(another curatorial experiment)
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Miso paste made in space opens a new frontier for fermented foods
US man extends record for most Big Macs eaten in a lifetime to over 34,000
from Medium
...ongoing literacy discussions about historically popular books. One such debate surrounds The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis. The popular children's book series is looked at by some as a fantasy, by others as an allegory for Christianity and by still more as wildly inappropriate for 2024.The 1950s-era series "aged like milk" and it had some gnarly racial implications, writes Sean Myers in An Injustice! Meanwhile Brian Tubbs reminds fans of "5 Great Quotes" from the series, in the publication Fantasy Fiction and Reviews.
As for why we read and re-read these books, the writer Alison Kilian has a theory:
"Books we read as children become time capsules, preserving fragments of our youthful selves. The characters, settings, and emotions embedded in those pages evoke a powerful sense of nostalgia."
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Language extinction and language creation (constructed languages)
There are many possible reasons to create a constructed language, such as to ease human communication (see international auxiliary language and code); to give fiction or an associated constructed setting an added layer of realism; for experimentation in the fields of linguistics, cognitive science, and machine learning; for artistic creation; for fantasy role-playing games; and for language games. Some people may also make constructed languages as a hobby.
How Climate Change is Messing up the Ocean's Biological Clock, a Potential Catastrophe Juan Cole/Frederic Cyr
Phytoplankton blooms are, in some aspects, metronomes of the annual oceanic cycles around which many species' biological clocks are synced to.One example is the zooplankton Calanus finmarchicus, a class of micro-organism only capable of swimming up and down through the water column. Calanus finmarchicus usually spend the winter in diapause — the marine version of hibernation — surviving on their accumulated energy reserves in the deep ocean. At the moment they deem appropriate in the spring, they raise from the abyss to graze on the bloom and reproduce.
Fish and shellfish, too, are adapted to this natural metronome.
For some species, such as shrimp, females strategically lay their eggs in the water in advance of these blooms so their young will have ample food supplies from the moment they hatch...
...Any change to the timing of the spring bloom, for example as a result of climate change, can potentially have catastrophic consequences for the survival of zooplankton populations alongside the fishes and ecosystems which rely upon this abundant foodstuff.
UNESCO’s Quest to Save the World's Intangible Heritage (New Yorker) Julian Lucas
The 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage defines I.C.H. as a phenomenon that is transmitted from generation to generation and constitutes an important aspect of a community’s identity. There are five categories: crafts, oral traditions, performance arts, rituals or social customs, and "knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe." (Religions and languages are notably excluded, though religious festivals and linguistic practices are eligible.)At the other extreme are countries that would prefer to keep UNESCO's paper-pushing hands off their intangibles. You won't find New York bagels, Navajo sandpainting, or—despite the lobbying of Herbie Hancock—jazz on the I.C.H. lists, because the United States has never ratified the 2003 convention. Richard Kurin, a former director of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, attributes this partially to a national distrust of state meddling in culture. (The U.S. has quit and rejoined UNESCO twice since its founding, and began withholding dues from the agency when it accepted Palestine as a member state, in 2011.) Israel, Russia, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia are other major holdouts, and it seems pertinent that all of them have intractable relationships with Indigenous and minority populations. Recognizing a people’s intangible heritage might be uncomfortably close to recognizing a people.
A Wonky Experience (Charlie Stross)
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My Malaysia Ordeal shows how Religion can Fuse with Nationalism to Silence Dissent (Ahmet T Kuru)
Make coffee. Shower. Clean the loo. In an age of choice, rituals are the key to happiness Tomiwa Owolade at The Guardian