December 2, 2023
The Pirate Who Penned the First English-Language Guacamole Recipe
The Pirate Who Penned the First English-Language Guacamole Recipe. William Dampier’s English food-writing firsts included the use of the words barbecue and chopsticks.
A simple theory of cancel culture
A simple theory of cancel culture, by Joseph Heath (previously). It's a social phenomenon that's independent of political ideology: a celebrity chef in China recently sparked outrage by posting a recipe for egg fried rice. "Social media have expanded the power of individuals to recruit third parties to conflict. This has dramatically enhanced people’s ability to escalate conflict, which has two notable effects. First, it has resulted in many minor conflicts, such as routine violations of etiquette, becoming much more severely contested and sanctioned. Second, it has made it possible to intimidate individuals and institutions in ways that had previously not been possible." [more inside]
Fedco drops all varieties by Syngenta
Maine-based gardening cooperative Fedco, founded in 1978, announces severance of ties to Syngenta: "In the years since we began labeling Syngenta varieties, our alarm at its practices has only grown. While our engagement with Syngenta is nominal within the massive global seed trade, in the words of activist Angela Davis, “You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.”" [more inside]
On Trump, and the prospects of Dictatorship
WaPo editor Robert Kagan argues that we are dangerously close to seeing a Trump Dictatorship. Is it true, or is it alarmism? He lists markers, but the American public (and mefites) will need to decide for themselves. [more inside]
The new, sweet oranges quickly displaced the bitter variety
The word for orange and its cognates in several Indoeuropean languages arrived in Europe via Persian (نارنگ nārang then, and نارنج nārenj nowadays). At the same time, in Persian oranges are called پرتقال (porteqāl) which literally means... Portugal! Why is that? from Portuguese Orange, Persian Portugal
Stareworthy
Dancing with the Stairs is an interactive and joyful visual of exactly that. Poetry in motion as they say....
What was it like to build the Millennium Falcon?
"Voice of a Star Wars Fan" is a fan video perhaps like no other. Better to know as little about it as possible before watching, but if you love old school model making, ILM, and the original Star Wars films, this SLYT video will surely be worthy of your time. [more inside]
The Death of the Tsundere
“The tsundere is a well-known anime trope, that many people still love to this day. But something happened to it since its inception, and I want to talk about that.” [19:05] [more inside]
"Ghosts haunt cities, seeking revenge for the disappeared past"
The Haunted City is an essay by Azania Imtiaz Khatri-Patel about the ghosts who haunt modern life, concentrating on London, Mumbai and Japan. Meanwhile Andrew Kipnis' essay The Haunting of Modern China focuses on the ghosts of urban China, and the living's changing relationships with the dead.
Finance is messy because the world is messy
But crypto kept growing until the control systems could not ignore them any longer. And the control systems cannot continue to avoid knowledge of the crimes. So, so many crimes. Many of them are what crypto advocates consider as utterly inconsequential, like serially lying on paperwork. And also Binance gleefully and knowingly banked terrorists and child pornographers. That’s not an allegation; that has been confessed to. There is no line a Bond villain will not cross. They will cross them performatively. from The Bond villain compliance strategy
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