“Aviary: The Bird in Contemporary Photography” is a new photo book featuring beautiful images of birds being… birds. All the shots are stunning and the plumage on show is exquisite. (via)
For More Perfect Union, Alex Opperman posed the question: “are restaurants starting to taste the same?” and immediately answered with “yes” and the reason why—Sysco, a multi-billion dollar American restaurant food distributor that seemingly sells mass-produced food to a large number of restaurants.
However, with mass-production comes unfettered acquisition of smaller distributors, continuous labour disputes and strike action, and poor work conditions and Alex dug into this by talking to restaurateurs, journalists, and business experts to find out how it all became a deep-fried mess.
On Instagram, comedian and social advocate Christina Brown discussed why French protests are heavily romanticised and they aren’t comparable to a perceived lack of action in the US. I’ve seen this in the UK as well and I’m so glad she summed it up the way she did.
I found this cool video by Hahns Atelier, a Korean brand known for their premium leather goods. In it, an unnamed pair of hands turned a KFC paper bag into a leather lunch bag. They carefully carved out each design from the paper bag, including Colonel Sanders’ face and the logo, and used them as templates to cut them into the leather.
Melanesia is a subregion within Oceania covering New Guinea, the Fiji Islands, and a number of other countries and territories in between:
Melanesia slots in between Polynesia, Micronesia, Australia, and Malesia, a biogeographical which also includes Papua New Guinea. And there’s also Papuasia which is another biogeographical region including the Aru Islands, the Solomon Islands, and Papua New Guinea again. That makes Papua New Guinea something of a pivot territory between three different regions.
Melanesia has a combined population of over 14.3 million and is rich in cultural history.
A few weeks ago I discovered the “Dark Is Not Evil” trope and found the TV Tropes page really insightful:
This trope can be a subversion or aversion of several other tropes depending on how it’s played, including Beauty Equals Goodness, Always Chaotic Evil, and Colour-Coded for Your Convenience. A common use for it is for the “Don’t judge a book by its cover” Aesop. It can also be used to promote Evil Is Cool, and sometimes Even Evil Has Standards, except without the, uh… evil. Even though with the subtle (or not so) undertone of Humans Are Bastards that this trope implies, using this does not automatically enforce Light Is Not Good; in fact, stories where Light Is Good and Dark Is Not Evil are quite common.
It’s amazing what centuries of language shifts and political dominance by the ruling classes can do.
Quantum Leap was a TV series starring Scott Bakula as Dr. Sam Beckett, a physicist who jumped back and forth through time and reappearing in the body of someone else, righting the wrongs of their present (but always in the past).
It aired on NBC from 1989–1993 but caused a lot of frustration for its fans due to constant schedule changes and a less-than-satisfying ending. Dan Larson discussed the show’s history and touched on the sequel series that didn’t answer any questions to the mysterious actual ending.
Oh boy.
Today, I learnt a new word called “vaguebooking”:
A blend of vague and Facebooking, vaguebooking is the practice of making a post on social media, primarily Facebook, that is intentionally vague but highly personal and emotional. Designed to elicit concerned responses from friends and family, it’s often looked down upon as a desperate call for attention or need for validation.
Apparently this was added to Dictionary.com’s slang dictionary in 2019 and while I totally understand what it means, I hadn’t heard it until now. A good example of this is the stereotypical vague but overly emotional post like “you really find out who your friends are when times get tough x”, followed by a response like “are you ok hun? x”, and a final retort of “i’m fine, just thinking out loud x” or perhaps an unannounced DM explaining what happened (if anything).
It’s fascinating how modern portmanteaus get formed, especially considering how marginalised cultures and online phenomena intersect.
SkatePal is a really cool organisation that helps Palestinian kids by promoting the social, health and wellbeing benefits of skateboarding
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In North America, millions of tons of a type of seaweed called sargassum washes up on beaches every year. The bad news is that it contributes to beach erosion and disrupts the ecosystems making it an invasive species but in Mexico, a businessman called Omar Vazquez found an opportunity to put that waste to use.
His “Sargablocks” turns the seaweed into bricks for use in low-cost sustainable construction.
Between me and sargassum, there was love at first sight.
Related: Nature.com on Mtamu Kililo confronting Kenya’s housing crisis by building with mushroom waste, turning banana stems into useful fibres in Uganda, and Kenyan art made from flip flops
Your smile’s like an email from grandma: all caps.
Jiminy Glick to Bill Maher
For JSTOR Daily, Waiyee Loh explored the West’s perspective of postwar Japanese culture and why it’s so adored: Observers have long hailed Japan’s aptitude for cultural synthesis. Is this characterization warranted, or does it reflect a collective fantasy about exceptionalism?
FlowingData wrote about the Pentagon Pizza Orders Theory, a concept that suggests that an increase in pizza orders at restaurants near the Pentagon can predict conflicts and crisis in the US government. (There’s now a real-time dashboard that monitors pizza shop popularity around the Pentagon area)
I read a thought-provoking article by Paul Biggar, an Irish software engineer and founder of Tech For Palestine. In it, he suggested that Ireland is failing Palestine despite their well-known support. Here are the opening paragraphs:
Ireland gets a lot of support and a lot of love from the international and Palestinian communities for our support for a Free Palestine. Unlike most countries, in Ireland the need for a liberated Palestine is a given, the default, and we are deeply pro-liberation and anti-genocide, having endured hundreds of years of occupation ourselves. We have turned out for protests in large numbers, and we have had numerous politicians take active and early stances.
That said, I truly believe that Ireland is failing Palestine.
Our convictions are high, but our actions are absent. We hold the right beliefs, and we are doing absolutely nothing with them.
It’s well worth a read as Biggar touches on government policies, Big tech operating in Ireland without reproach, and what direct action would look like to counteract the government’s “complicity”.
Harris Alterman is a comedian and he made a hilarious TikTok about “woke architecture” that is absurd but also not completely far from what we see from the right these days. This has to be one of my favourite pieces of satire all year. (h/t Sam Thielman on Bluesky)