A Yunnan village's sweet success story Most people don't associate Xishuangbanna in Southwest China's Yunnan Province with chocolate. But in Sanman village, they are now turning locally grown cacao into handcrafted chocolate. More than just a sweet treat, the cacao industry is boosting farmers' incomes while protecting the local environment and creating new opportunities through tourism and educational experiences. Watch how a cacao pod becomes a bar of chocolate.

He gave birth to the Xbox. Was a game making legend. Became an agent and then went full mad scientist making the world's best bread and chocolate. More than all that Seamus Blackley is a deep, eccentric thinker on tech and has lived a most unusual life. One of the best pods we've ever done. Mega thanks to @brexHQ and @sendcutsend for making the Core Memory podcast possible. Timestamps 00:00:00 Intro 00:03:37 Why Tech Hype Sucks 00:08:33 Why Talking About Your Work Kills It 00:11:36 Early Life, Physics, and Jazz 00:22:53 Fermilab & Academic Politics 00:31:43 Building the First 3D Video Game Engines 00:35:14 Early Game Development Culture 00:39:33 DreamWorks & Spielberg 00:45:28 Pitching the Xbox 00:55:04 Fighting to Save Xbox 01:04:44 Abducting Jimmy Fallon 01:08:16 Baking Bread with 4,500-Year-Old Yeast 01:11:36 Growing Cacao Trees in a Lab 01:18:05 Accidentally Launching a Chocolate Empire

Hazelnut Chocolate Invention. The world’s favorite chocolate pairing started as a wartime cheat. When Napoleon slammed Europe shut with the Continental System in 1806, British ships stopped delivering cocoa. In Turin, chocolate suddenly became scarce, expensive, and politically inconvenient. Piedmont’s chocolatiers had a local surplus sitting in the hills: the Tonda Gentile delle Langhe hazelnut, a round, oily, absurdly fragrant nut that grew like a weed compared with beans from the other side of the ocean. So they roasted the nuts, ground them into a paste, and stretched what little cocoa they had. The result was gianduja: part necessity, part accident, and—though nobody in those workshops could have named the reason—a chemical jackpot. Hazelnuts are fat bombs. Their oil is mostly oleic acid, the same monounsaturated fat that makes olive oil silky. Mill the nuts fine enough and they surrender a butter that doesn’t fight cocoa butter; the two fats melt on similar terms, so the mixture goes softer and more mouth-coating than straight chocolate. Roast them and the Maillard reaction throws off pyrazines—the same family of roasted, nutty, almost cocoa-like aroma compounds that roasting coaxes from cacao itself. The bitter alkaloids in chocolate don’t get buried. They get company. Two ingredients that look like substitutes turn out to be co-conspirators. A century later, history ran the experiment again. After World War II, cocoa was rationed and Piedmont still had hazelnuts. In 1946, pastry maker Pietro Ferrero, working in Alba, revived the old trick as a loaf wrapped in foil: Pasta Gianduja, sliced like cheese and eaten on bread because a slab of real chocolate was a luxury. By 1951 the loaf had become Supercrema, a cheaper, creamier spread. In 1964 his son Michele tightened the recipe, gave it a name that traveled—nut plus the Italian diminutive -ella—and put it in a jar. Nutella did not invent the pairing. It industrialized the accident. Ferrero Rocher and Kinder Bueno finished the job. Once a cheap way to fake abundance, roasted hazelnut and chocolate now taste, to most of the planet, like they were always meant to share a spoon.

10 THINGS TIME HAS TAUGHT ME 1. Most of our life is spent chasing false goals and worshipping false ideals. The day you realize that is the day you really start to live. 2. You really, truly cannot please all of the people all of the time. Please yourself first and your loved ones second, everyone else is busy pleasing themselves anyway, trust me. 3. Fighting the ageing process is like trying to catch the wind. Go with it, enjoy it. Your body is changing, but it always has been. Don’t waste time trying to reverse that, instead change your mindset to see the beauty in the new. 4. Nobody is perfect and nobody is truly happy with their lot. When that sinks in you are free of comparison and free of judgement. It’s truly liberating. 5. No one really sees what you do right, everyone sees what you do wrong. When that becomes clear to you, you will start doing things for the right reason and you will start having so much more fun. 6. You will regret the years you spent berating your looks, the sooner you can make peace with the vessel your soul lives in, the better. Your body is amazing and important but it does not define you. 7. Your health is obviously important but stress, fear and worry are far more damaging than any delicious food or drink you may deny yourself. Happiness and peace are the best medicine. 8. Who will remember you and for what, become important factors as you age. Your love and your wisdom will live on far longer than any material thing you can pass down. Tell your stories, they can travel farther than you can imagine. 9. We are not here for long but if you are living against the wind it can feel like a life-sentence. Life should not feel like a chore, it should feel like an adventure. 10. Always, always, drink the good champagne/ Cacao and use the things you keep for ‘best’. Tomorrow is guaranteed to no one. Today is a gift that’s why we call it the present. Eat, Drink & Be Merry. ~ Donna Ashworth ✨🙌🏾💫

If you thought we’d reached peak cacio-e-pepe-everywhere, turns out there’s still some joy to be found there. We have Nostra to thank for this welcome flashback. More 👉

For lunch, she tried cacio e pepe—pasta with pecorino cheese and black pepper, simple yet flavorful. The pasta was al dente, the cheese creamy, the black pepper adding a subtle heat, a classic Roman dish.💸 Start each day with grateful heart.154652

Evelyn in a super revealing schoolgirl uniform… the short skirt barely covers anything 🖤 The Mistress CaCa straps on and fucks Xiaohan hard in every position — missionary, cowgirl, doggy… ❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥