1. 63 Chinese Cuisines - Chinese Cooking Demystified

The video is ~40 minutes and the substack post itself goes into additional detail

Chinese Cooking Demystified has always been one of my favorite resources for Chinese cooking, and this video/article takes the cake. The amount of research and attention to detail is astounding, this is a very valuable resource to exist now, and it’s in English. There are plenty of other great Chinese cooking resources around but they all tend to be in Chinese, which make them a lot harder to stumble through the nuances of (especially with machine translation).

It’s not comprehensive - Chinese cuisine is so ridiculously broad and deep, how could any single resource be comprehensive - but this is by far the best and what I will be pointing all my friends to from here out.

2. New Zealand ‘Suspended’ Glass Beach House

I’m a sucker for cool houses I’ll never be able to afford, and this one’s awesome. Wraparound glass walls really make it feel like the wooden portion is floating in the air. I can just imagine chilling out there on the patio in the morning, sipping coffee and watching the waves.

3. Arcs is 2024’s Best New Board Game - Shut Up & Sit Down

I am obsessed with Arcs, and Tom Brewster does a great job of capturing what is so captivating about this board game. Hell, it’s what got me interested in the game in the first place, and at last retail release has hit my LGS and I’ve been able to obtain a copy (having already played several games with others’ copies and TTS).

I didn’t get the campaign expansion myself, I’m a bit scared of finding a group, but I did manage to get into a 3-player campaign game with some locals. We played through the first 2 acts last weekend and we’ve scheduled our 3rd and final act for a few weeks later.

4. Indie Game Award 2024 Nominations

After the hot mess that the The Game Award nominations were (and always are), here’s the shortlist for the Indie Game Awards, which are a lot more interesting. Really pleased to see UFO 50 in contention for GOTY, and lots of other good stuff (Lorelei and the Laser Eyes and Clickholding being some of my personal favs) here too. The one notable omission for me is Tactical Breach Wizards, which I found to have fantastically tight gameplay and incredible dialogue/narrative. Wizards is on the Golden Joystick shortlist for multiple awards, including GOTY, so fingers crossed for ‘em there.

5. The Best Espresso Grinders under £250 - James Hoffman

This review hits in the sweet spot of price:performance for grinders imo. £250 is not cheap, but it is relatively affordable when looking at espresso grinders, and above this price point is when you start to hit diminishing returns. That’s not to say more expensive grinders aren’t necessarily worth it - I have a Niche Zero and find the workflow to be simply unparalleled - but this is a great place to start looking. One of these grinders can probably stand up to pretty nice espresso machines without showing their flaws, and this will be a nice resource I can show to those looking to dive into espresso.