Jeremy Cherfas

Today's Eat This Newsletter has a couple of items about quinoa, takes a closer look at red-fleshed apples and rounds up some slightly delayed takes on Thanksgiving. Read it at

https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas/archive/ETN-224-life-happens/

These 40 questions -- in my case direct from Chuck Grimmett -- could make for a satisfying end-of-year exercise and maybe even an IndieWeb carnival topic.

#IndieWeb

Currently reading: Billy Phelan's Greatest Game by William Kennedy, ISBN: 9780140063400

#Fiction

Interesting to come across Bryan Lehrer's piece on the same day as Ben Werdmuller's. Personal histories, both focussed on building for the internet, sorta, and both coming, I think, to the same conclusion: money is essential and money spoils everything.

#IndieWeb

Very interesting personal history from @benwerd ... and here I remain, ready and willing to move from one-off donations to paying a real price for WithKnown.

#IndieWeb

I fundamentally disagree. My best days start slowly, with hydration (tea), a little light scrolling, some internal planning and generally enjoying a bit of peace and quiet and loving company. An hour will do.

Latest Eat This Newsletter includes:

Can you talk about the hummus wars when there is an actual war on?

School food in Nairobi

Global — and Californian — production of calories

Silent Doritos

https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas/archive/223-enough-to-go-around/

Finally offered the opportunity to pay to go ad free on Meta. At 12.99 a month, enough to put off most people, something tells me my information is worth much more than that. They’re not stupid.

While people are understandably impressed by the murmurations of starling flocks, I am reminded of a brief clip of dunlin doing likewise, with one great advantage over starlings: their white undersides.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZVbCC-gpxI

Rats! Looks like I need a new uninterruptible power supply, suitable for a Raspberry Pi and an iMac. Anyone got any recommendations?

Does anyone know what is happening with vanilla prices? I see reports of steep rises, precipitous falls and boring plateaux, and I am not equipped to sift out any kind of overview.

I am really grateful that I can follow people who post calm and reflective pieces despite being in the middle of frantic turmoil.

I asked a colleague for evidence that an intervention was associated with changes in behaviour.

We don’t know. It’s more about awareness.

M’kay.

Awareness may be a precursor of behavioural change, but on its own it offers me nothing of value.

"You could literally take a hungry climate refugee and put them in the middle of a field of food, and they’d still starve to death." Interesting take, with which I fully agree. I wonder how the writer might feel about Chris Smaje's Small Farm Future?

And it's out, the latest issue of Eat This Newsletter https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas/archive/linked/

A slew of stories from around the web, each of them connected to at least one of the others because that's the way of the food and agriculture system.

https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas/archive/linked/

Just finished the draft of the latest Eat This Newsletter, which goes out tomorrow at around 13:00 CEST.

One thing I was especially grateful for was @mastoreaderio@mastodon.social from @badlogic@mastodon.gamedev.place

Decided to take up Datasette again to look at Activity data in Health.app. Turns out that the Health export does not include distance for several workouts, even though I can see distance in both Health and Fitness. No idea why this is. Anyone have a clue?

The photo challenge was at micro.blog which is also federated. I post on my own site, which feeds to micro.blog via RSS. There is a different sort of challenge for October, called Inktober, for drawings, but I don't do that.

Of course InternationalCoffeeOutside Day and Coffeeneuring are full of flim-flam, but still, might be fun to attempt one or both, even though I will probably be on my own throughout.

https://coffeeoutside.ridewithgps.com/

https://chasingmailboxes.com/2023/09/24/coffeeneuring-challenge-2023-lucky-13/

I wish there were a way to really edit geojson online. I know there are sites where you can tweak a linestring, add a marker and other little bits. I'd love to be able to colour segments of the linestring differently, add markers with popups, etc. Does such a thing exist?

Sometimes a big story seems to have been everywhere I look, and I wonder whether it is worth including in my newsletter. So I ask people not quite as nerdy as me, and they say “what big story?”, which is why I do include it.

https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas/archive/mischief/

Always feels good to finish tomorrow's Eat This Newsletter a little early. Sign up at https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas/ if you would like my take on nice rice, Big Food, gin, tomatoes and brassicas.

Ischia is absolutely glorious and full of interesting places. There's William Walton's garden, if you are into that sort of thing, not to mention the hot baths.

New issue of Eat This Newsletter, with farmed fish, potentially pricy pasta, space spaghetti, and an optimistic analysis of agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa. Plus longer reads on vanilla and forest gardens.

https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas/archive/renewal/ and while you're there, consider subscribing

Currently reading: US History in 15 Foods by Anna Zeide, ISBN: 9781350211971

#Non-fiction

I enjoyed Peter's link to a search for images of Bromptons in aircraft overhead lockers but I keep reading reports of airlines that refuse them passage even though they fit. Is there a master list, I wonder? And is airline free to refuse an object that fits?

Well, that seems to have done the trick.

I'm none the wiser, but switch it off and then on again is almost always golden advice.

Finished reading: English Food: A People's History by Diane Purkiss, ISBN: 9780007255566

#Non-fiction

I appreciate that syndication is hard, and appreciate the work you are doing to make it easier. If I understand correctly, your plugin now sends mf2 to Bridgy and Bridgy makes the final decision as to what to send to, eg, Mastodon. If I knew how Bridgy used mf2, I could tweak my theme to suit.

Watch SE started losing charge very quickly, waking up to 18% rather than the usual 45–55% three days in a row. So, step one: hard reset. Tomorrow will tell.

Currently reading: English Food: A People's History by Diane Purkiss, ISBN: 9780007255566

#Non-fiction

Wow; what a great piece weaving together so many strands into a cohesive skein. Thank you. (I'd still like to read your version, if you ever write it.)

Finished reading: Weatherland by Alexandra Harris, ISBN: 9780500292655

#Non-fiction

Interesting to see someone else dithering about how to present smaller, stream-like notes and longer articles. I have not resolved this to my own satisfaction, nor have I found a home I control for my newsletter. I have a domain, I just don't know how best to make use of it.

Top tip from a Park Tool video: use an old toe strap to keep centre-pull brakes close while you fasten cable. Worked a charm. We now can stop. Next: new chain and gear setting so we can go.

Thanks to Ton for the reminder about isochrones. I have been thinking along similar lines and may well try to adapt the isochrone mapping tool to my needs.

Barbie was great, apart from the ending before the ending.

Currently reading: Weatherland by Alexandra Harris, ISBN: 9780500292655

Currently reading: Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan, ISBN: 9780571368709

Coincidence, I'm sure, to be mentioning an author and his book on the same day seven years apart.

* [An Extended Moment of Joy](https://www.jeremycherfas.net/blog/an-extended-moment-of-joy)
* [In the mind of the body politic](https://www.jeremycherfas.net/blog/in-the-mind-of-the-body-politic)

Here's another of my climate emergency rants from back in the day, this day in 2007 as it happens.

https://www.jeremycherfas.net/blog/ruminate-on-this

I do not see anything at all that could rightly be considered controversial.

Rome-Munich direct is of immediate interest (I'll be doing it with changes in October) although all 10 projects will make life easier for train travellers in Europe.

https://transport.ec.europa.eu/news-events/news/connecting-europe-train-10-eu-pilot-services-boost-c...

Somewhat pooped after a long drive, Rome to almost the tip of Salento, made tolerable by a delicious lunch with friends at their new house along the way and the restorative nap that followed.

Now that Threads is here, I no longer see options to like or reply to a comment on a photo on IG.

More relevant than ever ... and yet, still very little progress.

Just put the finishing touches to Eat This Newsletter 210, with:

* Ur-pizza
* Chinotto, eh?
* Entomophagy? Again!
* Food System Fixes

Subscribe at https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas/ now and find it in your inbox tomorrow.

Just put the finishing touches to Eat This Newsletter 208. Fancy a pot luck of food-adjacent links? Sign up at https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas