We need to support Brazil

This is not about football 📣. It's about açaí, specifically Brazilian açaí (apparently pronounced ah-sigh-EE). Açaí is a small, dark purple fruit that grows on the açaí palm tree in the Amazon rainforest. It's low in sugar, high in antioxidants, healthy fats and fibre. So it's a kind of superfood and you can get it (if you can find it and afford it) frozen or powdered for use in smoothies or juice blends. I checked out Tesco online and they sell, through their marketplace, Açaí body butter, Açaí body mask (neither of which I'll be buying because I wouldn't know what to do with them) and Organic Açaí powder, which I guess you might chuck into smoothies instead of whey protein powder and I think I might be able to get in my local Holland and Barrett. Alternatively, Ocado does scoopable frozen Açaí sorbet, Organic Açaí Drops, smoothie packs, the TriActive Super Good Bar "with Benefits" Almond & Acai Berry and smoothie bowls. I've never actually used Ocado [any recommendations or otherwise?] so maybe I'll give some of these a try for my debut purchase.

Why should we care about this? Because the great United States of America has slapped 50% tariffs on Brazilian imports into the USA and this threatens the livelihoods of farmers in the northern Brazilian state of Pará, which supplies 90% of the açaí sold to the US. I feel the world should stand up to bullies and we in Cornwall must shoulder some of the burden. Go buy your açaí and support the Amazonian farmers!

Late News: Ocado don't deliver to my area, it says. Although I'm sure I've seen their vans around. Bummer. H&B it is...

I shall report in due course.

Indian, Singaporean or Brazilian?

I woke up at 5am, went to the loo and checked my phone. My chess opponent had made a move. In the middle of the night? No, he's from Kazakhstan and it's 9am there. I go back to sleep and later - around 11am - make my move. I eventually checkmated him at 4pm Kazakh time.

I don't actually know whether he's from Kazakhstan, or even a 'he'. Here's his chess.com profile:

In common with many online games, you can select your own attributes to build your profile - choose your flag, upload a photo of your dog, whatever. For all I know I could have been playing a 10yo Swedish kid, although the time zone thing suggests his country may be correct.

Here's my profile:

Resplendent in my Ipswich Town gear, ready for the start of the new season on Friday. When I joined chess.com I didn't bother to set my profile so I had the default USA flag for a while. Didn't make me play any better,

I'm thinking of changing for a bit. This morning I watched  the fantastic ending to the England v India cricket series. When I was younger I followed cricket avidly but there was a period when the England team were a pretty unpleasant bunch of spoiled brats and the Australians were the world's leading sledgers and so I stopped. This test match has lasted four and a bit days and I switched on by accident - searching for something else- and I was gripped by a thrilling finish, which India won. That, combined with the fantastic results being posted by India's men and women chess players, makes me feel I should identify (we can all do that now, right?) as Indian for a while. Although I wouldn't be getting up at 5am to make a chess move. Maybe it'll confuse my opponents and I'll gain an edge.

But I'm also thinking about Brazilian. There's been a recent upsurge in my blog views from around the world:

I don't really know what this means. I suspect these aren't real people, since I've not received any Brazilian or Vietnamese comments, but even if they are bots scraping the web, why now and why Brazil? I tried to get some help from Google Analytics but - possibly because I've been nasty about Google recently - it was of no help. Nevertheless, I think I should perhaps identify as a Brazilian for a day - they did give us Pele, after all - to help the blog along.

There was a recent upsurge in "views" from Singapore, so maybe that should be an option. Although I'm a bit worried I might get deported if I'm no longer British. But a free flight to Bangalore wouldn't be bad, right? And the UK has a new trade deal with India, which includes visas, so I could probably get back in.

What do my regular contributors think - should I try Indian, Brazilian or Singaporean? I'm not really feeling English today, after the cricket.