
Hopefully we can all get more enthused about this series together again. *makes shooing hands at everyone*
