Jenn Chen

The Next Generation Of Coffee Refugee Programs Rise To Meet The Challenge | Sprudge Coffee Coffee shops around the world are helping refugees find meaningful employment in a new country.

An excellent (as always) piece by @thejennchen.bsky.social for @sprudge.bsky.social on the coffee companies stepping up to support refugees with barista training programmes and other activities. #CoffeeSky

Thank you for sharing!

Photos in ProPublica.

A mail service that helps people regain their footing—hard to get a job, hard to deal with the gov, hard to pay your bills without a stable address.

Many of the folks we spoke to _used_ to be unhoused & attributed part of their current situation to the aid they got from K2C.

And confession- I sometimes don't feel like writing an essay at all

My newsletter has felt like WORK instead of a creative outlet. I find myself writing essays more than reported articles. And then my non-newsletter journalism has been like, how do I focus on writing well and disconnect myself from reality while doing this because it's the only way I can write?

Trying to write lately has felt like multiple trash fires of shit (and so has not posting here)

The World Badly Needs A Global Coffee Seed Vault | Sprudge Coffee In the face of coffee's uncertain future, a global seed vault may be a necessary failsafe.

This is a great piece by @thejennchen.bsky.social, deftly tackling an issue that is both immediately pressing and also somehow distant and abstracted. #CoffeeSky

😳 Holy shit. This Vox article is from 2016. Think about that as you read:

Curtis Yarvin’s (Moldbug) “vision is corporatist,” where a nation “belongs to corporation.” When asked who shld lead it, Yarvin said, “‘It’s easy to say ‘put Elon [Musk] in charge, he’ll figure it out,’ & he might well…’” 1/

My transcription service substituted "egg" for "air" so now it reads like "this is a egg roaster, uses egg to push the beans up to the chamber" and all I can picture is eggs doing hard work

A headline from The Guardian: Starbucks says cutting shop staff in favour of automation has failed. Chief executive Brian Nicoll vows to "fundamentally change" strategy in face of worse-than-expected results

Guess investing in baristas IS important... if only SOMEONE had ideas that could, say, be put into a union contract......... oh wait

Welp I'm sick. Post-expo cold not covid. I was terrible to my body during the show and I think I picked something up on Sunday or Monday.

Seems to be lacking in the other EQ acronym I'm familiar with

Met quite a few people who were attending expo for the first time and I am envious of their energy and excitement (not that I don't have it, but I am a tad jaded)

all said, tho, coffee expo always reminds me of the really wonderful friends I've made in the industry, even when I only get to see them once a year. And! Having full convos with people ive known for a while but never talked much to has also been lovely

Four nights of godawful sleep, fourish days of early wake up times, dehydration, not eating enough meals, has my body very unhappy with me.

👀

Floor conversations were interesting!

Thank you for writing this up

Coffee Value Assessment vs. Equitable Value Distribution? The Specialty Coffee Association just took over the CQI Q Grader licensing and added in its Coffee Value Assessment. Now what?

This weekend seemed to cement a lot of power consolidation in the industry by the SCA, while taking a very heavy-handed consumption-sided approach to value distribution. srossmktg.com/2025/04/26/c... #coffeesky

Expo Game Night · Luma Game Night for Expo attendees and local specialty coffee professionals SCA Expo can be an overwhelming experience, no matter how many times you’ve attended.…

If you're going to coffee expo next week in Houston and would like a quieter, sober event to network in- I am hosting game night on Saturday! Deliberately low-key and for introverts who hate networking. #coffeesky
bit.ly/expogame25

Two notifications today:
1- got paid $40 via Venmo for Facebook's internet tracking settlement
2- blue shield of CA says hey, your info might have been shared with Google. Health care plan, patient name, drs, subscriber ID but don't worry, not your ssn or drivers license #!

How Substack steals your audience and your revenue They're not just bad for humanity. They're bad for business.

How Substack steals your audience and your revenue: 16 ways they take from creators

journalistspaythemselves.com/p/how-substa... cc @angryblacklady.bsky.social

If they took us politics out of it and followed the growth trend of expo, I'm sure it would be the biggest ever. Chicago was enormous and the biggest ever

Ghost introduced a beta connection between website & fediverse & I'm not sure how I feel about possibly having to manage another social account. I get why it's there and it seems neat, if it was the only account I have

Curious if the 17k+ attendees from 90+ countries stats that sca used in today's expo promo email is going to be adjusted for all the people and countries being blocked from entering the us. #coffeesky mailchi.mp/sca.coffee/t...

Travel Warnings and Detainments Cast a Shadow Over America’s Biggest Coffee Trade Show Amidst the U.S. government’s crackdown at the border and a raft of anti-trans legislation in Texas, some coffee professionals are skipping the Specialty Coffee Association’s Expo in Houston.

Another attempt at distilling everything that's going on through the lens of coffee.

This time, a look at how Trump's border crackdown, combined with the Texas legislature's anti-trans mania, have put people off attending the SCA's Expo trade show in Houston next month.

#CoffeeSky

Yesterday, I presented my art as art for the first time ever and in as supportive a space as I can think of. It felt a little weird to be the only photographer among paint, textile, clay, mixed media and such artists but it was fun nonetheless

Yellow ridged plant pot with one wilted calathea orbifolia leaf hanging over the edge and an open one in the background

Weekly photo challenge 13/52 mood. I was feeling rather uninspired this week, so I chose wilted as my mood. #52frames #52frames_mood