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Joined 4 months ago
Cake day: August 20th, 2025
  • human@slrpnk.nettoToday I Learned@lemmy.world•TIL Tonka Beans are illegal in the USAEnglish
    11·
    12 days ago

    From a blog post in the subject:

    At a distance, tonka beans look a bit like elongated raisins, or shrunken prunes. In many countries around the world, they are prized for the flavor and aroma boost that they can add to dishes. The taste and scent of the beans are reminiscent of vanilla and almond mixed together, though there are other warm notes, as well. But you won’t find them in the spice aisle of your favorite American supermarket because the FDA banned them in 1954.

    The reason? A chemical called coumarin found in the beans was shown to cause liver damage in animals, per the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. Coumarin is incredibly common and is found in things like strawberries, cherries, licorice, and even fresh cut grass, which is what makes your lawn smell that way.

    Grown in Central and South America, tonka beans are seeds of the kumaru tree. Also known as Brazilian teak, the seeds were traditionally used medicinally, but today the wood is used in flooring, on boats, and to make tool handles. Its versatility in flavoring both sweet and savory dishes is what makes it desirable to chefs everywhere. You can find it in everything from Caribbean black cake to even one of Tasting Table’s 13 bucket list beers from overseas.

    The flavor imparted by tonka beans is much more complex than you might think. It’s described in such lofty terms that you’d be forgiven for thinking everyone who writes about it is being poetic. Terms like “the most versatile,” “hypnotic,” and “transcendent” are tossed around by journalists and chefs. It’s included in dishes that range from ice cream to mashed potatoes, and braised chicken.

    Despite the restrictions, tonka beans have shown up on United States menus, like in the porcini mushroom brulee served at New York’s Timna. Apparently, the restrictions against using it aren’t very strictly enforced. But also, the regulation may be unreasonable. A single tonka bean can flavor as many as 80 dishes. A human would need to eat 30 whole beans to start experiencing toxic effects. Therefore, it seems the ban took place out of an abundance of caution.

    If you know where to look, you can find chefs all across the U.S. adding tonka to their menus. Whether it’s grated over tres leches cake in New Orleans or a panna cotta in New York, it’s adding unique notes and pushing some dishes over the top with flavor. Will it ever become commonplace in stores? That’s tough to say, given the reputation.

  • human@slrpnk.nettoAnarchism@lemmy.ml•The Feds Want to Make It Illegal to Even Possess an Anarchist Zine
    12·
    1 month ago

    Federal prosecutors have filed a new indictment in response to a July 4 noise demonstration outside the Prairieland ICE detention facility in Alvarado, Texas, during which a police officer was shot.

    There are numerous problems with the indictment, but perhaps the most glaring is its inclusion of charges against a Dallas artist who wasn’t even at the protest. Daniel “Des” Sanchez is accused of transporting a box that contained “Antifa materials” after the incident, supposedly to conceal evidence against his wife, Maricela Rueda, who was there.

    But the boxed materials aren’t Molotov cocktails, pipe bombs, or whatever MAGA officials claim “Antifa” uses to wage its imaginary war on America. As prosecutors laid out in the July criminal complaint that led to the indictment, they were zines and pamphlets. Some contain controversial ideas — one was titled “Insurrectionary Anarchy” — but they’re fully constitutionally protected free speech. The case demonstrates the administration’s intensifying efforts to criminalize left-wing activists after Donald Trump announced in September that he was designating “Antifa” as a “major terrorist organization” — a legal designation that doesn’t exist for domestic groups — following the killing of Charlie Kirk.

    Sanchez was first indicted in October on charges of “corruptly concealing a document or record” as a standalone case, but the new indictment merges his charges with those against the other defendants, likely in hopes of burying the First Amendment problems with the case against him under prosecutors’ claims about the alleged shooting.

    It’s an escalation of a familiar tactic. In 2023, Georgia prosecutors listed “zine” distribution as part of the conspiracy charges against 61 Stop Cop City protesters in a sprawling RICO indictment that didn’t bother to explain how each individual defendant was involved in any actual crime. I wrote back then about my concern that this wasn’t just sloppy overreach, but also a blueprint for censorship. Those fears have now been validated by Sanchez’s prosecution solely for possessing similar literature.

     Photos of the zines Daniel Sanchez is charged with “corruptly concealing.” Photo: U.S. District Court, Northern District of Texas

    There have been other warnings that cops and prosecutors think they’ve found a constitutional loophole — if you can’t punish reporting it, punish transporting it. Los Angeles journalist Maya Lau is suing the LA County Sheriff’s Department for secretly investigating her for conspiracy, theft of government property, unlawful access of a computer, burglary, and receiving stolen property. According to her attorneys, her only offense was reporting on a list of deputies with histories of misconduct for the Los Angeles Times.

    If you can’t punish reporting it, punish transporting it.

    It’s also reminiscent of the Biden administration’s case against right-wing outlet Project Veritas for possessing and transporting Ashley Biden’s diary, which the organization bought from a Florida woman later convicted of stealing and selling it. The Constitution protects the right to publish materials stolen by others — a right that would be meaningless if they couldn’t possess the materials in the first place.

    Despite the collapses of the Cop City prosecution and the Lau investigation — and its own dismissal of the Project Veritas case — the Trump administration has followed those dangerous examples, characterizing lawful activism and ideologies as terrorist conspiracies (a strategy Trump allies also floated during this first term) to seize the power to prosecute pamphlet possession anytime they use the magic word “Antifa.”

    That’s a chilling combination for any journalist, activist, or individual who criticizes Trump. National security reporters have long dealt with the specter of prosecution under the archaic Espionage Act for merely obtaining government secrets from sources, particularly after the Biden administration extracted a guilty plea from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. But the rest of the press — and everyone else, for that matter — understood that merely possessing written materials, no matter what they said, is not a crime.

    Guilt by Literature

    At what point does a literary collection or newspaper subscription become prosecutorial evidence under the Trump administration’s logic? Essentially, whenever it’s convenient. The vagueness is a feature, not a bug. When people don’t know which political materials might later be deemed evidence of criminality, the safest course is to avoid engaging with controversial ideas altogether.

    The slippery slope from anarchist zines to conventional journalism isn’t hypothetical, and we’re already sliding fast. Journalist Mario Guevara can tell you that from El Salvador, where he was deported in a clear case of retaliation for livestreaming a No Kings protest. So can Tufts doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk, as she awaits deportation proceedings for co-writing an opinion piece critical of Israel’s wars that the administration considers evidence of support for terrorism.

    At least two journalists lawfully in the U.S. — Ya’akub Ira Vijandre and Sami Hamdi — were nabbed by ICE just last month. The case against Vijandre is partially based on his criticism of prosecutorial overreach in the Holy Land Five case and his liking social media posts that quote Quranic verses, raising the question of how far away we are from someone being indicted for transporting a Quran or a news article critical of the war on terror.