Unpopular opinions thread

[Muirium]

That would have been an unpopular opinion two or three decades ago, but not so today, given how BAD red apples have become.

That's somehow true, green apples are a sort of high end thing right now, but given the fact that red apples are more widely available and when someone talks about apples the red one is the first appearing in your mind, I bet they're, at least in a cultural way, more popular.

Is this all an American thing? Here (Denmark), apples are usually multicoloured and taste great.

Damn, I love apples. Apples apples apples!

That’s also true here in Scotland. Most apples are red yellow green all mixed up. Those are the good apples. I like the first bite of a deep red apple (Macintosh is the best but only see them in North America) but they’re not as satisfying as a good locally sourced ducked up European apple.

[depletedvespene]

That would have been an unpopular opinion two or three decades ago, but not so today, given how BAD red apples have become.

That's somehow true, green apples are a sort of high end thing right now, but given the fact that red apples are more widely available and when someone talks about apples the red one is the first appearing in your mind, I bet they're, at least in a cultural way, more popular.

Is this all an American thing? Here (Denmark), apples are usually multicoloured and taste great.

Damn, I love apples. Apples apples apples!

Over time, red apples in USA (and in the cultural colonies, like my own country) have become a visually more striking and uniform red... but that change has also damaged its actual texture and flavor. They are prettier to look at, but blander and with a meh texture.

[depletedvespene]

That's somehow true, green apples are a sort of high end thing right now, but given the fact that red apples are more widely available and when someone talks about apples the red one is the first appearing in your mind, I bet they're, at least in a cultural way, more popular.

Is this all an American thing? Here (Denmark), apples are usually multicoloured and taste great.

Damn, I love apples. Apples apples apples!

That’s also true here in Scotland. Most apples are red yellow green all mixed up. Those are the good apples. I like the first bite of a deep red apple (Macintosh is the best but only see them in North America) but they’re not as satisfying as a good locally sourced ducked up European apple.

Another item to add to my "to eat" list when I do get to travel to Europe again. I haven't had a real red apple in ages.

[Muirium]

Yup. Bold red American style apples are more tart. Acidic. Not really appley-apples. They really need more… apple.

[fohat]

"Red Delicious" apples in the US need to be renamed "Red Tasteless" because they have been bred to look great without regard to taste. Decades ago, as a kid, I loved "Yellow Delicious" but today, besides being tasteless, those are also mush.

Fortunately I have somewhat better access to more direct supply lines from farms, and I do occasionally get good apples, but variety or appearance are not dependable markers. Smaller and uglier specimens are often better. There are some good ones out there, I got some Honeycrisps recently that were very good, and Pink Ladies are usually pretty decent but can tend towards mealiness.

[Scarpia]

Here in Sweden, the best apple variety is called Ingrid Marie, a tart and multicolored winter only variety. Almost all the other varieties we get in stores here are terrible; the red “delicious”, granny smith, pink lady, all awful tasting but with great looks and I’m sure great mass production properties (like high yields, resistance to pests, and peel that stays good looking for longer).

[Muirium]

Jazz Apples can be quite nice. They appeal to my sweet tooth. Though they're as jazzy as Utah!

[CallmeJohn]

iPods and other mp3 players are better than music streaming platforms. No ads, I own all my music and I don't have to use my phone's battery. Not sure how unpopular this opinion is on here but anyone I've talked to just doesn't get it.

I use a DAP too. Definitely prefer it to listening to music on my phone, and streaming platforms are absolute rubbish. Things like Spotify in no way satisfy my music demand, it's way too limited. I don't understand how people can subsist on Spotify, do they just exclusively listen to pop music or something?

Just curious what music player do you use?

[PlacaFromHell]

That would have been an unpopular opinion two or three decades ago, but not so today, given how BAD red apples have become.

That's somehow true, green apples are a sort of high end thing right now, but given the fact that red apples are more widely available and when someone talks about apples the red one is the first appearing in your mind, I bet they're, at least in a cultural way, more popular.

Is this all an American thing? Here (Denmark), apples are usually multicoloured and taste great.

Damn, I love apples. Apples apples apples!

I've been investigating about your country's apples and looks like they're mostly redfree variety, which is pretty similar to the royal gala here at Argentina, both varieties mixed in colour but more like reds. Green apples are, leaving aside the colour, generally crunchier and quite sour, while red apples are usually sweet and a little more on the pulpy side.
Come on, just look at this bad girl and tell me if you don't want to take a bite:

[PlacaFromHell]

Holy crap wtf happened with the picture

[matt3o]

The market... or better "marketing" made so that we usually know and easily find just half a dozen varieties of apple (red, yellow, green and perfectly round) and each one is very distinct in flavor (mostly hard texture, sweet and juicy), but that's not how (all) apples are.

I find the super red/yellow/green apples to be incredibly boring to the palate. Out of my mind I can count at least 50 varieties of apples and the best ones are mostly bitter-sweet, with a slightly grainy texture.

One of my favorite is the Annurca, they are small and not very pretty. They present bumps and dark spots like it should be.



Similar but a little sweeter the Stayman that might be easier to find internationally



But those are still "modern" apples, created for the human taste over the years (centuries). Very rarely you can find "real" apples, usually at bio diversity shows and they are multicolored and the shape is rarely round.

[Muirium]

That's industrialised consumerism for you. What sells best, and most consistently, is an easily identifiable, repeatable product. Fruit really shouldn't be like that, but most people don't want to spend some quality time in the fruit section of the supermarket (let alone the farmer's stall) inspecting things by hand. They want fast choices: green or red?

Huh. Reminds me of a certain switch family, come to think of it.

[kbdfr]

Apples? How weird. And old-fashioned.
But pears…

[Muirium]

Rocha pears. Yellow and golden sweet.

[Bjerrk]

That's somehow true, green apples are a sort of high end thing right now, but given the fact that red apples are more widely available and when someone talks about apples the red one is the first appearing in your mind, I bet they're, at least in a cultural way, more popular.

Is this all an American thing? Here (Denmark), apples are usually multicoloured and taste great.

Damn, I love apples. Apples apples apples!

I've been investigating about your country's apples and looks like they're mostly redfree variety, which is pretty similar to the royal gala here at Argentina, both varieties mixed in colour but more like reds. Green apples are, leaving aside the colour, generally crunchier and quite sour, while red apples are usually sweet and a little more on the pulpy side.

These are about the cheapest apples I could find down at the shop, and, honestly, they're pretty decent!


Somewhat locally grown, even.

I have a friend who lives on a small island in southern Denmark, just opposite a small (organic) orchard. They're of course on a whole other level. But for grocery store apples at 50 cents a piece I can't complain!

[Chyros]

Pears are okay, the gravelly texture is a bit weird though. And they are quite messy. Got into caramelised pear tea recently though, and it's quite nice (sounds sweet but it isn't).

Apples are okay too but I never buy them myself.

My fruit of choice is bananas. Juice-wise I love orange and pineapple — plays hell on my stomach though.

[Muirium]

Pineapple juice is top notch. I also thoroughly commend peach juice and pear juice. Though all that scrumptious sugar will wreck your diet, be warned!

But aye, bananas are the everyday staple. Perfect quick grab fruit, and don't even get your fingers dirty. Best eaten when spotty, of course.

[fohat]

Best eaten when spotty, of course.

My late father would have agreed with you, but my ex-wife refused to eat a banana that did not have at least a touch of green left on it.

Grapefruit is the best fruit juice. And it after eating a grapefruit the juice of the spent carcass squeezed into a glass is better than any store-bought juice.

[Chyros]

Pineapple juice is top notch. I also thoroughly commend peach juice and pear juice. Though all that scrumptious sugar will wreck your diet, be warned!

But aye, bananas are the everyday staple. Perfect quick grab fruit, and don't even get your fingers dirty. Best eaten when spotty, of course.

Absolutely! Don't understand these people that eat bananas before they're half-brown. They genuinely taste like grass before they've ripened, why do people do it? Oo

Also peach juice is really good too, yeah, I just tend to forget about it xD . But it's excellent!

Oh yeah, and I love strawberries. Just fucking expensive as gold shit xD .

[PlacaFromHell]

What about this one? Tomato is the ultimate fruit.

[Muirium]

It's not the worst. I really like the wee "cherry" ones—not to be confused with cherries or Cherry—as they're a more or less guilt free form of candy. Keep 'em cold in the fridge and chow on down before your mind even settles on a richer target.

[fohat]

I really like the wee "cherry" ones

A few years ago, for 2 consecutive years, we had a plant that produced vast quantities of the yellow pear-shaped ones. They were the best tomatoes I have ever had, perfectly sweet and tart at the same time, and I got a dozen or so every other day for a month or more.

After that I was never able to grow them again. I have bought other yellow pear-shaped cherry tomatoes but they were never as good. And I have never had another plant nearly so prolific.

[XMIT]

That sounds a lot more delicious than the extremely poisonous “devil’s tomato” that was growing beside our driveway last year.

[davkol]

Fun thread.

The thing about unpopular opinions is that—unpopular among whom? In this day and age you can just go online and I guess always find groups that will agree, or disagree with you. But because it's the internet, even if you find your social bubble, you'll quickly run into the narcissism of small differences.

My personal experience is unique in that I don't actually have many opinions… and the few strong opinions that I do have usually piss off everyone before I get into the nuances.

So for example I don't have a preference what I want to have for dinner: that alone is unpopular among my folks. Then I piss off carnists, because I dig into where the meat comes from and how our food industry and agricultural policy suck (ethically, environmentally), as well as vegans, because I'm actually fine with some animal products, I don't consider veganism philosophically sound, nor does it provide a structural critique of industrial practices (including but not limited to food production).

Regarding keyboards, I suppose my least popular opinion is also the broadest one:

The regular rubber-dome/membrane keyboards are mostly fine, until there's a viable mainstream replacement, such as speech- and motion recognition… I'm looking forward to that day. Unless it ends up as exclusively unfree technology (proprietary data-collecting cloud services and such).

[Muirium]

Unless? Sorry to break it to you, but…

[Yasu0]

I kind of agree with davkol on the rubber gome keyboards. They are fine. Which is why mx browns or otemu blue or whatever cheap attainable else thing gets you halfways from "fine" to endgame will sell. I guess its not really an unpopular opinion. Only unpopular here amongst the fringe lunatics.

We didn't do so hot on the "unfree" front did we.

[Palatino]

I kind of agree with davkol on the rubber gome keyboards. They are fine.

Agreed. Rubber gomes over rubber domes any day. The worst of all is rubber gnomes: their tall red hats make for an exceedingly mushy feeling. Plus they never stay in place: you suddenly find your text is illegible because the E, T and N gnomes have all gone off fishing together.

[Findecanor]

That's so depressing for the gnomes.

[fohat]

had a plant that produced vast quantities of the yellow pear-shaped ones. They were the best tomatoes I have ever had, perfectly sweet and tart at the same time, and I got a dozen or so every other day for a month or more.

I have never had another plant nearly so prolific.

I spoke too soon in that post.

During the summer of 2021 I had 4 of these plants and got literally hundreds (could easily have been 1K-2K) which by July I was dehydrating a hundred at a time to make tiny, intensely flavored little nubs. I gave away tons and probably still have hundreds of the dehydrated ones in the freezer.

[Mr Luud]

Unpopular opinion.

Yes Beam springs are worth $2,000+ dollars. sorry you can't afford it bruh just gotta save up and deal the price.

I see so much arguing about the price. yeah thats the price! what do you expect for a keyboard so rare and sought after jesus.