Notices by CoffeeGeek (coffeegeek@flipboard.social)

This is a long one, so bear with me.

I'm very sad that Whole Latte Love, a company we've partnered with for years and years, has recently decided to no longer be an advertiser on CoffeeGeek a few months ago. I do hope they reconsider, as we've done a lot to promote this company over the years.

They've decided platforms like Google and Meta are the best areas to spend their advertising dollars.

They also felt they were not getting enough clicks and traffic through their coffee and espresso- targetted ads on our low-impact, no popups platform.

The real reason I'm posting this though is this: If you want independent content producers in the arenas you are interested to continue and thrive, you have to do your part:

- don't adblock those sites if at all possible. I can understand if they're over-run with constant Adsense popup ads and big in your face ads every paragraph, but many indie sites do NOT do that, yet still get adblocked.

- don't just click, but SUPPORT the independent advertisers that support those content producers. They often has the same or lower prices than Amazon, often have free shipping, and in almost every case have way, way better customer service.

With both of these things, it often doesn't cost you a penny more, or any kind of increased frustration, but you're supporting independent businesses and not feeding the Amazon / Google / Meta engines.

If you enjoy independent, honest content about the hobbies and interests you love, you have to do your part to ensure they thrive and continue. Pretty soon, all you're going to have left is AI-generated blabble on corporate-controlled websites.

Coming within 48hr (I hope): our comprehensive First Look at the Lelit Victoria Espresso Machine. 4700 words. Tons of photos. Details in the minutia for those who love that kind of thing.

And I use a phrase I think is perhaps not politically correct any longer? ("red headed stepchild).

Here's the conclusion, and some of our article photos.

With regards to Bluesky, I had kind of given up posting there, as engagement was pretty much zero for my several-months attempt in the spring.

But I decided to give it another go a few weeks ago, and I post there regularly again, hoping engagement (interactions - I'm not looking for likes and faves) picks up.

Whenever we do post new content on CoffeeGeek, I do post the links on Bluesky (as well as Threads).

https://bsky.app/profile/coffeegeek.bsky.social

#NCP

This makes me incredibly sad.

Minolta, a storied name in photography gear, indeed one of the true leaders in autofocus, innovative cameras in the 1980s, long gone now, but some crappy company has bought the name, and slaps it on the shittiest, crappiest white label $99 cameras coming out of China.

So... sad. I cut my photographic teeth on the Minolta Maxxum system.

I hate, hate HATE when money grabbing, no-ethics companies do this kind of shit.

EDIT: there is one cool thing to come out of Minolta's demise: after they merged with Konica, Sony bought their entire digital SLR division (I think around 2008 or 2010?) and all of Sony's excellent entries into digital photography basically stem from that purchase.

In a way, if you buy a Sony A7R today, you're kinda buying a Minolta camera.

#photography #minolta #cameras #filmphotography

If you want to know more about Minolta and its history with film (and digital) cameras, Petapixel had an awesome article covering the brand a year or two ago.

#filmphotography #photography #minolta

https://petapixel.com/minolta-history/

A dragon free-poured latte art (with some etching help) done FIFTEEN years ago. Nov 2008.

- Dragon body and shape freepoured
- smoke from Dragon's nose, freepoured
- etching used to create dragon's flared head scales / pointy bits
- etching used to make the mouth, eye and nose hole.

That's my lil' Tintin reporter, checking it out.

cc @espresso @coffee

#latteart

Heads up folks. If you've been in the market for the old school classic, built like a tank Gaggia Classic Evo Pro, the brushed steel one is on sale 20% off on Amazon, going for $399.

That's $150 cheaper than the standard price. Also, the Ltd Edition gold one is also at $399.

cc @espresso

https://amzn.to/47kJfXA

This is very sad, and an example of what happens when the collective public relies on dubious 2 minute shorts on TikTok and Youtube to get their "information" from, more and more, and lose the ability to absorb long form content by people who actually know what they're talking about.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/21542/end-of-the-road-an-anandtech-farewell

Any Leica M10 / M11 Monochrom owners out there?

How do you like it? Do you use it regularly?

#leica #leicamonochrom

So some bad news regarding our account here on Mastodon and the #Fediverse

I'm going to have to suspend, at least for now, posting any links to content on our website on this platform. The #MastoDdos effect is only getting worse, and it now brings our website down for a solid 5 to 7 minutes everytime I post a URL. We've tried to fix this on our end, without any real luck. Caching, Cloudfare, etc etc. None of it works.

What I'll do instead is post links to our Threads account when new content is posted on our website. A bit of a weird fix, but until the infrastructure in the fediverse evolves to deal with this growing problem, I can't have our website go down that often. It has further unintended side effects (like harming our SEO ranking).

Of course, I'll still be participating here daily on coffee subjects!

Actually, I can still post content links here to CoffeeGeek, but I have to be smart about it: I have to post them as links, and also attach a photo to my post, so that the link doesn't trigger a card call to our website.

So, going forward (for now at least), when we do post new content on CoffeeGeek, I will post the link here, but also attach a photo related to the story. The link should still work, but not bombard our website from 1000s of instances looking for a card.

@BeAware I'm posting the full urls, and not the "share" link. I read the share links no longer work here. Now it looks like the full urls don't either.

Are youtube links no longer working on Mastodon as cards?

The last couple I've posted are just a generic youtube small card.

#youtube #mastodon #fediverse

#NCP

Posted without comment. Other than to say Bloomberg's site doesn't like MastoDDos floods, so the title below may not register.

It is:

The Moral Case for No Longer Engaging With Elon Musk’s X

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-10-05/the-moral-case-for-no-longer-engaging-with-elon-musk-s-x

I love coffee history.

I also love coffee's role in history.

For instance, do you know that coffee was a key factor in the Union winning the US Civil War?

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-coffee-helped-the-union-caffeinate-their-way-victory-civil-war-180984502/

When I pulled the plug in October, 2023 on my daily Twitter engagement, and went all in on the #Fediverse, I had some goals in mind, written in my desktop notebook.

- No longer get my news from a social media feed (instead reading more traditional journalism)

- Try to avoid negativity, at least as much as my personality will allow

- Seek out creative, engaging content producers

and most important:

- Always interact; stop just consuming, and don't just use the platforms as an advertising, click-driving vehicle.

#NCP

This is actually some big news: a lot of folks originally joined the Tweeter because of #Diggnation and #TWiT hyping up Twitter in its earliest days. I know I joined because of them (esp. Leo talking about it all the time)

Well Kevin Rose, founder of #Digg, said if he got 1,000 likes to a post he made on Threads, he'd delete his Tweeter account.

He got them, and he did.

Makes me think - if I get 200 likes here in the #fediverse on this post, pointing out Kevin's post, I'll delete CoffeeGeek's Tweeter account too. (I promise, this isn't likebait lol!)

https://www.threads.net/@kevinrose/post/C8qfqaUM5rI

Another reference point: I posted this photo 24hr ago. Again, 13K+ followers.

I am a slave to #Instagram's horrible, skewed 100% to #Meta algorithm. If I don't post to IG, then companies, manufacturers, vendors etc go "what's wrong with you, why don't people like you on Instagram?" It's a 20 edged sword, with all the edges pointing my direction.

I really, really hate #Instagram and #Meta. I feel **absolutely forced** to use it, based on what I do, and where a segment of the specialty coffee community is. Everytime I use it, I feel dirty.

I have 13K followers there. Yet, when I post things, the algorithm BURIES them. For example, I posed this attractive photo of the Hario Suiren there 1hr ago. Here's what the numbers are. Remember, 13K followers:

I need some help, #fediverse

We need to better incorporate our Mastodon feed into the CoffeeGeek.com website.

Part of the problem is, in the platform we use (Wordpress / Elementor), there's almost zero support for Mastodon in our share, follow, and embed tools. So either we have to write something from scratch and make it work with our existing share tools, or... well if there is an Elementor / WP friendly share plugin out there that actively supports mastodon, I want to know about it.

Any thoughts? Ideas? Guides? Step by step to make it happen? The research I've done so far shows it's tricky to have a proper share popup for Masto like you can have for Facebook, for eg (second screen cap below) because of the decentralized nature of mastodon.

For instance, I want to have a Mastodon share button in this cluster, which is created via a convenient widget in Elementor: