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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • As far as I’ve found, they’re both right. You shouldn’t have to wash your mushrooms, but it’s not a bad idea if you’re not buying fancy mushrooms.

    The generic button mushroom variants you’re probably getting at the grocery store are grown in compost, which often contains some manure - ie poops.

    But before growing mushrooms it’s pasteurized. Mycelium is picky, and fairly easily out-competed by other stuff, so to make sure you’re just growing mushrooms and not bacteria you basically have to sterilize the medium they’re grown in.

    But those mushrooms are often grown in open beds, and harvested by hand. And that means they get that poop dirt right up on them. Will it immediately give you super botulism? Probably not but it’s still kinda ick.

    Fancier mushroom varieties from smaller cultivars are the ones that actually don’t really need washed and often shouldn’t be. They’re grown in highly sterile environments and they fruit out of a container, so they never touched the poop. And that’s if they even used compost - lots use straw or wood.

    If you do decide to wash your button mushrooms it’s not a big deal, they aren’t actually sponges, and they don’t absorb as much water as some cooking shows say. If they get soggy it probably means they’re old, try putting them in the fridge for a few hours uncovered. It’s basically a dehydrator.


  • It entirely depends on how much and what you’ll use them for. They’re going to be around $200 USD all in, so if they’re for occasional use probably not. If you’re going to use them a lot like for work or a regular hobby then it’s not a crazy amount to spend. They tend to be more comfortable than flange earplugs, and a little better than foamies, but for me at least I don’t want them in for more than 3 hours.

    Etymotic makes a few different ones for general noise, sleeping, music, and they also do ones for their earphones.


  • Look for a local print or embroidery shop that you can get like work shirts and business cards and whatnot made. Unless you’re really in the middle of nowhere, there’s probably a local print shop that will at least be able to point you in the right direction. If you want a one off instead of a small batch look for a place that offers embroidery - it sounds more expensive but because they can just throw whatever on the machine and do a one off, it’s usually actually less expensive than traditional screen printing. Specifically for hats in not sure if you can get them digitally printed in most smaller local shops.


  • If you are working with a specific company to produce a personalized / custom product, they will generally have at least one person on staff that can do design, or at least deal with any file conversion and technical stuff like that. They should be able to quote you a price.

    If you are working with an artist first, they may have a company they’re familiar with to have the item produced, and if they do, should be able to handle most of it themselves. If they don’t, or you would like it produced somewhere specific, just let the artist know - most places will have all the information the artist will need on their website, or the artist can just get in touch with them directly.

    In general, if you’re going to an artist or design shop they should be able to give you some kind of quote with a very rough idea of what you want - especially if they do this professionally, talking to people who don’t have an art background is basically half their job. If you want to be specific it’s much more useful to send something like a mood board or a collage of similar things than a bunch of text. It’s also generally a good idea to be open to their ideas, as they often have experience that may be helpful and will see some problems much quicker than you might.












  • Ok I’m in a waiting room super bored so forgive my ridiculous takes, but the second one is probably a better logo even if the design is worse in a bunch of ways.

    So, first lets look at Morgan as a brand. It’s a known brand, but not exactly top shelf stuff. From what I can find, they seem to be trying to change that, moving into the ready-to-drink and doing a bunch of social media stuff. they’ve moved from using artificial vanilla flavor to real *Madagascar vanilla* which is definitely more marketable no matter if it actually tastes better or not.

    So as part of that they’ve redesigned basically all their labels and that means they need vibe with the modern upmarket design trends which right now are to use more type and negative space, and to ape design from the era around the 50s and maybe 60s. It goes with the current retro packaging design trend but doesn’t alienate older people like the 70s based stuff, which is usually aimed at a younger market segment. It’s old enough to feel “classy” even if the customer is old.

    As part of that, the large illustration doesn’t fit. Printing full color like that in the era it’s aping was expensive so it feels out of place, and you just don’t have space for it if you want a clean look. So it’s got to be way smaller. The old label has the illustration as basically the main focal point - it’s huge. The new one has it as a small design point. The illustration just doesn’t work at that size. On a little 50ml bottle it’s going to be like 4mm high. Here’s a photo I found.

    The new one actually reads pretty similar even though it’s like half as tall and only uses 2 colors. When it’s on a bottle that small and sitting next to Admiral Nelson and Lady Bligh which still use big full color illustratons on their labels can you tell which one is which?

    But here’s the thing, the captain isn’t even actually the logo. The logo is the name, it’s the same logotype. They didn’t change that. They changed the mascot. It’s pretty important to note that there’s a big difference. A logo basically is your branding. It needs to work at any size, in any medium, and be instantly recognizable. That generally means it needs to be pretty simple. The Morgan logotype works great as a logo, but the mascot until now really didn’t. You can tell because if you look around there are about 50 different versions because the big full color illustration doesn’t work more often than it does. The new one will.

    With all that defense I will say there are a few kind of dumb moves. The treasure chest is clearly a terrible idea. Like, if they were swapping it in on the non-alcoholic lines it would be kind of great but on everything it’s dumb. And I definitely would have fought for a puffy shirt instead of the collared one, if nothing else than for historical accuracy - I don’t think you can even wear shirts if the era unbuttoned with a collar like that. Edit- honestly they might be going intentionally anachronistic so that you can “cosplay” as the captain easily. Do the pose, hard cut to the captain logo, it writes itself. Which would be kind of clever but if that were the case I might have pushed the whole thing to be slightly more androgynous.

    Anyway, I keep seeing this take over and over again, that everything is moving to minimalist blobs for logos, and while sometimes there’s definitely a point (the cross branding for Google’s apps on Android come to mind) a lot of the time there done just like this - with two large copies next to each other. And when you frame it like that of course the detailed one will look better. But when your logo has to shrink to 32x32px on a crappy Android phone or be printed like 5mm wide in black and white the simpler one is going to look way better.

    Anyway thanks for coming to my Ted talk I guess.

    Tldr: the guy isn’t the logo he’s the mascot and the new one can be printed small.





  • To be fair I’d call it a wash. Bedrock fixes a lot of weird stuff like quasi connectivity and being able to push things like chests with pistons but also introduces it’s own bugs like weird timing things and randomly taking fall damage. There’s also weird differences like being able to do things with cauldrons or just like minor texture differences that they are slowly bringing into sync.