Cultrface – a blog dedicated to culture and how it enriches our lives.

Here's how they mixed milkshakes in the 1890s

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1890s Milkshake Mixer In Action

Before milkshake machines—in and out of order—people in the 1890s had their milkshakes shook with a hand crank device. Fun fact: you could buy milkshakes in drug stores as these machines used to mix liquid medicines before they started making sodas and then milkshakes, all as alternatives to alcohol.

“No country drug shop or cross-roads store is now considered complete without a machine for making milk-shakes,” San Francisco’s Evening Bulletin reported in California. “The milk-shake is the craze, and the city people on their vacations come upon it everywhere. The shake is merely a glass of milk and an inch of fruit sirup [sic]. The glass that contains it is put in place in a machine that jolts and bounces it terrifically for a minute or two, mixing in into a light substance like whipped cream.”

True West MAgazine

Milkshake related: 3 levels of milkshakes and the $5 milkshake from Pulp Fiction

Patricia Hernandez on MrBeast's symbiotic relationship with YouTube

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For Polygon, Patricia Hernandez wrote a really insightful peace on MrBeast, his symbiotic rise with YouTube, and how he warped YouTube in his image — but YouTube is warping him back:

MrBeast embodies this ostentatious era of YouTube so fully that some, like Smigel, consider the platform’s current phase synonymous with Donaldson. You see his influence everywhere, in the types of boisterous content people make, the brisk editing styles populating all of YouTube’s trending content, and even in the way YouTubers style their video thumbnails. Up until recently, MrBeast had the biggest video on the platform. Rare is the video that doesn’t take cues from MrBeast’s signature and endlessly memeable reaction face. As far as detractors like McLoughlin are concerned, MrBeast copycats are a plague on YouTube. And even if they do wholly original content, by and large, the most visible creators on the platform produce videos that mimic the extremes of someone who is willing to spend millions on a shoot.

“With MrBeast, it feels like you are watching a millionaire live out his fantasies,” Smigel told Polygon.

As I read the article, I could feel myself getting more and more queasy with each paragraph. I wrote about my weird feelings towards MrBeast on Bluesky a few days ago and while I feel kinda validated by the article, I also feel hollow inside. It’s all so soulless. I watch content that isn’t related in terms of subject matter but the inspiration is clearly there: the opened mouthed thumbnails, the ostentatious titles, the cookie-cutter themes.

I don’t find any of this aspirational or a way to live life. Most of us will never amass the fortunes that MrBeast has, and that’s by design of capitalism. For people to be that rich, most people have to be that poor and philanthropy is more of a moral signpost than a remedy of balance.

He could just give the money away without a video showing people moonwalking on hot coals (I don’t know if MrBeast has ever made a video about that but it wouldn’t surprise me). But millions of people love it and don’t see—or want to see—the murky underbelly of how it got there, nor think it’s “deep” enough to look. All I know is it won’t last forever, because nothing like this ever does.

Kingyo-sukui (goldfish scooping): a Japanese pastime

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kingyo-sukui : Goldfish scooping

You may be familiar with “hook-a-duck”, a carnival game where you use a long rod with a hook on the end to catch a duck and potentially win a prize. Well, imagine, instead of a hook, you have a paper scooper (or poi) and instead of a duck, you’re trying to catch goldfish. Now you’re playing Kingyo-sukui, or “goldfish scooping”.

Kingyo-sukui can be played casually or competitively (there’s even a National Goldfish Scooping Championship). Each person tries to scoop as many goldfish from a pool as they can with their poi and put them into a bowl. Because the poi is made of paper, players have to be careful not to tear it completely or the game is over.

The game originated in the early 19th century as a child’s pastime and the poi had nets rather than paper. A century later, they started replacing the nets with paper and opened them out to the general public in stalls. The National Goldfish Scooping Championship started in 1995 and has a children’s section, a general section, and a group section.

The Cool Japan Fund is a public-private fund, founded in November 2013, as a way to contribute to the sustainable growth of Japan’s economy through the expansion of overseas demand and supply of attractive products and services unique to Japanese lifestyle & culture.

This Cool Link was published 1 month ago. (#)
The FADER tweeted "Jason Derulo thought 'Cats' would "change the world." and La Primera Vaca quoted "It did. Look around you! We're all in hell now!"
Oh, sweet Jason.
a drawing of a moomin holding a molotov cocktail
Molotov Moomin sticker
A shot from “Downtown 81” showing Jean-Michel Basquiat walking with his clarinet at the intersection of East 88th Street and 5th Avenue across from the Guggenheim Museum

Cxffeeblack to Africa (Documentary)

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Cxffeeblack to Africa (Official Documentary)

Cxffeeblack to Africa is a documentary on the Black history of coffee, created by Cxffeeblack founders Bartholomew Jones and Renata Henderson. As the title suggests, the pair go to Africa, specifically Ethiopia where coffee is the nation’s biggest export, bringing in $1.16bn in 2021. They then meet up with Tamiru, a coffee farmer, to try and reconnect a Black coffee supply chain.

It's Pistachio Day!

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Apparently, it’s Pistachio Day today so here are some links and background info about it.

Quick facts about pistachios

  • Pistachios are part of the cashew family along with mangoes and poison ivy
  • Their name derives from the Pistachio tree (the pistachios we eat are actually the seeds)
  • Pistachios are Persian in origin (now modern Iran) and remain native in Central Asian countries such as Afghanistan
  • Pistachio shells contain urushiol (along with other fruit and seeds from the cashew family), which is an oily resin and irritant that causes allergic reactions
  • In China, pistachios are known as the “happy nut”
  • In 2023, competitive eater Nick Wehry set a new world record at the Get Crackin’ Wonderful Pistachios Eating Championship by shelling and eating 188 pistachios in 8 minutes (via)

Links

A research paper on the cultural differences in emoji use and understanding

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Researchers from the University of Nottingham released a paper this month about the “individual differences in emoji comprehension” across gender, age, and culture. Here’s the abstract:

Emoji are an important substitute for non-verbal cues (such as facial expressions) in online written communication. So far, however, little is known about individual differences regarding how they are perceived. In the current study, we examined the influence of gender, age, and culture on emoji comprehension. Specifically, a sample of 523 participants across the UK and China completed an emoji classification task. In this task, they were presented with a series of emoji, each representing one of six facial emotional expressions, across four commonly used platforms (Apple, Android, WeChat, and Windows). Their task was to choose from one of six labels (happy, sad, angry, surprised, fearful, disgusted) which emotion was represented by each emoji. Results showed that all factors (age, gender, and culture) had a significant impact on how emojis were classified by participants. This has important implications when considering emoji use, for example, conversation with partners from different cultures.

Individual differences in emoji comprehension: Gender, age, and culture — Yihua Chen, Xingchen Yang, Hannah Howman, Ruth Filik (2024)

I know my emoji use and comprehension is way different to my mum, for example. She opts for the woman dancing in the red dress and the grinning emoji quite a lot when she reacts to things and my emoji use is more wide ranging depending on my mood. Definitely an interesting paper.

Lost brioche: a decadent French bread-based dessert

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A Lost Brioche dessert featuring brioche bread, ice cream, and cooked apple slices, drizzled in caramel sauce

Lost brioche is a French dessert that derives from French toast or “pain perdu” (“lost bread” in French), where the leftover brioche bread from a bakery was used to make both dishes. Where lost brioche differs from regular French toast is in its consistency, which is more gooey but decadent and sweet. The picture above came from a restaurant I visited with my family at Christmas in Nice, France last year. It was my first time eating the dessert and it was so good, I went back again a few days later to have seconds! We initially didn’t know what the name meant and thought it undersold the dessert but now I know better!

In terms of a recipe, I didn’t ask at the restaurant (it never crossed my mind to make one) and it’s hard to find one online that isn’t just for French toast which is different. I did find one on Yummly which you can follow but it lacks ingredient quantities which you’d need. If anyone reading this has a recipe, I’d be happy to host it here.