Posts
This candle doesn't smell of anything
— Speculation: Scented Candle Ratings Down Due to Covid-19 Loss of Smell, Jason Kottke
Cooking Terms
I love cooking but the terminology seems very fluid to me until I hear chefs talking to each other about how they prepare an ingredient in a way that sounds so specific. It turns out these words do have distinct meanings that I struggle to hold in my head. A very awkward Frenglish word. Means frying ingredients in not very much oil but over a relatively high heat. A larger ingredient like a meat is cooked over a very high heat just to brown the surface. The process that makes things go brown is called the Maillard reaction. Usually things...
The hills of south-east London
I went and saw Jamie in the park. It was freezing cold today but I had panicked and put on a heavy coat. The hills in Dulwich were unrelenting from the beginning and I was dripping in sweat before I reached Clapham. We spoke about things breaking down, about how much we can endure and how many times we can restart things and change our conditions. We were up late last night, we're in a strange detente for now. Christmas is looming and forcing everything.
Pellatt Road
In East Dulwich there is a Pellatt Road. I still don’t know how to pronounce it; a simple “pellet” seems most statesmanly. I’ve wondered where that name came from. It struck me as a person’s name, probably. I started looking, and found an MP for Southwark who died a little before a plot called Friern Farm near the village of Dulwich in Surrey was bought up and replaced with a tidy horseshoe of early Victorian streets, one of which was named Pellatt Road. Taking that as good enough, I sank into a rabbit hole finding out about what life he...
Green chain walk
In this second lockdown it's all suddenly become about long walks and big cooks. Emma's been walking for a dozen miles at a time through a river of wild spaces in South London called the Green Chain Walk. I've been churning through the cookbooks that I've been picking at until now, mostly neglecting. Successes lately have been gyoza, massaman curry, drunken noodles, Tuscan bean soup with homebaked bread. Fridays are for film night. We take turns and choose a film that is non-negotiable, which helps us to avoid commitment problems and the Mexican stand-off of choosing what we are Both...
Why is there a cluster of tall buildings in the City of London?
— Why is there a cluster of tall buildings in the City of London?, in Diamond Geezer
The daily paper in e-ink
— An updated daily front page of The New York Times as artwork on your wall, Alexander Klöpping
Men in evening wear slapping one another on the back
The latest issue of the All My Stars newsletter got me reading about Crash (1996). It was obviously a very contraversial film, that much I remember. There was some monocle-popping from Francis Ford Coppola on the Cannes jury; he refused to present the award that the film went on to win. What's funny though is that the film won the Special Jury Prize, not just the Jury Prize. What's the difference? Well I looked it up: There's something about the "criticism about the whimsical nature of these awards" that really tickled me. Of course these guys (yeah, guys) were just...
Pubs in London with outdoor heaters
I was forwarded a PDF that began life as a Google Doc, before it was overwhelmed by demand. Crowd-sourced, guerrilla resources often spring up like this in times of difficulty. Perhaps I should be less surprised at how quickly Londoners have acted to work out where to get a pint without exposing yourself to the virus or the freezing cold. PDFs are notoriusly inconvenient to quickly reference, so I'm mirroring here. Text presented as found, below.
Autumn leaves
I was locked down for two weeks, so when I got out I wanted to make the most of the autumn leaves. Most of the time though, I'm back inside. I saw On The Rocks with Rashina Jones and Bill Murray after I listened to the Big Picture episode about Sofia Coppola.
History of the Bible
I read The History of the Bible this weekend and enjoyed it a lot. I have a little collection of books about theology now, not because of any interest in faith but because I think it's an interesting vein of history and culture. The bible is so often quoted, wittingly or unwittingly, in popular culture and everyday speech. Here are some good excerpts from the book. The first I've included because I like the readings of the Old Testament that give God a personality. In this case it's a taunting condescention. I also just think the language here is amazing....
Self-isolation
I've been placed into self-isolation, it's been three days now. A friend of mine who I saw last week got a test after some very low level symptoms and he tested positive. He feels horribly guilty for the cluster of people around him who are now in self-isolation, which goes to show how much of this situation has been laid on the consciences of individual people, wrongly. I've been doing okay so far. We've been playing Mario Odyssey and Ticket To Ride, and we baked a load of bread. I've never baked a loaf of bread before, even through the...
Grapefruits are weird
— Grapefruit Is One of the Weirdest Fruits on the Planet, Dan Nosowitz in Atlas Obscura
Mask misinformation
— How a bizarre claim about masks has lived on for months, Olga Khazan in The Atlantic
Evicted in the pandemic
— His Landlord Evicted Him During The Pandemic And Then Demanded $1,100 For Him To Get His Belongings, Vanessa Wong in BuzzFeed News
The Internet Is For End Users
— The Internet Is For End Users, Mark Nottingham in Internet Architecture Board RFCs
Tired on waking
I woke up today and I was really, really tired. It's the end of the first week in a new role at work. I lay in bed until an uncharacteristic noon and having just gotten up, everything feels like far too much effort. If I'm tired or unhappy I can usually carry it around with me as I get on with things but I feel very under it today. I hope it's not COVID-19 fatigue (the clinical kind, not the morale kind).
V. Krishna and the making of an English-Kannada dictionary
— Alar: The making of an open source dictionary, Kailash Nadh, CTO of Zerodha
Round two
The numbers are up again (the bad ones, the COVID-19 ones) and the daily cases are actually above where they ever got in the first wave. The response has been slower, patchier; nobody's ready to jump straight into a full national lockdown again. It feels like it could be coming, though. I've mixed feeling about how ready for that I am. We have this new home: spaces to work and to rest that are separate from one another. We have a garden, although autumn's washing in and that the garden is becoming less of a crucial assett over time. I...
Judith Butler on JK Rowling and the trans culture war
— Judith Butler on the culture wars, JK Rowling and living in “anti-intellectual times”, Alona Ferber in The New Statesman
A man's losses in the Oregon wildfires
— The desperate fight to save his family ends in tragedy, Capi Lynn in Statesman Journal
Boys State
We watched Boys State this week. It’s a documentary that follows a cohort of Texan teenage boys going through an intense one-week political bootcamp at the Texas state capitol. They’re divided randomly into two parties*, given lessons in the state constitution, and then they run a compressed set of elections for party chairmen, gubernatorial candidates, and ultimately for state governor. I really enjoyed it, though I felt myself predictably enamoured with the charismatic and thoughtful liberals Steven and René. Conversely, I found myself predictably horrified with the mini-demagogue-to-be Robert, and the Steven Miller Jr. in Ben Feinstein. Ben was interesting...