Via the New Shelton wet/dry, we are directed to problem of how most cuisine is reduced to a flag and cordoned in by national borders, which is serviceable to an extent but results in a monolithic understanding when regional dishes are in reality much more granular foodways. Chinese cooking has been categorised in popular culture into eight styles, Sichuan, Cantonese, Anhui, Hunan, Jiangsu, Shandong, Fujian and Zhejiang as a start (based off the order of courses presented in banqueting tradition) but is far more rarefied in reality, even to the exclusion of standard dishes which so far not been subject to an official count but seems conservatively to number in the scores with this “coffee table” enumeration of representative recipes, ingredients and trajectories.
Tuesday, 25 March 2025
dim sum and then some (12. 337)
cruelties, collusions, corruptions and crimes (12. 336)
Via JWZ, the crew at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency has regrouped after that initial and unending force majure of flooding the zone to again catalogue the daily horrors instigated by the Trump administration, like last time around, lest we forget. The atrocity legend has been updated with several new and dreadful categories to work into the schedule.
synchronoptica
one year ago: the calculus of Easter (with synchronoptica)
seven years ago: Woozle hunting plus a local beverage
eight years ago: art projects informed by the Rijksmuseum collection
nine years ago: digital colonialism, an AI chatbot comes to a disastrous end plus the Satan-Leaf Gecko
ten years ago: assorted links worth revisiting plus hipster animals
Monday, 24 March 2025
6x6 (12. 335)
reading between the lines: Trump regime shutters access to border-straddling opera and library, the Haskell House, which served as neutral territory for family reunions and marriages during his first term’s travel ban

kennedy center honors: Conan O’Brien awarded the Mark Twain prize for American humour, embracing the irony and tension of the moment
backstroke of the west: an incomprehensible translation and re-translation of a Star Wars bootleg DVD
free spaced repetition scheduler: geography with positive reinforcement—via Maps Mania
opsec: Trump administration inadvertently shared its plans to to bomb Houthi targets in Yemen with a journalist from The Atlantic
politikkimut akuliunneq (12. 334)
Framed as a bald demonstration of power and meddling in its political affairs and right to self-determination, out going prime minister Mรบte B Egede has denounced a pair of upcoming visits by Trump’s national security advisor and the second lady as “foreign interference” and has called for the international community to step up its support, warning that appeasement and retreating whispers will only embolden America’s imperial ambitions. Others should take up this example and be bold enough to call the regime what it is. Fresh from recent elections that saw a shift in power to the Democratic Party, the incoming leader called the delegation disrespectful amidst deliberative coalition talks to form the next government and an unbidden charm offensive as talks of annexation persist. Though the itineraries are separate, the security advisor and energy secretary will join Asha Vance to attend the Avannaata Qimussersu, the territory’s premier dogsled race.
mercury-redstone booster development (12. 333)
On this day in 1961, the rocket prototype built in Alabama under the guidance of Wernher von Braun (previously) was launched from Cape Canaveral for one final test-flight to certify its safety and fitness for human transport—using a dummy as the occupant as with concurrent Soviet trials. The rocket reached an altitude of one hundred eight five kilometres in low Earth-orbit and was successfully salvaged in the Atlantic approximately eight minutes later. Alan Shepard had volunteered to fly himself but was strongly discouraged y von Braun because of the risk—had Shepard been allowed to go, he would have become the first human in outer space, instead of the second, Yuri Gagarin achieving that milestone less than three weeks later.
synchronoptica
one year ago: The Breakfast Club (with synchronoptica), assorted links worth revisiting plus The Initiation of Sarah (1978)
seven years ago: quitting Facebook, the train from Pyongyang plus the March for Our Lives
eight years ago: ISPs allowed to sell browsing history plus Canadian schools cancel field trips to US over concerns of protecting students with immigrant backgrounds
nine years ago: The New Yorker mascot plus a quantum loophole in causality
ten years ago: more links to enjoy, fonts that promote recall and proofreading plus crusades against the unorthodox
Sunday, 23 March 2025
where the axe is buried (12. 332)
Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic has an intriguing book recommendation from scifi author Ray Nayler, just the third novel from former Peace Corps volunteer and press attachรฉ and consular officer, that follows his previous works in engaging with themes of artificial intelligence, animal ethics (after several short stories published in prestigious anthologies, his debut book The Mountain and the Sea dealt with the discovery of an octopus society off the coast of Vietnam where Nayler was a special envoy for environment, science and technology in Ho Chi Minh City) his titular latest writing is a geopolitical study that could well be set in the present as a meditation on oligarchy and activism in a polarised world consisting of two competing blocs. In the aligned west, the branches of government have been replaced by AIs referred to PMs who have managed to optimise the messiness of politics and have seemingly solved the ungovernable problems, striking a balance between climate stewardship, modest growth and keeping the populace generally placated. Their foil is known as “the Republic,” a massive state under the tyranny of a immortal despot, whose consciousness has been digitised and is transferred into a replacement body periodically once his current one wears out (with some ill-advised modifications that ultimately reject reincarnation)—though presented to the people as the leader’s intellectual anointed heir. Contrasted with the apparent freedom of the AI governed world, which nonetheless uses inscrutable, paternalistic algorithms for social-engineering and entrapment, subtly limiting the chances of certain for the collective good, the Republic is a totalitarian regime that suffers no dissent or illusory freedom of choice with both systems are on the brink of collapse, betraying their mutual fragility.
8x8 (12. 331)
fork in the road: AI misapprehension of a machine translated simple yes/no survey from Spanish rendered ‘i griega’ (upsilon) as a y-junction and all affirmative responses as the utensil
hunter-gatherer: the handbag theory of human advancement—via Strange Company
signature authority: after declaring his predecessor’s pardons invalid over the use of autopen, Trump faces scrutiny over unsigned deportation orders

spring issue: the fourth instalment of the achingly beautiful HTML Review—see previously—is out, via MetaFilter
vexatious lawsuits: mob boss Trump partially reverses executive order rescinding law firm’s contracts and security clearances for millions in pro bono services, prompting mass resignations
schlachthof: ancient butchery for mammoths discovered in Austria
cousin german: a comparison between English and Lower Saxon
synchronoptica
one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting, Cityspeak in Bladerunner plus The Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound
seven years ago: the Ecosia web browser, an ancient passing red dwarf plus Cambridge Analytica
eight years ago: Trumpland, Trump’s triumphs, recreating the bedroom from 2001 plus more on concrete poetry
nine years ago: the christening of Boaty McBoatface, humorist Richard Littler plus a tubular tree house
ten years ago: God Bless You Mr Rosewater plus the crusades and the reconquista
Saturday, 22 March 2025
joak (12. 330)
On this day in 1925, after a concerted government effort to subsidise the nascent technology following the successful, pioneering launch of KDKA in 1920 out of Pittsburgh, radio broadcasting began with the announcement of the above call letters for station identification from a studio Tokyo, a simulcast with transmitters in Osaka and Nagoya. The inaugural programme featured a live performance by the naval band and a recording of Beethoven’s opera Fidelio. Early broadcast included educational lessons, coverage of baseball games and radio calisthenics—see previously.