This Friday will be the last stream of September, as the month comes to a close, and as such it is time for a cheese review. I enjoy doing these, and I enjoy tax write-offs. It's a good excuse to share some thoughts with my biggest and most direct supporters.

I suspected that once I returned to the US that I would be less busy and more able to handle more work but as I come on almost a full year back (already!), I have discovered that that is not the case. My reach exceeds my grasp and I am constantly desiring to do new things that I cannot possibly afford the time or energy for when in combination with everything else I do.

When I was a teenager in high school, Florida's Department of Education IQ tested me and it came out to 142. This is high, relatively, but it's not the highest. I am convinced the main difference between someone around 140 IQ and someone at around 180 IQ is that the smarter person has the wherewithal to figure out how to convince 140 IQ idiots like me to do all their work for them. I have never managed to figure out how to delegate.

My #1 goal before the end of the year is to get donate-by-check working with Kiwi Farms. I have been approved for all the systems. The only thing left to do is get it going. I was holding off on it because the site was running so poorly. With that taken care of, I am confident enough now to actually solicit the funds. The donation system itself is mostly done but it needs a proper trial-by-fire.

If that produces the income I hope, I think I will be good enough that I can simply take care of DKF-related problems as they come up. I have good ideas of how to further improve the KF infra, and a lot of what I want to do would involve using USIPS as a way to house resilient infra and also lease it out to other sites. This is my longest long-term goal: USIPS as a politically active alternative to Cloudflare. Something like that is probably the best I can hope to achieve in my life professionally.

October is my favorite month and I hope to do more streams than usual throughout it. I’ve been driving a lot the last week and the fall mood is doing a lot for my spirits. The political landscape is hellish but I find myself more optimistic than usual, so I’ve been productive and eager to get things done each day. I appreciate orange leaves and gloomy overcasts.

These are the things on my mind as I eat my nice cheese.

This cheesebox was a straight fucking banger. Came with thick rye crackers seasoned only with olive oil and an accompanying apricot jelly. These both paired incredibly well with each cheese. The whole thing is a winner.

MANCHEGO 1605
Artisanal firm Sheep cheese from Ciudad Real, Spain. This is exactly what I want from these boxes. It's a firm cheese but soft to bite into, crumbly sort of like mashed potatoes in texture once masticated. Very, very fine crunch in the form of protein that appears in hard cheeses. It's a weird thing to appreciate (the crunch) but it's a sign of quality and that the cheese came from a real farm. Just a joy to eat. I've come around liking sheep products a lot.

Pictured as the triangular firm white cheese with small holes and the wax with writing on it.

OMA
Cow cheese from Vermont named after their grandma (aww). Quarter round provided. Extremely holey. So soft that the sides spill out, but it is not wet as very young cheeses can be. Has a pungent smell that is common with red fungus cheese.

Something that can be eaten with anything. It honestly craves a really buttery grilled cheese sandwich. If I wasn't dieting I'd eat it in the most disgustingly decadent way possible. It's savory and delicious.

SHELBURNE TWO YEAR CHEDDAR
Also from Vermont and quite frankly the best of three really good cheeses. I could eat the entire block by itself.

My issue with cheddar is not that cheddar in and of itself is bad. It's not bad. It's common because it's good. What bugs me about cheddar is how the most common cheddars you can find are plain, boring, and exist only to complement meat. Anything is good when eaten with high fat ground beef. It is very hard to make ground beef taste bad.

What Americans lack in their food is a demand for exceptional quality. Knowing that ground beef is fatty and delicious means you can cook shitty beef with a lot of salt and MSG and the average person won't even realize they're eating pure slop.

Going out of your way to taste good food trains you to be a picky cuntish snob, which is a pro and a con. The con is that you start to realize how sloppy and shitty a lot of stuff is and how the mega-corps that own the entire country get away with what is tantamount to gastronomical rape on the American population - it really ruins you for stuff you used to like. The pro is you don't have to imagine eating this good, you just eat this good.

Anyways, this cheddar is brilliant and I had to forcefully separate it from myself.

Thanks for reading. Have a great day.

P.S. Josh wine sux.