Many statues of antiquity were executed in this way—including homages like the Statue of Liberty—as opposed to the Egyptian foot where the greater toe is longer. Many more pedary profiles (there’s no science behind this—sort of like palmistry or phrenology) are to be found and Da Vinci’s characters amazingly exhibit them all.
A quick read of the tea leaves on how the US Department of Agriculture—the agency responsible for maintaining the integrity of America’s foodstuffs—might relax some of the stricter standards put in place to ensure that public school meal programmes (for comparison, here are some global examples) were healthful and nourishing, Naked Capitalism hit upon an interesting, adjacent campaign combatting food-waste.
Many of the dissenting voices who’ll advocate classifying catsup the tomato paste of pizza as a vegetable say that kids end up throwing away big portion of these healthier meals and while the problems that afflict institutional lunches are not new and schools have challenges staying in compliance, some districts are engaging their pupils by setting food sharing and donation programmes to reduce the amount of food that gets thrown away. Students are required to fill their trays with a balanced meal—including a portion of vegetables, a carton of milk, et cetera—but after passing through the line, they are empowered to trade something unwanted (within reason) for an extra helping of something desired and know that they are giving food away to the hungry and disadvantaged of their communities. Instead of ingratiating processed foods at a formative age, it’s probably a far more important lesson to imprint that waste and choice has consequences.
Unfortunately, the US Sh*t Poster in-chief is an influencer and is setting—unsurprisingly—an atrocious example with his dietary predilections, which is a resounding endorsement for the processed, nutritionally vacuous and brandable foods that he’s chosen to limn the limits of his palette.
Such a cycle of meals only serve to keep us indentured to the systems underlying it: an economy bolstered by mcjobs, precarious and underserving healthcare that’s over burdened in part by lack of choices (though Dear Dotard could avail himself of any number of gourmet repasts and one would assume exercises his taste to leverage guests with dinner table diplomacy) and the pharmacopeia to stave off the deleterious effects of such a lifestyle. Hopefully, most of us have matured beyond this stage of being a finicky eater and perhaps like other unwelcome commendations and subsidies, people will further distance themselves from this short list of go-to franchises.
We appreciated the message, style and provenance of this series of UK World War II propaganda posters circulated in 1940 in order to impress upon the public the importance of avoiding idle talk and over-sharing, since someone was always listening and even seemingly innocuous details (which we’re want to spread despite ourselves for the chance to pique and leverage the interest of our cohort) could be aggregated into rather circumspect intelligence on plans and operations. We see who’s eavesdropping on the after work conversion of our pub-goers, and given the number of secrets still surfacing, I think that the campaign was on balance a successful one.
media obsolescence: a personalised nostalgic romp through which ‘tech world’ informed your formative years, via Things Magazine
temperance: a 1908 map that charts insobriety across England
