January 23, 2021
Candles not necessarily included.
What is artificial birthday cake flavor? Ashlie D. Stevens @ Salon.com takes a dive into the history and science of the food flavor that has seen a 29% growth since 2017. [more inside]
Family with COVID-19 couldn't smell house fire
weaving cultures together
Interaction between Scotland and the Muslim world stretches to over 500 years, with notable individuals including; Michael Scot of Melrose whose translations of the philosophical works of Ibn Rushd were instrumental towards inspiring the Renaissance, John Yahya Parkinson of Kilwinning whose poetry honoured the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) and Lady Evelyn Cobbold, the first British woman to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. With such a rich history, Muslims are today recognised as one of the most diverse and vibrant communities, representing an integral part of the tartan fabric of Scotland - and so, there is a Scottish Islamic tartan.
"she makes a bid for her sanity, one sentence at a time"
Maeve Brennan was a writer on staff at the New Yorker for three decades from 1949 onwards, but remained almost entirely unknown in her native Ireland, until years after her death in 1993. Her belated return home started with an article by Fintan O'Toole in 1998, reviewing the short story collection The Springs of Affection, then recently published in the US. Eighteen years later, that collection was republished in Ireland, with an introduction by Anne Enright. A biography, a novella, and a collection of her Talk of the Town pieces have been published in the last couple of decades, and now she's slowly entering the Irish canon. [more inside]
Margaret Marilyn DeAdder, 1942-2021
Margaret Marilyn DeAdder, professional clipper of coupons, baker of cookies, terror behind the wheel, champion of the underdog, ruthless card player, and self-described Queen Bitch, died on Tuesday, January 19, 2021. RIP.
Bjork as mushrooms
Larry King, 1933-2021
Larry King died this morning at age 87. The host of Larry King Live on CNN for over 25 years, and before that The Larry King Show on nationwide talk radio. Cause of death has not been published but he had been hospitalized with COVID-19 in mid-December. King had previously expressed his intentions to be cryonically preserved.
The enduring allure of conspiracies
If conspiracy theories are as old as politics, they’re also — in the era of Donald Trump and QAnon — as current as the latest headlines. Earlier this month, the American democracy born of an eighteenth century conspiracy theory faced its most severe threat yet — from another conspiracy theory, that (all evidence to the contrary) the 2020 presidential election was rigged. Are conspiracy theories truly more prevalent and influential today, or does it just seem that way? [more inside]
"what I was really doing, was *hiding*."
"This is a process for me, and I don’t have it totally figured out." Crystal Martin writes about withdrawing and "dimming her light", professional skills and personality, and things we tell ourselves we're doing. "I’m not one to cry in front of people, and most of the mean things people say to me don’t really matter, but what I’ve found…especially in my first year as a developer, is that I fall apart…I mean I…CRACK when someone questions my intellect." (Essay is from 2019 and is on Medium. Please also note the postscript which contextualizes the anecdote at the start of the piece.)
A Visit From The Zune Squad
“Almost a decade after Microsoft terminated the brand, there is a small bastion of diehards who are still loving and listening to their Zunes. If you talk to them, they’ll tell you that these MP3 players are the best pieces of hardware to ever run a Windows operating system. Preserving the Zune legacy has just become another part of the hobby.” Luke Winkie reports on the denizens of r/Zune (The Verge). Previously.
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