A space for mostly short form stuff and responses to things I see elsewhere.
Just received a webmention -- micro.blog like -- from 12 February 2019. Strange ...
Eat This Newsletter 274: That Administration thwarts its own healthy ambitions, plus ancient avocados, Vietnamese food fraud, and a fight between yeast and sourdough. In the 17th century.
Read (and subscribe?) at https://buttondown.com/jeremycherfas/archive/etn-274-pushmi-pullyu/
Top Album artists for the week to 3 July from last.fm
1 Katia Guerreiro 12
2 Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong 11
3 Paul Simon 11
4 Randy Newman 8
5 Keith Richards & Levon Helm 1
https://www.last.fm/user/jeremycherfas
Very fine survey and assessment of the effects of blue-blocking spectacles on sleep. My screens are less blue in the evening, but I also take 1mg of melatonin every night, and that seems to work for me. Plus, the dreams. Oh, the dreams.
This month's IndieWeb Movie Club suggestion is Triplets of Bellville, the first one to have tempted me. I happen to know that the whole thing is on YT, in segments, having watched it while stuck in an empty B&B a couple of years ago. Very tempted.
Currently reading: Civilisations by Laurent Binet and Sam Taylor, ISBN: 978-1473577091
Huge fun, recommended by a friend to whom I raved about Cahokia Jazz.
Eat This Newsletter 273
Number one question: In the 17th century, did the Dutch really brush their teeth with butter?
And a bunch of other morsels.
https://buttondown.com/jeremycherfas/archive/etn273-buttery/
Pellagra is a dietary deficiency disease that ends in madness and death. And at one time was responsible for half the inmates in Italian asylums and 100,000 deaths a year in the US. Now it is all but forgotten.
https://eatthispodcast.com/pellagra
“I never relinquished my desire to hop a train, I just stopped pursuing it.”
Very disappointed, in the end, by this article, which I had hoped might tell me about the reality of riding the rails today.
Instead, a bit like me, the writer just gave up on the dream.
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2025/05/09/the-hobo-handbook/
Album artists to 12 June at last.fm https://www.last.fm/user/jeremycherfas
1 Paul Lewis 18
2 Spiro 17
3 Gigi 14
4 Junior Wells 14
5 Coleman Hawkins & Lester Young 13
How do you cure a dietary disease caused by poverty? Give sufferers better food.
“The hospital doctors all knew: give them a decent diet.” Knowing wasn’t enough.
“We can’t improve the peasants’ diet. That’s that’s not our job. We’re doctors.”
So whose job is it?
https://eatthispodcast.com/pellagra
Jeremy Cherfas, Jun 26 2025 on stream.jeremycherfas.net