23 Comments
Mar 15, 2023Liked by John Birmingham

Reminds of this quote from about the Federation in Star Trek:

"There must be like twenty different counselling groups for non-human engineering students at StarFleet Academy, and every week in every single one of them someone walks in and starts up with a story like "our assignment was to repair a phaser emitter and one of my human classmates built a chronometric flux toaster that toasts bread after you have eaten it"

https://www.tor.com/2016/10/17/the-answer-to-why-humans-are-so-central-in-star-trek/

Expand full comment
Mar 15, 2023Liked by John Birmingham

one of my favourite head cannons "team fuck it hold my beer I got this"

Expand full comment

There is one thing better, and that's to bake the bread oneself. Then you can even skip the toasting as whatever deliciousness scale you used just became obsolete.

Expand full comment

I’m just waiting for someone to invent a toaster that browns bread evenly on both sides and produces the same toast colour cycle after cycle.

Expand full comment

Sounds like a job for AI

Expand full comment

Don't they have some sort of techno laser toaster that will toast whatever GIF you send it from your phone (via some sort of cloudy panopticon of course)? If you sent it a picture of pure brown, perhaps it would do that for you.

Tomorrow they'll have a version with ChatGPT in it, to explain why your preferred toast picture is wrong.

An visiting American colleague confided to me the other day that no one uses "single use" toasters any more. Now they use "air fryers" for everything, and it does everything equally poorly...

Expand full comment

mmmm Never thought of using the air fryer for toast, have to give it a try.

Expand full comment

SORCERY!

Expand full comment

and the more expensive the toaster, the worse it is...

Expand full comment

The Egyptians inventing toast amazes and yet also doesn't surprise me, considering their innovations around bread in general. Did you know that they would apply mouldy bread to wounds to facilitate healing? Thousands of years before the discovery of penicillin.

Expand full comment

Yeah but they also used fat of a crocodile, hippo, snake and tomcat as a cure for baldness so swings and roundabouts (still better than anything Gwenth Paltrow is selling on goop.)

Expand full comment
Mar 16, 2023Liked by John Birmingham

And do we have proof this did not work. All those dudes in the hieroglyphics looked to have a pretty good head of hair. And do you know where i might find a podgy hippo locally, asking for a friend.

Expand full comment

Get Ashley & Martin on the phone stat!

Expand full comment

My two favourite breakfasts are vegemite toast and boiled egg with toast soldiers. Possibly one of the reasons (along with red wine) why I can can't even make inroads into the first 5kg.

Expand full comment
author

There was an impossibly hip cafe in 90s Sydney. Doc, I think. Their speciality was boiled eggs and toast soldiers.

Expand full comment

I'd never order in a cafe what I can easily make myself. Cafes are for treats like eggs benny. That said, I overcooked the egg this morning. Still good comfort food.

Expand full comment

Well I'm off to make toast with marmalade for afternoon tea.

Expand full comment

#Winning

Expand full comment

You can't get me with these subliminal toast posts. I have already had my toasted sanger spag bog with cheese leftovers lunch and feel satiated.

Although i may breakfast tomorrow by reviving the old sourdough getting to the end of its useful life and slather it with butter and peanut butter.

Expand full comment
author

Sourdough is the bomb. It NEVER gets stale.

Expand full comment

One of my favouite theories is SARS_CoV_2 was created by sourdough so as to increases its replication.

Expand full comment

Starts stale

Expand full comment

Mmmmmmm toasssst

Expand full comment