food court

Though the history and geopolitical situation that frames Iran’s relationship to the US and the broader Western-world (and its neighbours in the region) if rather fraught and complex and believe that the profusion of convenience food is a real blight on society and the environment, we rather enjoyed this summary presentation through the lens of bootleg fast food franchises from Atlas Obscura that neither shied away from the uncomfortable truths nor trivialised the state of affairs.
Kentucky House, Mash Donald’s, Pizza Hot and others occupy an entrepreneurial and experiential space that’s otherwise absent in daily life. We also gained an appreciation for the nuance of the Persian pejorative gharbzadeghi (غرب‌زدگی) for being besotted (struck) with Western models and standards in education, business, arts and culture but also critically as it launches a discourse on imitation and authenticity and how one as a nation is can be played proxy as consumers of the products or the politics that the West is selling. Do give the whole article a read at the link up top and discover more with the help of their team of intrepid adventurers.

pilea peperomiodes

Though my adopted specimen was not getting adequate sunshine for some time, once I found a better spot for this particularly hardy succulent that goes by many different common names—the pancake plant, the Chinese money plant, the UFO plant—it’s begun thriving.
First described and collected by Scottish botanist George Forrest (perhaps a further example of nominative determinism) at the turn of the last century while exploring the southwestern Yunnan province, this evergreen with circular leaves known in its native land as 镜面草 was rediscovered in 1945 by a fleeing Norwegian missionary who took cuttings back with him and introduced them in his home country, propagating them throughout Scandinavia. Not a detrimental transplant it spread in the wild and was exchanged as houseplants under the radar of researchers and it was not until 1984 that the P. peperomiodes was formally identified and where it came from was known.

7x7

писанка: a collection of traditional Ukrainian folk design on egg shells ahead of 8 April Orthodox Easter

walking simulator: virtual tourist have free range over the landscapes created for immersive gaming experiences—even the old, abandoned levels and worlds from long shelved titles

worldcon 76: finalists announced for the 2018 Hugo Awards for science-fiction and science-fantasy plus the 1943 Retrosepctive Hugo Awards, via Super Punch

rotten tomatoes: the US has decided it will no longer regulate genetically-edited crops if it can be show that the tweaks are just a short-cut to selective breeding programmes, via Slashdot

fermi’s paradox: an illustrated lesson in astrobiology from Maki Naro and Matthew Francis

tears of a clown: downfall of a once flush service-sector career field

a is for attenborough, b is for brexit: design agency counters with an alternative abecedarium of twenty-six coins to the Royal Mint’s rather pedestrian release of the A to Z of Britain

my god, it’s full of stars

On this day fifty years ago, Stanley Kubrick’s theatrical adaptation of the Arthur C Clark science fiction novel had its initial release at the Uptown Theatre in Washington, DC.
The cultural impact of this work is nearly impossible to gauge in totality but among the many ground-breaking firsts of the film (previously here, here and here) was the appeal to the possibility of space-tourism (projected already for the turn of the millennium) and product placement and brand tie-ins with the hotel-restaurant chain Howard Johnson’s (effectively defunct in 2006) presence on the station with its Earthlight lounge. Back on Earth, there was a 2001-themed kids’ menu for years after.