Loic Suberville gives us short and funny skits about the way languages are constructed and used. While no language is exempt, he has had a lot of fun with French as it is heard by English speakers. There seems to be a wide gap in how we use vowels.
The latest in the French series is labeled as part 107, although the numbering seems a bit random, as there are not 107 videos (it's about language, not math). You can browse through a ton of these videos at Suberville's YouTube channel. -via Laughing Squid
The advent of powdered gelatin and refrigeration led us into a dark period of cuisine in which anything and everything was suspended in gelatin because it looked as if you'd put a lot of work into it. But suspending weird things in gelatin was big even before that, back when it really was a lot of work. And that's where we first encounter coffee jelly.
Coffee jelly might seem like nouvelle cuisine of the highest order, seeing as most of us are used to having our coffee as a liquid rather than a solid. But it’s actually the opposite. Early recipes for coffee jelly are at least as old as Durgin-Park. One recipe, from an 1836 issue of New York’s Lady’s Book magazine, told readers to mix coffee with the gelatin produced by boiling a calf’s foot. With cream and sugar, it became an elegant dessert. Gelatin, for much of the 19th century, was a luxury, requiring boiled animal parts and a cool enough spot to allow it to set. A platter of shimmering coffee jelly, turned out of a decorated mold and served with a cream sauce, would have elicited oohs and ahs at a tea or dinner party.
In the 21st century, we aren't all that impressed with gelatin dishes, so coffee jelly pretty much died out in America. However, in the past hundred years, it has traveled around the world and back again. Learn where you can find coffee jelly, plus a recipe for making your own at Atlas Obscura.
This is a 1990 Daihatsu fire truck. It's not a toy or a model, but built for its stated purpose. It's also adorable. Owner Todd Lappin has named his new friend "Kiri". You can see Kiri on the streets of San Francisco. Although Kiri is not affiliated with the San Francisco Fire Department, it's fully functional and can fight fires. SFist reports:
"I imported Kiri directly from Japan with a local importer I got to know," Lappin tells the paper. "Essentially it was retired by the town, went through the auction system. It sold for almost nothing, because who wants a 30-year-old tiny fire truck?" [...]
Lappin had some experience importing a Japanese car previously, and after he got to know the ins and outs of the process, he decided to seek out something cooler and more unique for San Francisco, as a whim. Enter Kiri, which served a volunteer fire department in Kirigamine, Japan for about 30 years, and came to SF about five months into the pandemic. The truck is made to navigate hills and narrow streets, and it's never had its own water tank — it has a pump that relies on suction, so you just need to park it next to a pond and drop a hose in, and you're good to fight a fire.
-via Super Punch | Photo: Kiri the Japanese Fire Truck
It's been 35 years since the world's worst nuclear disaster occurred in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. A complicated series of events led to explosions and a fire that burned for days at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Pripyat, during which nuclear fallout rained over Ukraine and nearby Belarus.
April 26, 1986, started off like any other day for Alla Shapiro. The pediatrician, then 32 years old, was at work in the Pediatric Hematology Unit at the Children’s Hospital in Kiev, Ukraine. But everything changed when she learned that an explosion had occurred 80 miles north at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, just outside the city of Pripyat. In the hours that followed, hundreds of children arrived at the hospital by bus seeking treatment.
As a front-line worker, it was the first time that Shapiro and her colleagues were faced with treating patients during a disaster of Chernobyl's magnitude. Unfortunately, the Soviet government didn’t have any nuclear disaster protocols in place, and basic supplies were severely limited, leaving medical professionals to improvise and adapt. In the days and weeks that followed, Shapiro discovered that the government was misleading the public about its handling of the explosion, which was caused by a flawed reactor design, according to the World Nuclear Association.
Shapiro wrote a book about her experiences titled Doctor on Call: Chernobyl Responder, Jewish Refugee, Radiation Expert. She is now a consultant on the effects of radiation on human health. In an interview with Smithsonian, Shapiro describes the flood of children from Pripyat coming into her hospital coughing on radioactive dust, and the measures the staff took to care for them.
Just found my new role model pic.twitter.com/f1HkBXSxyy
— human_not_bees (Beës) (@human_not_bees) April 25, 2021
Before you watch this video, remember that speed competitions involving food are often a bit gross, and should never be attempted in everyday life. She had the sandwich made and EATEN before he even got to the jelly! This one-on-one competition was over before it began, but it highlights the reasons why Guinness World Records has to establish rules and standards before they recognize any record holder. -via Metafilter
Deep in the heart of the Amazon, in the riverside town of Maués, they grow a fruit you may have never heard of. Guaraná grows in other places, but Maués is the heart of its production, as guaraná is not only a prized fruit made into a daily drink, it's a tourist draw. They even have an annual guaraná festival.
Guaraná contains high levels of caffeine – as much as four times that of coffee beans, as well as other psychoactive stimulants (including saponins and tannins) associated with improved cognitive performance. And numerous research papers explore its potential in the prevention of cardiovascular disease, as an anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antidepressant, intestinal regulator and even an aphrodisiac.
Maués might be dubbed the "land of guaraná" but the fruit's history long predates the town. The Sateré-Mawé indigenous people have been cultivating guaraná in their ancestral forests nearby for millennia. It was their ancestors who domesticated the species, learned of its properties and devised the best cultivation and processing techniques.
Guaraná has a traditional origin story that, yes, involves an eyeball, and long-held traditions on how to prepare and consume it. But it's also a moneymaker, working its way into South American sodas. It may even prolong life. Read about guaraná and what it means at BBC Travel. -via Digg
(Image credit: Anita Fortis)
In the rush to colonize Africa, various European countries scrambled to claim lands, exploit their natural resources, raise crops using forced labor, and export Africans as slaves. By 1761, the French East India Company was in control of Madagascar and the Mascarene archipelago. The Mascarene Islands were uninhabited, and the French set about bringing in enslaved people to work the land. The preferred crops were coffee and sugar, which were in high demand around the world. They did not grow crops that would sustain the people who lived and worked there, so supplies had to be imported. Captain Jean de Lafargue was willing to take food to the Macarene Islands, but he was also open to making some extra money on the side.
The governor gave Lafargue his new orders: go to Foulpointe, on Madagascar’s east coast, and bring back food. Oh, and don’t bring any slaves.
From the governor’s point of view, the proscription made perfect sense. The one advantage of having been abandoned by the navy was that its crews no longer stopped by, insisting on being fed, but even with that reduction in overall appetite, Île de France still needed victuals more than extra mouths to feed. Lafargue, though, had no intention of paying attention to the restriction: L’Utile was his first command, and one of the benefits of being captain of a Company ship was the possibility of engaging in trade on your own account. Indeed, it was an official perk: the Company had suffered so many losses from pilfering captains that it had eventually thrown up its hands and given them the right to merchandise for themselves, in the hopes that they would stick to their permitted limits and leave the Company’s goods alone. And Foulpointe was Madagascar’s main slave trading port.
L’Utile departed on 27 June. Three weeks later, on 22 July, it set sail for its return journey. In between, Lafargue had not only filled up the hold with flour, meat, wine, and other necessities, he had also negotiated the purchase of 158 Malagasy men and women, who cost him 10,000 livres. This was something over his yearly salary, but he could expect to sell them in the Mascarenes for twice that—and the buyers would consider it a good deal as long as a slave lived more than three months.The slaves were shoved into the hold and walled up in a compartment separating them from the foodstuffs. The only mitigation in their situation was that L’Utile was not a specialised slave ship, and so they were not chained.
Lafarge's plan was to sell the Malagasy people on the island of Rodrigues, then continue to Île de France (now Mauritius) with the supplies. But on his secret route, there was the Island of Sand, a tiny, treeless, uninhabited volcanic island with a dangerous reef that had been badly plotted on various maps. You guessed it; L’Utile was shipwrecked when the island appeared where Lafarge wasn't expecting it. The surviving French sailors and the Malagasy worked together to built a boat, in which the Frenchmen sailed away, leaving the Malagasy behind. Read the incredible story of the castaways who lived on the island for 15 years at Damn Interesting. The story is also available as a podcast.
I want one pic.twitter.com/WiGHfOwked
— Sven Henrich (@NorthmanTrader) April 24, 2021
I want one, too! Last weekend, people on the streets of Los Angeles were treated to the sight of a guy surfing through the air on a real hoverboard. It wasn't a movie stunt- this is a real quadcopter that's strong enough to lift a person and controllable enough to stand on. It's made by Omni Hoverboards, Inc. and their website says to "Stay tuned for our consumer version". The hoverer in LA was most likely part of that promotion. Here's the company's demonstration video.
Let's just hope the first people who buy the consumer version are as good at staying upright as the guys in these videos. -via Geekologie
If these new prototype lenses can successfully monitor changes in intraocular pressure ( the pressure within the eyeball), then who knows what kind of upgrades and advancements researchers could do with contact lenses? Researchers from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology developed the prototype lenses that change in shape to monitor the changes within the eyeball, as the Conversation details:
The continuous monitoring provided by the contact lens could come in handy for people suffering from glaucoma. This lens can monitor changes in intraocular pressure throughout the day, and can responsively release drugs to alleviate the glaucoma. A similar lens, called Sensimed Triggerfish, has received regulatory approval in the United States and Japan.
Thanks to the ubiquity of electronic devices, we are currently living in a world constantly bathed in electromagnetic radiation. Although a clear consensus is absent, studies have pointed out that exposure to electromagnetic radiation could possibly induce some effects in human tissue. Engineers in South Korea have applied a layer of graphene to contact lens to help shield the eyes from electromagnetic radiation. The thin graphene layer also reduces dehydration.
Image via unsplash
The Garden of Earthly Delights, painted by Hieronymus Bosch between 1490 and 1510, has been a cause of debate and different interpretations as to what Bosch wanted to portray in this artwork. From sexual freedom, to acid trips, to anti-church ideology, the triptych oil painting’s meaning leaves a lot to imagination. London curator James Payne believes that the artwork is just “pure and simply, hardcore Christianity:”
Depicting the Biblical creation of the world on its outer panels, the work opens up to reveal elaborately detailed visions of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, then humanity indulging in all known earthly delights, then the consequent torments of Hell. It is that last panel, with its abundance of perverse activities and grotesque human, animal, and human-animal figures (recently made into figurines and even piñatas) that keeps the strongest hold on our imagination today.
Payne’s explanation goes into detail on all aspects of the work, highlighting and contextualizing details that even avowed appreciators may not have considered before. While identifying both the possible inspirations and the possible symbolic intentions of the figures and symbols with which Bosch filled the triptych, Payne emphasizes that, as far as the artist was concerned, “his images were a realistic portrayal of sin and its consequences, so in that sense, it wasn’t surrealism, it was realism.” This bears repeating, given how difficult we moderns find it “to look at this painting and not see it as surrealism or a product of the subconscious, not see it as a sexual utopia, a critique of religion, or even a psychedelic romp.” Just as The Garden of Earthly Delights tells us a great deal about the world Bosch lived in, so our views of it tell us a great deal about the world we live in.
Image via wikimedia commons
In the Hero's Journey narrative structure developed by mythologist Joseph Campbell, the hero, who is often an ordinary person (and thus demonstrating, in egalitarian fashion, the latent ability of all people) who accepts a call to adventure.
In today's retelling of the great story at the heart of the human journey is Gareth Wild, a video producer in London. The challenge that reached out of our collective unconscious into his life was to park in every single slot in the parking lot of his neighborhood grocery store.
Arthur needed Excalibur. Moses needed his staff. Gareth Wild needed Google Sheets.
Masala chai is a delicious blend of tea, spices, and milk enjoyed by, well, everyone, but it has a special significance for the Indian diaspora. The traditional drink, correctly made, is a connection to home and family. While meaningful, it's not an ancient tradition. Indian people didn't drink tea until the early 19th century, when the British Empire needed a place to grow tea after China began closing off trade with the West. Plantations in India took a long time to produce quality tea, and the Indian Tea Association (composed of British plantation owners and tea traders) boosted sales of the inferior product by promoting tea drinking among Indians.
Chaiwallas—street or roadside stand vendors that sold tea—started adding masala to tea sometime between World War I and the 1930s. This innovation was likely inspired by those Ayurvedic and Muslim medicinal spice brews—and because the cheap tea tasted bitter and strong. The Association took notice in the 1930s and started inspecting tea stalls to prevent the practice from spreading, even sending out competing tea hawkers who didn’t brew with spices—the addition of spices, the Association believed, meant that less tea would be used per serving and thus lower profits. While my research is ongoing, I suspect that many chaiwallas did not scale down the tea: Most modern masala chai recipes call for just as much (or more) tea as a plain cup would. But the Association shut down those tea stalls that used masala, calling it an adulteration of the product.
As history proves, that wasn’t the end of masala chai. “Adding the spices was really an act of rebellion against the British,” says Sana Javeri Kadri, owner of Diaspora Co., a single-origin sustainable spice company that supplies turmeric and other spices to chai drinkers and manufacturers. “Therefore, as our national symbol or a national drink, it’s a very symbolic one.”
The history of masala chai is a fascinating story told at Epicurious. But there's more, as we get a rundown of the spices and a lesson in making authentic Indian tea, too.
You might get the impression that these shoes and cars were designed at the same time, but they're just coincidences. Niek Pulles, a graphic designer from the Netherlands, found perfect matches between many cars, both stock and custom, and shoes. He calls his project SNEACARS. You can view more works in this series on his Instagram page.
A moonbow is the rare nighttime counterpart of a rainbow. Photographer Brian Haislip was lucky enough to see and take a shot of a double moonbow as it seemed to entangle itself with a crash of lightning (an added bonus, if you ask me). The magical photos that he got are beautiful:
“This particular night,” he tells My Modern Met, “the lightning calmed down around 10 p.m. so I packed up and went back home to edit the lightning shots I got.” He heard more thunder in the distance around midnight. He was exhausted but as a self-proclaimed “storm addict,” he decided to grab his camera and head back to the same spot.
“The storm ended up not producing very much lightning, so I decided to call it a night,” Haislip recalls. “As I was getting ready to pick my camera up, I started seeing this crazy-looking white formation off in the distance, I had no idea what it was. At that time, the full moon peeked out from the remaining storm clouds, and all of a sudden this full double moonbow appeared. I was not prepared for something like that, which is why the double moonbow picture is out of focus… really threw me for a loop!” Once he realized what he had seen, he adjusted the settings on his camera and snapped as many shots as he could. “During that brief time, I was able to capture a few streaks of lightning coming out of the dissipating moonbow.”
Image via My Modern Met
The Surtshellir Cave in Iceland was discovered to be a trove full of Middle Eastern artifacts, and the location was used by the Vikings as an offering pit for sacraments to stop the apocalypse. The most noticeable artifact in the cave was a stone, boat-shaped structure that served as the main offering pit, as All That’s Interesting details:
As deputy director and chief curator of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology at Brown University, Kevin Smith was thrilled at the discovery. The Surtshellir Cave in question was formed by a volcano that erupted nearly 1,100 years ago — and gave Smith a window into what might have happened there.
[...]
Smith and his team also found 63 beads made of a mineral common in the Middle East but rarely found in Scandinavia. Most entrancing are the specifics of how these animal sacrifices aimed to avert Ragnarök. A study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, the study proffers some rather staggering theories.
Image via All That’s Interesting
