6x6 (13. 377)

mail-order magic: cheaper printing techniques and a robust postal system helped occultism to flourish in the United States at the turn of the last century—and still thrives  

no contest: sentences delivered in bear-suit insurance fraud case 

floating currency: the US$ index is a deceptive relic  

garum: the fascinating history of fish sauce—via MetaFilter  

van helsing: the curious case of Old Thiess and the benevolent werewolves of Livonia  

domestics: a peek inside the world’s first servant robot mail order startup

windows on the world (13. 365)

Opening on this day in 1976 and in operation until destroyed during the September 11th terror attacks in 2001, the complex of dining and entertainment venues developed under the guidance of restauranteur Joe Baum (responsible for renovating the Rainbow Room of Rockefeller Center and creator of America’s first themed destination dining establishments) and architect Warren Planter (student of Eero Saarinen) whose concept for the interior was that of a grand ocean liner with plush accents and brass railings and a terraced layout that afforded views from every table with logo, dinnerware and lighting designed by Milton Glaser.  Housed in the upper storeys of the North Tower (Building One) of the World Trade Center, all staff present on the day of the attack perished, the impact of American Airlines Flight 11 cutting off all means of escape above the ninety-second floor. Though never conclusively confirmed, it is speculated that the identity of The Falling Man is restaurant audio engineer, Jonathan Briley, brother of Alexander, the soldier and later seaman character from the disco recording act, Village People. The iconic photograph is owned by Elton John and was named after the 1950 oil painting by Max Beckmann that seems to foreshadow the trapped jumpers.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a return visit to the Störmthaler See (with synchronopticæ)

fourteen years ago: comparmentalising the internet 

fifteen years ago: the life and afterlife of William Shakespeare 

sixteen years ago: around town, a visit to the Kyffhäuserdenkmal plus default browsers

9x9 (13. 340)

sen̓áḵw: the return of a Squamish Nation village exempt from zoning laws and an elegant solution to Vancouver’s housing shortage—first heard on NPR  

patience: a meditation on Solitaire—see previously  

tanker war: veterans of the 1981-1988 Persian Gulf crisis share flash-back inducing parallels  

granny shelf: an appreciation of the overlooked products in one’s grocery aisle—via Web Curios  

rückenfigur: a retrospective exhibition of Expressionist artist Gabriele Münter  

season ticket: brilliant vintage bus passes of the Milwaukee metro  

easter armistice: attacks continue as thirty-six hour truce for the Orthodox holiday between Ukraine and Russia approaches  

phreak box: an emulation of tones that hacked payphones—via Kottke—see previously  

diego garcia: US opposition forces UK to abandon plans to return the Chagos islands to Mauritius

table manners (13. 285)

Though admittedly sometimes we practise with the wooden, break-apart pair included with store-bought sushi that includes a brief guide, like those napkins that one used to find in Greek and Italian restaurants that included a vocabulary lesson for native pleasantries to exchange with the waitstaff (one doesn’t find them so often any more), we knew we were doing it wrong and would never assay such behaviour during an authentic meal unless by limited utensils and were not prepared this extensive list, courtesy of MetaFilter, of breaches of etiquette that one can commit with chopsticks (箸, はし in Kana and pronounced as hashi). Dating back to antiquity with their first archeological evidence as cooking implements, the use of chopsticks spread with Confucian philosophy as civilised and refined with the modern aphorism that whereas knives are for the slaughterhouse and battle, chopsticks are for scholars—so called grand chopsticks (料理箸, ryōribashi) used for preparation rather than eating are longer and also measure temperature as a property of bamboo by their sounds or silence during frying. Whilst not intended as prescriptive or shame-inducing but rather as cultivating eating as an art and act of reverence, there are orders of precedence, using the serving implements, not double-dipping and many others, including the pictured transgression called ogamibashi (拝み箸), it being considered rude to hold one’s chopsticks during the expression of thanks (itadakimasu, いただきます) for what one is about to receive, the equivalent (though more nuanced as a recognition of humility rather than hierarchy and that one’s needs have a larger meaning) of having one’s knife and fork at the ready during grace.

the white witch of burley (13. 222)

Courtesy of Weird Universe, we are introduced to the enigmatic figure of Sybil Leek (*1917 - †1982) who made an enduring mark on the quaint New Forest village first with a robust chain of antique shops that dominated the local market, astrologer and then occult practitioner through her latter day cookbook and dietary guide according to one’s zodiacal sign—some people appreciate the nudge. Her eccentricities generated a lot of attention for the village from the 1940s to the early 1960s but not all the publicity was well-received as an early advocate for women’s rights, environmental stewardship and her generally stoic philosophy when it came to embracing what most liberated women (see below) were accused of being, with her landlord ultimately refusing to renew her leases, prompting Leek to emigrate to the United States and settling in Florida, where her penchant for the esoteric had more receptive audience, turning to prediction and her capacity for premonition and mediumship, authoring more books and appearing regularly on the psychic and parapsychology circuit—though astrological readings were still her mainstay. Trained in the dark arts, Leek did not believe in curses and only channeled the benevolent side of her power, she had a genius level IQ and argued that her spiritual practise was not a dramatic thing, as most perceived it—just quiet mediation instead of prayer. More at the link above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit, the Covenant of the Goddess (with synchronopticæ), US Peace Corps founded (1961) plus pastel studies of the planets

twelve years ago: GCHQ’s operation Optic Nerve, Andy Warhol’s album cover art, storing energy in massive marbles plus Agnes of God

fourteen years ago: privacy and social media plus more dragnet surveillance and the US security jabberwocky

fifteen years ago: complimentary vexillology plus spaghetti rice

sixteen years ago: naming storms  

seventeen years ago: the month’s namesake 

tradwife futurism (13. 199)

Lamenting the visions of paleo-futures lost to the branching decisions that inform our present, Telescopic Turnip, complete with a recommended accompaniment soundtrack of optimistic New Age—via MetaFilter—takes us on a journey of one those alternate timelines with the hope and enthusiasm of the Atoms for Peace programmes through microwave cookery. Contemporarily, the oven is not a replacement for the traditional stove and range top but rather a complement and although agreeably there was a course adjustment, this vision was not entirely abandoned, which I think about the every time I notice the custom-built cabinet in our well-appointed kitchen that hides the barely used microwave behind a hydraulic wing-style door—which is also a nice storage space for cookbooks and makes the layout symmetrical but also was a pretty expensive thing to install for that purpose—or how the kitchenette of my workweek apartment only had a microwave, and there was a time when it was promoted as the way of the future. Read more about the accidental discovery and foisted application—along with that of countervailing rival Teflon, at the link up top.

building & loan (12. 886)

Whilst calling “affordability” a hoax perpetrated by Democrats and blathering on about how much grocery, energy costs and inflation is down (a sentiment contrary to economic realities and one that the public is not buying), Trump seeming undermined his own argument with a multi-pronged approach to lowering consumer prices first by directing the justice department to investigate price gouging and collusion in the meat-packing industry that has made beef more expensive, reversing tariffs on some staple imports—plus a promise to issue individual stimulus cheques from duties dividends, through revenues won’t satisfy promised payouts, direct payments as opposed to extended subsidies for health insurance coverage premiums to encourage Americans to become entrepreneurs in their wellness and most controversially the introduction of a fifty-year mortgage to make homeownership achievable to more with nominally lower monthly outlays—though over a much long period, deferring outright tenancy and building equity, with more going towards interest rather than the principal.

first-in first-out (12. 855)

For some time, a local shop has been more visibly attempting to reduce spoilage by discounting perishable items about to expire with mark-downs, now adding “no to throwing me in the bin,” not only to reduce waste but also to keep food items out of landfills where it produces methane aside from taking up space, and so we appreciated this reporting from Spoon & Tamago about Family Mart, one of Japan’s largest konbini (コンビニ) franchises, a bodega or convenience shop, about its campaign to raise awareness and appeal consumer sympathy through an array of more emotive anthropomorphic characters, teary-eyed and asking for help.  Following trials that demonstrated shoppers were willing to help rotate stock and feedback from customers, the company rolled them out nationwide and made design template free for any one to use to cut waste in their own stores with the stickers. Learn more at the links above.

welcome to the jungle (12. 753)

If Upton Sinclair’ original 1906 novelisation of the inhumane conditions in the meatpacking industry (see previously here and here) wasn’t already enough to turn one vegetarian and co-champion for struggling immigrants and reform of the social safety net in the US, this brief from 99% Invisible should do the trick, showing that precious little has changed in the intervening century, including the tarnished American Dream, and has taken a turn for the worse with consolidation and workers even more disposable.

8x8 (12. 679)

short imagined monologues: the abandoned new Cracker Barrel logo speaks out  

internet caretaker: Messy Nessy returns from vacation with another roundup of things found on-line—no notes  

 ticker-tape: a 1967 home computer—via Damn Interesting  cybersitter: a look back on the ways of filtering the web

ai upscaling: multimedia artists complain about unbidden tweaks to their signature videos—via the New Shelton wet/dry

dark dwarves: astrophysicists theorise a new class of stars that may never exhaust their fuel  

🖇️: an annotated collection donated to Present /&/ Correct 

divertimento № 198: assorted links amid gustatory delights from the Minnesota State Fair 

the united states is not made up of well-adjusted adults—it’s made up of americans: simulation and simulacrum in the USA—via Miss Cellania

synchronoptica

one year ago: the introduction of Pepsi (with synchronopticæ)

thirteen years ago: the evolution of screen-time plus frozen fireworks

fourteen years ago: reimagining Space Oddity 

seventeen years ago: driving on autopilot 

8x8 (12. 561)

willis wonderland: an appreciation of an influential designer that defined the aesthetic of the 80s 

 

husband-and-wife slices: the thorny problem of translating Chinese dishes—the apotheosis of Chinglish on menus 

 

social mountaintop: a hot-take about the rise of MAGA and its charismatic figurehead 

destiny of the republic: a new biography on James Garfield, US president for two hundred days 

border control: Norwegian visitor barred entry for verboten JD vance meme 

crockett and tubbs: a compelling Miami Vice and Star Wars crossover 

borenstein back to blogging: an appreciation of the format and schedule—via Language Hat 

kunstler tapeten: wallpaper inspired by the Michael Powell and Emerich Pressburg classic film The Red Shoes—via Nag on the Lake

coques et moules (12. 554)

Today was a beach day and we wandered over the dunes to the water’s edge along the plage near where the cargo ship the TK Bremmen washed ashore in 2011, long since cleared away and salvaged due to the pollution risk from oil in the hold.

Taking a nice stroll in the sand and surf, there was the remains of a World War II concrete pillbox bunker, a relic of Nazi Germany’s Atlantic Wall and impervious to destruction after eighty years. Later on we returned to the Island of Saint Cado and had mussels served the traditional way with frities and fortified cidre in tea cups.

We walked around the whole of the island. A service was being held in the chapel but we saw the devotional fountain fed by the sea, built in the 1700s with a Celtic cross in deference to Cardoc, patron of Gaul and Armorica (along with Saint Anne, the mother of Mary), restored in the twenty first century for the procession of Saint Cado’s Pardon (see previously), a pentential pilgrimage—to be granted indulgence—coinciding with a feast day and unique to Breton.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a visit to a historic hermitage (with synchronopticæ) 

twelve years ago: Wiesbaden’s Fort Biehler plus an FAQ on FAQs 

thirteen years ago: wayside shrines, the Feldenkrais method plus the return of the hibachi

dim sum and then some (12. 337)

Via the New Shelton wet/dry, we are directed to problem of how most cuisine is reduced to a flag and cordoned in by national borders, which is serviceable to an extent but results in a monolithic understanding when regional dishes are in reality much more granular foodways. Chinese cooking has been categorised in popular culture into eight styles, Sichuan, Cantonese, Anhui, Hunan, Jiangsu, Shandong, Fujian and Zhejiang as a start (based off the order of courses presented in banqueting tradition) but is far more rarefied in reality, even to the exclusion of standard dishes which so far not been subject to an official count but seems conservatively to number in the scores with this “coffee table” enumeration of representative recipes, ingredients and trajectories.

9x9 (12. 297)

ei-ei-o: a comparison onomatopoetic words for animal sounds across different languages—via Waxy   

acrostic: textile company’s branding has the aesthetics of concrete poetry 

destiny narrative: an omnibus post on the horrors and avoidability of war  

analog society: a British group performs live mash-up of notionally similar songs 

tectonic independence: why Greenland is an island and Australia a continent—see also   

360: Manhattan’s only revolving restaurant to reopen  

telephone game: Russia demands details from US before agreeing to any ceasefire agreement in Ukraine   

cross-walk: mimes direct traffic in Bogotá   

an old error has more friends than a new truth: proverbs and idioms from around the world

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit (with synchronoptica) plus more FOIA follies

seven years ago: raising awareness for prosthetic limbs, Japan’s residential towers plus more links to enjoy

eight years ago: provisions requiring employees submit to DNA screenings

nine years ago: what if the Singularity already happened, the doorway effect plus colourful ancient statuary

ten years ago: Disney reboots, even more links plus more made-up jobs

opsophagos (12. 200)

Mapped onto all sorts of anti-social behaviour and privations of gluttony, the real and reputed ὀψοφάγοɩ, gourmandise of ancient Greek culture with a penchant for relish or hors d’œuvre as anything that might compliment a staple dish were leveed with a fish addiction, the most desirable morsel of a repast—we learn via Strange Company. There are many accounts of overindulgence by the wealthy and philosophers alike, wishing almost self-destructively for the gullet of cranes and pelicans for devouring the food—the poet Philoxenus of Leucas, for example, an enthusiastic banqueter and seafood lover who caused his own death by gorging on a giant octopus—and the conspicuous consumption was linked in the public’s mind to all sorts of vices, immediate gratification and moral failings, and indeed the spectacle or the rumour of the fish market became a moral panic of the day. More from JSTOR at the link above.

backsplash, splashback (11. 996)

Having previously explored the influence of architect and resistance-fighter through her Frankfurt model kitchen that has become the standard design for the Western world, we were pleased to learn that personal domestic space of Margarete Schütte-Lihotzsky has been carefully conserved and made accessible to the public in her Vienna apartment. The modern, fitted standard with harmonised features now taken for granted, like broad counter surfaces, tiled Spritzschutz which are reversed for British and American English and plenty of recessed storage room was first introduced in 1926 and the restored 1970s version in her former home. Despite of the impact of her installation, Schütte-Lihotzsky, who never was a homemaker nor cook prior and relied on interviews, was understandably resentful for only being remembered for this singular innovation at the expense of social aspect of architecture and urban-planning.

manna from heaven (11. 938)

Via the New Shelton wet/dry we are directed to an omnibus article on the research and development of producing food out of air, profiling some of the two dozen firms around the world seeking to transform carbon dioxide and water (see previously here and here) into an alternative protein-source, flavouring a substrate of desiccated cell walls of autotrophic, soil-dwelling bacteria. Using a fermentation process already well established in the production of insulin and the rennet enzymes for cheesemaking (eliminating the need to harvest it from the stomach lining of calves), scientists working for these biotech startups have isolated a highly palatable bacterium that thrives in captivity and have launched demonstration farms to show the concept’s viability to mill a nutritious flour and meal using a fraction of the land—allowing more opportunities for the rewilding of fields and pastures—and resources it required for traditional farming. While commercial-scale production is in sight, the largest hurdle remaining may be convincing the public to adopt such a diet of microbes that foregoes the folkways of cooking.

allium sativum (11. 913)

Via Strange Company’s Weekly Link Dump, we were intrigued by this herbarium of apotropaic plants that goes beyond one’s standard staple of garlic to ward off or disempower malign forces and how these superstitions intersect with traditional healing and culinary arts. For instance, testimony from witch trials during the sixteenth century in the Gulf of Trieste revealed the widespread belief that good witches (called Benandanti—see also) engaged in nightly parasomnic battles with their evil counterparts wielding wands made of rue and fennel. Dill was also held to have disenchanting properties and hedges of hawthorn (Weißdorne) were said to be protective barriers where dark magic could not enter. Much more at the links above.

upselling (11. 888)

Although to an extent we get why both websites and increasingly waitstaff, dependent on positive reviews, recommendation, and the former sidelined, scraped, abandoned, bereft of revenue and cajoled into a subscription model, places and spaces one has given a minute of their attention to voluntarily are not enough and demand another minute amongst the vortex of algorithmically curated feeds and forced notifications—and the minute after that, no longer allowed to engage and explore on one’s own terms. Nick Heer presents the very apt allegory of a dining experience ruined by an aggressively intrusive server:

Would you like to see the menu again? Here, try this new thing. Here, try this classic thing we brought back. Here is a different chair. How about we swap the candles on the table for a disco ball? Would you like to hear the specials again? Have you visited our other locations?

Such an encounter is highly relatable and corresponds with newsletters, paywalls, diversions that lock one into walled-gardens and promoted content and detract from the whole venture.

7x7 (11. 830)

cat lives matter: US vice presidential candidate JD Vance propagating false and inflammatory rumours about migrants abducting and eating family pets 

beany leeky greens with greeky rampy beans: recipes and foodways becoming a bit less twee, more straightforward—via tmn  

an agony, in eight fits: James Earl Jones (RIP) reads Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark  

may the gods give you everything you asked for: backhanded benedictions and predictions about what AI does next 

 esh: how AITA took over the internet

a melodrama in three acts: Five Star Finale and other pre-code screenplay original sources  

crowd size: Harris-Walz campaign advertisement airing on Fox News

 synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronoptica)

seven years ago: silphium, more on the Voynich Manuscript plus a visit to Trump’s ancestral home

eight years ago: Birobidzhan oblast,  fantasy doubles tennis plus the 1970 movie The Phynx

nine years ago: more links to enjoy 

ten years ago: WWI periodicals a century on