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Maybe the cassette is protected - there's a gap in the casing for a lever to go in and if that's blocked up - then the record button want actuate.

Have you seen this? https://cabin.city/
It's just one of many similar concepts.

the hiss that dolby adds can be easily heard. record without dolby, with dolby b and with dolby c and play without dolby - you'll hear the particular hiss associated with dolby

well, if recorded with dolby, yes

LOL, got the terms wrong - pinch rollers are the rubber wheels :-)
When I was young - the cassette hiss always annoyed me - I can hardly hear it now...

Back to an interpersonal protocol that would work without the "trusted" third party. Imagine we all have on our machines a customisable communication protocol that could broadcast and receive messages from anyone and we can set up various filters and challenges - so first we allow individual protocols to talk between themselves and find out whether there's a match - then move onto personal communication.

That' s how we could get rid of all the 3rd party portals FB, LinkedIn... and have total control.

But, there's a bit of psychological work that needs to be done - to establish rules of engagement so people know what to expect, how to protect themselves, how to communicate at the right level. That could be AI assisted.

yes, changing consciousness is one way to do it....

Those rubber wheels are called capstans and they pull the tape along. They can dry out or wear out and you have a choice of replacing them or cleaning with a special compound.

The heads don't turn - they just push onto the running tape and read. Grab a cotton swab and clean the heads with isopropyl alcohol. I normally clean heads every few days (if playing cassettes).

And one of the truly untapped powers of the universe is bringing individual consciousnesses closer to each other and establishing protocol for collaboration - or you could even call it a "love protocol", which at the moment exists only in a very specific way and seems underutilised.

I think that a part of the problem is this (blind?) belief in quantitative analysis and optimal systems.

I also think that the answer is partially philosophical, maybe even metaphysical or even religious.

Nietzsche touches on it in his superhuman concept - it's about reaching true potential, or new potential - through self transcendence and self overcoming - which pretty much means breaking rules, or ignoring consensus, ignoring facts and seeking new perspectives.

It's true, complex systems spend time suspended - waiting for the "leap" conditions. I'm trying to hint at those and I'm saying - the structure doesn't provide answers how to break out of the structure. It only establishes rules how to keep that equilibrium.

Again, it's always a temptation to "statistically, scientifically..." look for causality - but IMO that is not what it takes to break out of our predicament. Or, in other words, we should stop looking behind our backs and focus on what's ahead.

Wow, what a great response, thanks! Exactly what I've been hoping for.
There are so many discussion topics here and we'll be drilling into those one by one.

There's one thing that I'd like to address first (as you've validly raised it) and that's our paralysis of thinking due to the sheer complexity of problems that are facing us and the infinite derivation of new emerging problems and pathways as a result of the indeterminate nature of the results of our tempering and modelling.

There's only one solution to it - Gordian Knot! When something is too complex for untangling - the proper course of action is to cut through it! Then, instead of looking for million cures to cure million diseases - you're looking for one magical cure to cure them all.

You still need to scope out stages and avoid overthinking in terms of looking ahead in terms hundreds of years.

But important thing is also not to fool ourselves that a revolution can change the situation with any permanency. Also not to blame rogue individuals for the predicament of the planet (Rene Girard's mimetic theory - Girard suggested that societies tend to transfer their collective guilt onto a single person or group, the scapegoat, to resolve social tension or conflict. This scapegoat is then expelled or killed, which temporarily restores harmony).

I have to disagree (respectfully) here ;-)
I've got experience with 1,2 and 3. Europiccola was crap at frothing and I improved a bit by blocking 2 holes (with tootpicks, of course).

The Izzo Pompei has 1 hole and is a professional 2 grouphead machine and the performance is much better than La Pavoni ... but

This Bezzera Strega has 2 holes and is a frothing monster! So, there's more to it than the number of orifices...

Midweek reflection.

It would be interesting to conduct a survey and ask people what are the most pressing frustrations (or factors that give them anxiety/angst and stop them from enjoying life as much as they could) and come up with an ordered list.

For example:
1) money problems
2) relationships problems
3) inability to buy house
4) work / business issues
5) lack of freedom / independence
6) psychological issues - anxiety
7) loneliness

The premise is that in a large enough pool of people - you'd have capacity to deal with all of those. There are people very good at doing admin stuff and there are people are very good at dealing with physical situations. There are some with alternative perspectives, deep wisdom, cognitive abilities...

That could be a basis for creating groups/clubs/organisations that wouldn't aim to be therapy groups, but try and actually remove the underlying (physical or psychological ) problems.

Those could be simply co-operatives - an organisation that would be projecting a higher consumer power (maybe) by, let's say, purchasing car or house insurance for 10,000 members and project a greater bargaining might.

There could already be a demand for something like this that wouldn't be subversive in terms of its relationship to the state, but help with the alienation problem and the lack of capacity/capability.

Another day, another thought :-)

This one is about friendships or about "meaningful" relationships.

What I'll try to capture here is how we're "holding back" from maximising the potential of connections with people because we're trying to minimise inter-personal risks and want to remain independent and minimally committed.

Important thing to bear in mind here is that we, as individuals, are at our weakest when it comes to our relationship with the outer world (nature, society), but the most sovereign when it comes to personal agency.

The modern society emphasises the importance of being independent financially and emotionally in relation to each other, but being totally dependent on the society (having a nominal value of 1 in terms of political, economical power).

This is a huge area and I don't want to go into details, just a taster or a conversation starter :-)

https://slantpositive.vercel.app/Friendship%20Reinventing%20Bonds%20as%20Cornerstones%20of%20a%20New%20World

Yep, this is pretty much one perspective on looking at the planetary/societal problems. That's the first bit that I addressed in the intro - it's this appeal to humanity that we're heading in the wrong direction and it's about 2 groups of people - one saying - how can the world not see that we're working against the clock to stop destroying humanity and the planet and the other who don't see anything wrong with the world - it's just a cycle and they get on with minding their own business and taking care of their families trusting that the system will evenutally get back into sync.

What I'm proposing is the 3rd way - where we acknowledge that the world is changing and that we, individually or collectively, are facing deterioration of our lives (or at least not improving) - so we think out of the box and start thinking of ways to create new relationship between us, nature and society and build "structures" to make ourselves less sensitive to the changes and more in control with what really matters to us on a micro level. A good word is making ourselves "anti-fragile". That also includes - not being so sensitive to overreacting to some negative things like climate change, far right rise... etc. :-).

I've had terrible clogging when spraying water on beans prior to grinding... Maybe just my bad experience, but from memory. -the grinder jammed

One can take it in the direction of philosophy - so we have an entertaining chat, which is perfectly fine. Another option is that frustrations that we have are real. Not only frustrations of having a bothersome existence but, more importantly, frustration of inability to communicate ideas, inability to get people to cohere around sense making and finally - frustration of being unable to create.

Creative existence for us is making things better and finding more about ourselves, so that's a bit circular. But regardless whether everything is perfect or everything is wrong - the fun to be had is in the shaping and moulding.

Good afternoon!

I'll continue publishing some random stuff until (hopefully) someone else joins the conversation.

This is something I call "Interfaces without Implementation" - it's a geeky name usually associated with software design.

The gist is that we live in the society and we've been brought up to believe that the society has all the answers. It's also our "conditioned" reality because, arguably, we're more societal creatures than natural. Most of natural threats have been counteracted by the society, so most of the threats that we are facing are the ones coming from the society itself.

Then the premise is that we have an elaborate list of specifications for the society we live in and we think of those as buttons that do something. Let's say - a button in a submarine labeled "Raise the Periscope". So we're taking stock of what's available and find all sorts of useful buttons and levers and we chart our navigation plan confident that we have every eventuality covered.

Now, I go on to say that unless we test these buttons or unless someone is accountable that behind these buttons there's actuation and what happens as a result lives up to the design specification - we can't be sure that these buttons are not just mocks - interfaces without implementation.

Anyway, have a read and comment. It's all a bit of fun.

https://slantpositive.vercel.app/Interfaces%20without%20Implementation

Jeez - a proper sleeper!

Yep, I've changed the seals multiple times and have swapped heating elements over, just got a bit distracted and lazy recently, so left this one remain broken. I might fix the La Pavoni - you've given me inspiration (here goes the praying hands emoticon ;-)

I agree "red one" is enough RED

No, I haven't but my La Pavoni is currently a shadow of its former self. It leaks from the bottom of the boiler, I think it's the element seal.

Fantastic looking beast! I like the boldness of the colours theme. Is this what they call brutalistic architecture? Looks just like Mazzer Jolly?

There's a trainload of people out there grappling with despair regarding the trajectory of our planet, concerned that we're regressing morally and mentally, and the system we live in is broken and corrupt.

But, is it possible to avoid apocalyptic ruminations and channel energy into constructive thinking? Try to identify opportunities, look ahead and work towards building a better world?

If anyone's interested, let's build some sort of theory and classify what's wrong with the world, then our immediate surrounding, our social groups and finally ourselves.

Next thing would be defining what are the frustrations that stop us from being content and work on how to remove them. I'm imagining some sort of co-operative sub-groups that would have more power and more expertise and use collective wisdom to overcome problems.

It's really a tabula rasa - let's see what emerges :-)

Thanks, it's a Bezzera Strega - a weird lever/pump hybrid.