Latest news with #Kirsch
Irish Times
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Black Forest gateau
Serves : 6 Course : Dessert Cooking Time : 30 mins Prep Time : 30 mins Ingredients 6 large eggs, separated 160g caster sugar 60g cocoa powder 30g self raising flour 2tbs kirsch liqueur For the filling and topping: 3tbs icing sugar, sifted 1tbs vanilla paste 250g mascarpone 1 punnet of fresh cherries, stones removed 3tbs cherry jam 50g 70% chocolate Preheat the oven to 190 degrees and line a 450g loaf tin with baking parchment. Place the egg whites in a mixer bowl and whisk at a high speed until the eggs form soft peaks. Add half the sugar and whisk until the meringue is glossy and forms stiff peaks. Put to one side. Place the egg yolks in a mixing bowl with the remaining half of the sugar and whisk at full speed until the mix has doubled in size and turned pale; this takes about three minutes. Add the cocoa powder, flour and kirsch to the egg yolk mix and fold together until it is combined. Fold the meringue into the egg yolk mix in three stages, keeping in as much air as possible. Once combined, pour this into the lined loaf tin and tap to allow the mixture to fill all the corners. Place the tin in the oven and cook for 20-25 minutes until a skewer inserted into the centre comes away clean. The mix will soufflé up slightly but will level out as it cools. Turn it out upside down after about 10 minutes on a flat surface and remove the parchment, which gives a rectangular shape. For the filling, add the icing sugar and vanilla to the mascarpone and mix with a spoon until smooth. Slice the pitted cherries in half and set aside. To assemble the gateau, cut the cake in three through the middle. Spread a layer of cherry jam, a thin layer of the mascarpone filling and some halved cherries on two of the layers and sit one on top of the other. Place the remaining layer of cake on top, spread the remaining mascarpone on it, then finely grate the chocolate to cover the top before slicing and serving.
Vox
11-05-2025
- General
- Vox
America is a country of doomsday preppers
Kirsch shared his insights into prepping and Americans' desire to look out for themselves in emergency situations with the Today, Explained co-host Noel King. You can read an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity, below, and listen to the full episode of Today, Explained on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts. How does one get into, at the university level, researching the end of the world? It started off as this investigation into these doomsday-prepping kits that were coming out of Silicon Valley from this startup called Preppi. What was the story that Preppi was trying to tell? The way that they sold it, at least at the time that we were looking at their materials, was that this was a 'bug-out bag' that you would be proud to display in your living room. It was a really nice weekend bag, and it had a piece of chocolate in there they say you're gonna really like. And had these very high-end cosmetics and face lotions. So this bag, its contents and style, don't mark you as some sort of weirdo who was sort of secretly stashing away goods, but rather it is sort of an outward display of good taste. And so, these class markers become super important in telling this story. Trying to sort of pull this behavior out of the shadows and sort of trying to locate it at the beating heart of mainstream American culture. Do you have a bug-out bag? I don't. Where I live in the desert, FEMA issues recommendations for geographic regions for what people should have. So my co-author, Emily Ray, does have a bug-out bag because she lives in the Bay Area. I have 15 gallons of potable water ready because I live in the desert. Good. I have a little kit, a just-in-case kit. And I have always wondered how many other people are engaged in prepping or prepping-adjacent behavior. How many of us are there out there? It can be hard to track. Because on the one hand, there's no bright line where a certain behavior turns into prepping, right? But FEMA does give a national household survey, and their 2023 results indicate that about half of Americans indicate that they are engaging in some kind of preparedness for some sort of adverse event. If you told me to envision a prepper, I have a picture in my head. Is my picture fair? Is there a type of person who preps? You're right that there's a sort of media spectacle version of a prepper, and that gets informed by a lot of things like cable and reality television. I'm not even just talking about the extreme preppers. There's an episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, where they go into an Atlas bunker and try to imagine what it would be like to ride out the end of the world. And so I think that's an interesting starting point. But again, as Emily and I were digging into this, what we eventually concluded was that this behavior can be marginalized and seem to be extreme, but it actually is a kind of behavior that is constitutive of being American. In other words, we argue that prepping is an American institution, and that from the founding, Americans have seen themselves as a prepared citizenry. We've seen this throughout the past couple of hundreds of years, where Americans are invited to see themselves as the self-sufficient frontier people who are able to tame the elements and dominate the wilderness and bring America into new spaces. And that 40 percent of us are preparing in some way — this feels like a very high number to me — would seem to suggest you're right, this is part of the identity of many of us. When do we see this put to the test? There are a couple of ways to tackle that. The first is at the apocalyptic register, things like nuclear war, right? Or total societal collapse. Americans really haven't had to deal with that. And that's an important part for our analysis, too. Because we argue that one of the reasons what we call a 'bunkerization fantasy' is potent is because Americans have never actually had to go to ground. They've never actually had to take cover in the way that many Europeans had to during the Second World War. That's one part of the story: It's easy to think about readiness and what to do in the face of total collapse because it's been deferred. It becomes a site of fantasy. On the other hand, you're also right that the US has ongoing extreme weather events, hurricanes, wildfires, dust bowls, droughts — the list goes on and on. And the way that we tell that story is the way we diagnosed the neoliberal condition of American political life: These disasters happen. There is an oftentimes inadequate or incomplete state response. And so the reaction to that becomes, I can't rely on the government to do things, so it's up to me to take responsibility for my own preparation. And the way that I do that is through consumption choices. Today, Explained Understand the world with a daily explainer plus the most compelling stories of the day, compiled by news editor Sean Collins. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. One beautiful part of the American economy is that there is always somebody who will sell you something if you have enough money. And when we think about preppers, when I think about preppers, I do tend to think about ultra-rich people, like Mark Zuckerberg buying a private island, raising their own food, these guys in Silicon Valley buying land in New Zealand. What is the deal with the ultra-wealthy and their preparation for the end of the world? Do they know something that we don't or do they just have a lot of money and need to spend it? I think it's the latter. I really think this is a sort of conspicuous consumption. These ultra-rich people, we hear a lot about their preparation plans. You mentioned Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel, and those are the two most high-profile examples. And what I think is notable about those is that they get profiled in Forbes or Fortune or these monocle-like publications for upwardly mobile people. And they lavish the reader with all sorts of details about the extravagant things that these folks are doing. And then there's always this coy, But we'll never tell you where it is, right? And so it's a way to signal conspicuous consumption that more middle-class or upwardly mobile Americans can at least try to emulate. But I do want to suggest, too, though, that this takes on strange dimensions. I'm sure, for instance, you've read a lot about Elon Musk's desire to go to Mars. So much. Yes. Right, and it's a fantasy. It's in many ways based on this mentality, There's nothing we can do here anymore and so we're gonna have to try again on another orb. There's a risk here of upping the ante. So what starts with the rich often trickles down to the less rich, which is why I have a LifeStraw and an L.L. Bean knife. If we talk about people who are not the Elon Musks or the Peter Thiels of the world, is prepping big business among the middle class as well? Yes, and like many other industries in the US, it ebbs and flows. And we trace that back to the Cold War where there were home fallout shelter kits that you could buy. Those went under in the '60s and now they're coming back. You can look at different kinds of preparedness markets that pop up. Shelf-stable food is becoming an increasingly common thing to see. I know at my local Costcos, there are often aisle endcaps that have pyramids of these food buckets that you can store in your house. We might just be in a period of upswing right now. There are still companies that will come bury a fallout shelter in your backyard and promise not to tell anybody where they put it. You're in Arizona. What's the scenario that most worries you? Grid failure. And that's just because, as you can imagine, in the Sonoran Desert, it's hard to imagine making it through 115-degree days without some kind of chemically induced air conditioning. My biggest ones are electromagnetic pulse, hurricane, tornado, and civil war. Electromagnetic pulse is akin to grid failure, right? It means the electricity goes out, and you're trying to figure out what to do. We just saw this happen in Spain and Portugal. It was really a nightmare. It makes me wonder: Should we really want to survive a doomsday scenario? It sounds like a bleak question, but I think in some ways, that is the politically animating question. What can we confront alone and what can we confront together, right? And if we limit ourselves to confronting things alone, I think that threshold is pretty low. Yeah. And so you can think about, again, the ultimate example of this, thermonuclear conflagration. I would say, No, you don't wanna go through that. You'd want to just vaporize. But once you start thinking about smaller-scale or more regionally located catastrophes that might emerge, the tolerance for persisting through those things is amplified when they're done in concert and collectively with other people. When considering risk tolerance, that should be part of that narrative.
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- Yahoo
A Kansas sheriff's sweet, clumsy invite to deliver drunk teens home
The Wabaunsee County Sheriff's Office posted this photo after busting teenagers who were caught drinking. In a masterpiece of social media, Sheriff Eric Kirsch invited teens to call law enforcement if they are "drunk as hell" and need a ride home. (Wabaunsee County Sheriff's Office) Hey teenagers: do you have a cool adult who you trust to drive you home after you get drunk? If not, the Wabaunsee County Sheriff's Office wants to be that person. That's the message from a post that the Kansas sheriff posted Wednesday to Instagram and Facebook. Using a few hundred words (and a handful of emojis), Sheriff Eric Kirsch invited teens to call law enforcement if they need a sober driver: 'SO….in WABAUNSEE COUNTY KANSAS if you're drunk as hell & under 21 & need to get home safe, you can call us & we'll get you home safe.' For the 'young adults' who accepted the offer, he promised not to cite them with a minor in possession of alcohol. The post is a masterpiece of social media, attracting more than 1 million views in the first few hours. Kirsch hopes teens think, 'Wait a minute guys, let's call the Sheriff's Office' after a night of Jägerbombs and Bongzillas. In the process, the message charmingly zigzags all over the place. Kirsch morbidly opens with the military and law enforcement resumes of the department's officers, complete with all caps at all the wrong moments, by listing 'HORRIFIC crimes like homicides,' 'a serial killer' and 'decades in and out of combat zones.' One jarring sentence lists, 'child molestation & online child crimes investigations, busted up PEDOPHILE NETWORKS & other sinister human trafficking syndicates.' The perfect words to convince a tipsy teenager to stagger into a police cruiser? Nope. After that wobbly start, Kirsch gets down to business by offering teenagers a ride home 'if you're drunk as hell.' I think most college-town Uber drivers would tell you the clean-up risk of wasted first-time drinkers. Teenagers often volunteer the alcohol they just drank right back to the world. Puke clean up is a startling new job responsibility that the sheriff is possibly assigning his deputies. Here's hoping Wabaunsee County has invested in rubber floor mats. This is a good moment to inspect the photo that accompanied the words. The top of the image has the badge of the department against the black Kansas sky. At the center, a law enforcement officer smiles — a flashlight, handgun and body camera strapped to his vest. His thumbs-up gesture is mimicked, with varying levels of enthusiasm, by a few of the teens who flank him. Their faces appear to be lit by the strobing lights of a sheriff's cruiser. The teenagers are perfectly Midwest. Their hoodies advertise Coors beer and the Bank of the Flint Hills, brands that likely don't appreciate these product placements alongside teen drinking, thank you very much. The boys mostly wear baseball caps, while one girl stands uneasily near the middle, nervously hinging her OnCloud sneaker in the gravel. At the center of the photo is the contraband: plastic bags from WalMart and Dollar General, filled with empty cans of Mike's Hard Lemonade and other alcohol. The sheriff reveals that they had also been drinking beers and Boone's Farm Wine, the archetypal teen garbage swill. He writes: 'HORRIBLE BOONES FARM WINE (that's basically engine degreaser dudes, you should be ashamed of yourselves )'. It's a standard and cringey aside that signals: 'You can trust me! I've been a young drinker before.' (Only slightly more likely to appeal to 2025 teens? The sheriff's office replied to its own post with a song from 2007, when many of them had yet to be born.) If these words aren't convincing teens, Kirsch next tries compassion, and it's a heavy, heartfelt dose: 'I'm tired of carrying people off the roadway in the aftermath of entirely avoidable tragedy.' There's a bit of patriotism swirled in as Kirsch calls teens 'the future leaders of this Great Nation & we NEED AND WANT you ALL to succeed.' For anyone who has coached, taught or mentored young people, this post presents a familiar conundrum: In order to keep teenagers safe, we need them to trust us adults. Does that trust come through showing them expertise by listing law enforcement accomplishments? Does that trust come through showing them compassion by reminding them, as Kirsch write, that, 'We're here for you dudes, even if you're not quite there for yourself yet '? Does that trust come through the legal forgiveness of a sheriff overlooking the misdemeanor crime of a drunk teenager? Kirsch admits that there is no perfect formula to eliminate teen drinking. He writes: 'People are going to party, prohibition doesn't work yet providing options does. We provide this option so all lives on the road may benefit.' Of course, prohibition of alcohol — whether for teens or an entire country — doesn't work. But that distracts from how these free rides gently sanction teen drinking. The sober rides are a slight but very public enabling. However, Kirsch's stated goal is to create safe roadways that are free of drunk teenage drivers. If that is his mission, this impromptu policy announced on social media works as a step in that direction. The subtle permission for teen drinkers simply might be a necessary cost. When I was a high school teacher, my student journalists interviewed a child psychologist about teen drinking. They asked, 'If parents drink with their teenagers in controlled ways during high school, is that a good way to minimize alcohol abuse later in life?' The psychologist was flummoxed by the question. No, she said, drinking early in life is a leading indicator of later alcohol abuse, so any implicit approval for it is consequential, especially during teenage years. The comment section on Facebook voices this exact worry: 'Thanks for encouraging underage drinking…. No more Ubers the wabunsee (sic) sheriff's office will do it free of charge and listen to your drunken dreams and goals yay good job guys ' Is the sheriff smartly trading tipsy teen drivers for teens who feel liberated to be 'drunk as hell'? Another anecdote from my high school teaching days provides my personal answer. Each October I supervised the fall dance with about 700 students celebrating in the school gymnasium. A few hours into the dance, students literally leaned against the doors, eager to start partying in basements with their own bottles of Boone's Farm. After I released the students and after the chaperones left, I sat in the bleachers of the gymnasium surrounded by drooping streamers and deflated balloons. The DJ packed his speakers into the back of his van. Through the open doors, traffic whirred past. That's when I would hear the sirens. I bowed my head. I hoped the police car wasn't responding to the accident of a drunk student driver. I sometimes prayed in those moments to keep all of those young people safe. The ones I worried about the most had driven themselves to the dance, packing into sedans with corsages on their wrists and beers in their bellies. 'Please keep them safe,' I thought. The ones I worried about less? Students who wobbled onto party buses with drivers to deliver them home. Or students who arranged rides with parents. If they insisted on drinking, at least they would be safe. So, I hear you, Sheriff Kirsch. In the realm of teen drinking, there is no silver bullet (Well, maybe one). There is only ambiguity and a hope for safety. Eric Thomas teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Frantic mama reunited with 12 ducklings that fell in storm drain
ORWIGSBURG — As if to say 'Come to me, my babies,' a mother duck frantically called out Wednesday morning near a drain in a neighborhood off Market Street. Trapped at the bottom of a five-foot-deep culvert, a dozen of her brood huddled together, apparently unable to answer their mother. * Ducklings huddle together at the bottom of a drain in Orwigsburg, Wednesday, April 30, 2025. (MATTHEW PERSCHALL/MULTIMEDIA EDITOR) * A duckling attempts to hop into flight to exit a drain in Orwigsburg, Wednesday, April 30, 2025. The duckling, however, was unable to fly. (MATTHEW PERSCHALL/MULTIMEDIA EDITOR) Show Caption 1 of 2 Ducklings huddle together at the bottom of a drain in Orwigsburg, Wednesday, April 30, 2025. (MATTHEW PERSCHALL/MULTIMEDIA EDITOR) Expand Mother duck's incessant pleas, however, were heard by Tina and Albert Caraballo. The drain through which the ducklings had fallen is in the Caraballo's backyard in the Lantern Green townhouse development. The couple's quick response in covering the grate with cardboard prevented another four ducklings that trailed behind their mother from falling in as well. As the Caraballos awaited response from the Orwigsburg borough and fire department, mama duck encircled the dense thicket on a hillside above the drain, repeatedly calling to her young. A mama duck leads around four ducklings in Orwigsburg, Wednesday, April 30, 2025. The rest of the ducklings fell into a drain.(MATTHEW PERSCHALL/MULTIMEDIA EDITOR) Tina kept a watchful eye on mom, talking to her as she might to a friend in distress. 'I know you're concerned,' Tina said at one point, 'but you must have patience.' Zach Kirsch, a captain in Friendship Hose No. 1, arrived around 11:55 a.m. Already experienced at duckling rescues, Kirsch said it was the third one in recent weeks. Fire Chief Scott Rarick and firefighter Frank McDonough joined the rescue effort. David Benulis, a neighbor, pitched in with a plastic bucket and a rake. Singlehandedly, Kirsch removed the heavy iron grate from the culvert. Fortunately, a step ladder was embedded in the culvert wall. Chief Rarick measured the air quality in the drain before allowing Kirsch, who had on shorts and Army boots, to enter the culvert. Fearing the ducklings would seek refuge in the drain pipe, Kirsch blocked it with the cardboard the Caraballos had placed over the grate. One by one, Kirsch handed the ducklings to McDonough, who gently put them in the bucket Benulis brought. Ten ducklings were rescued. But two, as was feared, escaped into the drain pipe as Kirsch descended into the culvert. Firefighters and borough workers retrieved both of them from other drains. Meanwhile, Tina had cornered mom and her four offspring under shrubbery in front of her house. It was there, after a harrowing two or more hours of separation, that mama duck was reunited with her brood. * Zach Kirsch with the Friendship Hose Co. lifts ducklings out of a drain in Orwigsburg, Wednesday, April 30, 2025. (MATTHEW PERSCHALL/MULTIMEDIA EDITOR) * A mama duck sits with her entire brood of ducklings after some were rescued from the bottom of a drain in Orwigsburg, Wednesday, April 30, 2025. (MATTHEW PERSCHALL/MULTIMEDIA EDITOR) Show Caption 1 of 2 Zach Kirsch with the Friendship Hose Co. lifts ducklings out of a drain in Orwigsburg, Wednesday, April 30, 2025. (MATTHEW PERSCHALL/MULTIMEDIA EDITOR) Expand Fearing a repeat performance should the duck family be left alone, neighbors stood atop grates while others stopped traffic and escorted mama and her 15 offspring across Market Street to their home, a pond behind the Schuylkill EMS compound. 'This happens every spring,' Chief Rarick said. 'Over the years, we've had calls for bees, ducks, pigeons and, naturally, cats.' * A mama duck and her ducklings are ushered across a road and toward a pond in Orwigsburg, Wednesday, April 30, 2025. Several ducklings were rescued from the bottom of a drain. (MATTHEW PERSCHALL/MULTIMEDIA EDITOR) * A mama duck and her ducklings are ushered across a road and toward a pond in Orwigsburg, Wednesday, April 30, 2025. Several ducklings were rescued from the bottom of a drain. (MATTHEW PERSCHALL/MULTIMEDIA EDITOR) * A mama duck and her ducklings make their way back into a pond in Orwigsburg, Wednesday, April 30, 2025. Several of the ducklings were rescued after falling into a drain. (MATTHEW PERSCHALL/MULTIMEDIA EDITOR) * A mama duck and her ducklings make their way back into a pond in Orwigsburg, Wednesday, April 30, 2025. Several of the ducklings were rescued after falling into a drain. (MATTHEW PERSCHALL/MULTIMEDIA EDITOR) Show Caption 1 of 4 A mama duck and her ducklings are ushered across a road and toward a pond in Orwigsburg, Wednesday, April 30, 2025. Several ducklings were rescued from the bottom of a drain. (MATTHEW PERSCHALL/MULTIMEDIA EDITOR) Expand
The Guardian
21-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
The Guardian view on social care: while politicians dither, those in need suffer
The rising human cost of our shamefully inadequate social care system is illustrated by the shocking case of Hugh Kirsch, as reported by the Guardian. Mr Kirsch, who is 66 and has severe learning difficulties, suffered abuse in a previous placement. That home, Mendip House, was closed down. Now his family fear another disruption is on the way. For nine years he has been looked after by Somerset Care, but this organisation has said that it can't keep going on the 0% annual rise offered by Haringey, the London council that funds him. Mr Kirsch may be evicted as a result. His past bad experience makes this story particularly dismaying. But the threat hanging over him is in no way unique. For every dispute over social care costs that garners press attention, there are many others that stay hidden. A 0% increase is tough for providers at any time. But steeply rising costs mean it is currently untenable. This month's increase in employer national insurance contributions has left the social care sector with an estimated £2.8bn bill – and no way of meeting it except by putting up fees. Disturbingly, not-for-profits such as Somerset Care are particularly exposed to these financial risks since they rely heavily on council funding. By contrast, homes with more privately funded residents are in a better position to cross-subsidise places and meet shortfalls. Already, charitable care providers have begun handing back contracts, and there are fears that for‑profit, private-equity-backed businesses could be the only bidders left if non-profits exit the market rather than slash costs. Yet despite this worsening situation on the ground, and warnings of the demographic and financial challenges dating back years, a policy solution to the UK's social care crisis is still years off. Louise Casey, the person chosen by Sir Keir Starmer's government to find a solution and build a cross-party consensus around funding, is widely respected for her bold interventions in highly contested areas. But diverting her from social care to produce a short report on grooming, as ministers did in January, sent a terrible message about the lack of urgency that bedevils this issue. It should have been possible to find someone else in order that the social care work could begin straight away. Given recent upheavals in health policy, it is no wonder that social care is once again stuck on the sidelines. The decision to abolish NHS England, and the upcoming launch of a 10-year plan, are enough to keep any health secretary busy – even one as ambitious as Wes Streeting. But the dangers of doing nothing are not limited to the distress caused to individuals and families caught in the middle of conflicts like the one described above. There is also the risk that the sector as a whole is weakened by further delays. The problems are UK-wide. Scottish non‑profits sent their own appeal to the chancellor in November, after the SNP government scrapped plans for a Scottish national care service. Organisations across the country deserve better from politicians, as do the vulnerable people whose needs they were set up to meet.
