Jeremy Cherfas

A space for mostly short form stuff and responses to things I see elsewhere.

Chuffed to learn that @scotlandbread won @bbcfoodprog award for Food Innovation. If I were in Scotland, I'd be sourcing from Flour to the People. Instead, I gave a donation to the crowdfunder campaign at https://crowdfunder.co.uk/scotlandthebread

Eat This Newsletter 171 is out, with Canadian chickens, proletarian food systems, sweetness and dark, and a tribute to NI Vavilov. All connected, even if somewhat tenuously. Read it at https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas/archive/eat-this-newsletter-171-proletarian/

Relaxing with a peppermint tea and some Lester Young, having put tomorrow’s Eat This Newsletter to bed, or whatever one does in this digital age.

2021-12-09

On Wikipedia

1 min read

John Naughton's online diary contains a good piece on Wikipedia.

Me: “So you’ve found a glaring error on a subject you know about?”
Critic: “Yes. Elementary mistake”.
Me: “So why haven’t you corrected it?”
Critic: Flustered (sometimes), irritated (often), defensive (much too busy)

But there's another aspect to this, which is the wiki-zealots, who are all-too-ready to block the Critic who does have expertise on a topic precisely because they are not members of the Wikitribe.

Eventually, those people give up and keep their expertise to themselves, doing Wikipedia and the world a disservice.. Well, Wikipedia is doing itself a disservice, but let's not quibble.

TFW you forget to Start a Workout when you start a workout -- and you feel somehow you‘ve cheated yourself even tough, of course, you haven‘t.

We saw The French Dispatch this afternoon and it was a total delight, if you are into that kind of thing. Want to watch it again immediately as there were so many visual treats that went flying by. Probably not for everyone, but for me a solid 5/5.

Jeremy Cherfaspublished this 20 November 2021

0 stars 2 comments

@jeremycherfas Where/how did you see it? Theater?

JMaxB, Nov 20 2021 on micro.blog

@JMaxB Yup. Local cinema. Suitably masked and socially distant.

jeremycherfas, Nov 20 2021 on micro.blog

Why butter chicken, why not tomato chicken? @KanjiSuch explains:

If I had to guess, it would be that butter makes it sound fancier and nicer than just saying tomato chicken, because tomatoes are in many other chicken dishes, too.

From the transcript, now available.

Replied to a post on www.explodingcomma.com :

There is, in my mind at least, some confusion between discoverability and promotion. That is, I want people to be able to find my podcast, which means I both need to promote it where the ears are and, if possible, make sure the ears can find it.

Jeremy Cherfaspublished this 15 November 2021

0 stars 1 comment

@jeremycherfas Yeah, I wish there were some happy medium between the feeling of shouting into the void and the feeling that, at any moment, a million screaming randos might show up on my doorstep. I think you are right that it the slow, hard work of building community with webring-like tools is probably the best approach.

petebrown, Nov 15 2021 on micro.blog

Replied to a post on www.zylstra.org :

I've lost track, Ton. What are you using now as your feed reader?

Jeremy Cherfaspublished this 14 November 2021

0 stars 1 comment

I am using FreshRSS currently. I've dabbled a bit with Aperture/Monocle, with Yarns on Wordpress and with using a TinyTinyRSS instance. My TinyTInyRSS instance kept bumping into some 'bad bot' filters my hoster has in place (the same is true for FreshRSS btw). The upside to me for both Tiny and Fresh is that I find their php and mysql tech accessible, and have no trouble running it locally. Or at least more accessible than any of the IndieWeb stuff. I'd like to get to a working locally run Aperture/Monocle combo but can't and haven't figured out why. With Yarns, which has as a pre above Aperture it lives in the WP ecosystem I am at least more familiar with, I have issue with it storing all feeds in the WP content tables, even though everything in a feed reader is/should be ephemeral imo, just providing enough time to do something with whatever gets fetched (respond, bookmark, download to notes etc). Ideally I'd run yarns in a separate WP install to prevent it polluting my blogs database, but then you're back to how to ensure my 'reader' Wordpress instance can post to my 'blogging' WP instance.

Ton Zijlstra, Nov 14 2021 on stream.jeremycherfas.net

Can anyone tell me which template I need to edit to add an extra link to <head> in @withknown CMS?

Jeremy Cherfaspublished this 13 November 2021

0 stars 13 comments

@jeremycherfas are you ahead of me, and fully up to date with GitHub?

cn, Nov 13 2021 on micro.blog

That html tag has got lost… #POSSEhiccough

Chris 2️⃣💉 Neale, Nov 13 2021 on twitter.com

Yeah. WithKnown is wonderful, but it does have issues with, IMHO, over-aggressive tag stripping.

Jeremy Cherfas, Nov 13 2021 on stream.jeremycherfas.net

@cn I'm on Version: 1.2.2+2020061101
Github is at 1.3.1 202120201
But, y’know, inertia. Is the latest any less agressive about stripping tags?

jeremycherfas, Nov 13 2021 on micro.blog

@jeremycherfas I don’t know, I sent a reply from my blog which may not have reached you regarding use of FooterJS in lieu of template hacking; although I can certainly look into that for us…

cn, Nov 13 2021 on micro.blog

@cn No sign of it yet … And no rush either. I might just bite the bullet and upgrade. But not today.

jeremycherfas, Nov 13 2021 on micro.blog

@jeremycherfas my install may warrant diagnosis (being PostgreSQL, and older than current…)

cn, Nov 13 2021 on micro.blog

@jeremycherfas having “PubSubHubbub hub” field empty possibly not helping?

cn, Nov 13 2021 on micro.blog

@cn Mine? Yours? I think all this recent crypticity is affecting your communication. 😀

jeremycherfas, Nov 13 2021 on micro.blog

@jeremycherfas the field in my settings was blank; your blog gets twitter replies (via brid.gy?) which has stopped working for me (Stars happen).
The “crypticity” is a distraction from the week plus common(ish) cold 🤧

cn, Nov 13 2021 on micro.blog

@cn Get well soon. In the meantime, I am somewhat distracted myself.

jeremycherfas, Nov 13 2021 on micro.blog

For the sake of completion, the solution is to edit Themes/Solo/templates/default/solo/shell/head.tpl.php or the equivalent file in whatever theme you are using.

Jeremy Cherfas, Nov 15 2021 on stream.jeremycherfas.net

And remembering to edit it again when you upgrade…

Chris Neale, Nov 15 2021 on stream.jeremycherfas.net

Also on: @EatPodcast

Created an account at alltogethernow.io. It's a start.

Intrigued by a new role-playing board game called Rulal Commerce, based on China's demand for tea and what it is doing to Laos. Can't find any explanation of the significance of the name, though. Does it, I wonder, mean anything?

https://pim.cgiar.org/2021/10/25/rulal-commerce-boardgame/

Step aside 75%, which achieved mythic status as the amount of genetic diversity lost since ~1903. The new not number is "almost 80%", the proportion of studies in a global meta-analysis that found evidence of some genetic erosion. I hope that's clear.

https://agro.biodiver.se/2021/10/almost-80-is-the-new-75/

Huge congratulations to Chris Otter, whose fascinating book Diet for a Large Planet has just won the AHA Bentley Prize in World History. We had a great chat about how the British created global food outsourcing and made it was it is today.

https://www.eatthispodcast.com/large-planet/

15 years ago today I wrote enthusiastically about @Mann_Library @Cornell gathering up great graphics to share and inspire.

The old website remains at https://web.archive.org/web/20170719024829/http://martha.mannlib.cornell.edu/charts/ but where are the original submissions and what happened to the project?

Jeremy Cherfaspublished this 16 October 2021

0 stars 2 comments

Thanks. I'd love to see it available online.

Eat This Podcast, Oct 16 2021 on twitter.com

We'll pass your note along to Ms. Wightman!

Mann Library @ Cornell, Oct 16 2021 on twitter.com

Also on: @EatPodcast

On this day in 2009, I never thought I would be directing this post to @danielpunkass https://www.jeremycherfas.net/blog/the-software-ate-my-homework-honest.

Long may it continue.

Hey @marcoarment Overcast.fm still giving errors: ssl3_get_server_certificate:certificate verify failed when I try file_get_contents(overcast_url)

Is this a relic of the big certificate fail a while ago? If not, I wonder what I can do about it.

Jeremy Cherfaspublished this 09 October 2021

0 stars 4 comments

To clarify, you’re writing PHP code that fetches an Overcast URL and gets that error? Or you’re seeing my servers report that error in my PHP somewhere?

Marco Arment, Oct 09 2021 on twitter.com

My PHO code, which used to work fine, is generating errors trying to access an Overcast url.

Eat This Podcast, Oct 09 2021 on twitter.com

Chances are your server’s OpenSSL is out of date or it doesn’t have LetsEncrypt in its root trust chain. Try disabling certificate validation on that fetch, e.g. for curl: curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, 0); or for file_get_contents: stackoverflow.com/questions/2614…

Marco Arment, Oct 09 2021 on twitter.com

openssl is up to date 1.1.1l on OSX. I found another potentially useful answer buy have not been able to work on it. Thanks for your help. stackoverflow.com/questions/6941…

Eat This Podcast, Oct 10 2021 on twitter.com

Also on: @EatPodcast

Very nice idea. @croptrust is offering to help seedbanks in less well-off countries financial help to duplicate their collections and store them safely in Svalbard.

What are you waiting for? Apply now. https://www.croptrust.org/svalbard-grant-call-for-proposals/

Hey @marcoarment Has something changed in Overcast back end? I am getting errors like `file_get_contents(): Failed to enable crypto` from my all data XML file. Maybe part of that root certificate thing, which I confess I do not fully understand. #indieweb

2021-10-01

International Coffee Day

1 min read

It's #InternationalCoffeeDay2021, the whole point of which is promotion, right? So here's a link to all previous episodes of Eat This Podcast on coffee https://www.eatthispodcast.com/coffee/

Giving up on Defeated on Netflix after two episodes. Too dark, too violent, too one-dimensional.

Looking back through some posts On This Day, I came across one about a book and CD called Jane Austen Sings the Blues. The book is still around, but I can find no trace of a recording of the accompanying interview. Maybe @GrantStovel at @ckuaradio knows where I can find one

2021-09-09

1 min read

Correctly attired for editing next weeks episode with @dianaegarvin on some fascinating aspects of coffee history.

Jeremy Cherfaspublished this 09 September 2021

5 stars 2 comments

FrackingTheSuburbs liked this post

Sep 09 2021 on twitter.com

AgroBioDiverse liked this post

Sep 09 2021 on twitter.com

Tavola Mediterranea (Farrell Monaco) liked this post

Sep 09 2021 on twitter.com

Samantha Collins liked this post

Sep 09 2021 on twitter.com

LonelyBob liked this post

Sep 14 2021 on twitter.com

@jeremycherfas Very nice scene! I look forward to the episode.

jean, Sep 09 2021 on micro.blog

@jean Thanks. I hope you find it interesting.

jeremycherfas, Sep 10 2021 on micro.blog

Also on: @EatPodcast

Bagged another geohash, yesterday, which miraculously was within walking distance. Not sure how best to own this contents though. [2021-09-06 41 12 - Geohashing](https://geohashing.site/geohashing/2021-09-06_41_12)

The horror, the horror

1 min read

21 months worth of filth.

Jeremy Cherfaspublished this 04 September 2021

0 stars 3 comments

@jeremycherfas Almost an hour later, good as new.

jeremycherfas, Sep 04 2021 on micro.blog

@jeremycherfas Hehe, you should have seen my Ergodox after several months of cats sleeping on the keyboard!

bsag, Sep 04 2021 on micro.blog

@bsag Heh. Much cleaner than my old Das because the keys are not enclosed. So just tipping it up and giving it a good shake gets rid of a lot of detritus.

jeremycherfas, Sep 04 2021 on micro.blog

Great fun chatting with Amalia Sacchi for @festletteratura about food, agriculture and the climate crisis, although ashamed not to be able to do it in Italian. It will be streamed on 8 September at 14:10 CEST.

In case you thought "organic" meant anything more than another way for industrial food to profit with no regard to any costs other than purely financial, Marion Nestle takes apart Danone's decision to abandon small organic dairies https://www.foodpolitics.com/2021/08/24686/

Looking at an old post of mine from this day in 2007 and wondering, does anyone, anywhere, host a blog carnival on any topic these days? Time for a revival?

Jeremy Cherfaspublished this 08 August 2021

1 star 14 comments

AgroBioDiverse liked this post

Aug 08 2021 on twitter.com

What’s a blog?

AgroBioDiverse, Aug 08 2021 on twitter.com

@jeremycherfas I remember blog carnivals. Those were fun. And I think a revival might be interesting.

arush, Aug 08 2021 on micro.blog

@arush Yeah those were a lot of fun. Along with blog memes, does anyone remember those?

ladyhope, Aug 08 2021 on micro.blog

@arush That was before the word "meme" was coopted for something else.

ladyhope, Aug 08 2021 on micro.blog

@jeremycherfas Those, along with blog memes. Remember those?

ladyhope, Aug 08 2021 on micro.blog

@jeremycherfas That was before the word "meme" got coopted.

ladyhope, Aug 08 2021 on micro.blog

@jeremycherfas Not that I'm aware of. Although blog challenges are still a thing.

ladyhope, Aug 08 2021 on micro.blog

@ladyhope This is true. And I'll stop now before I find myself at the end of a "Get-off-my-lawn!" type of post.

arush, Aug 08 2021 on micro.blog

@ladyhope @arush i could certainly resurrect one of the memes I remember from back in the day and tag the two of you. In fact two, rather than five, which is my recollection, would surely be more manageable. I’m travelling tomorrow, but watch out.

jeremycherfas, Aug 08 2021 on micro.blog

@jeremycherfas Ooh! Great question! I loved blog carnivals.

kimberlyhirsh, Aug 08 2021 on micro.blog

@jeremycherfasThat would be epic!!

ladyhope, Aug 08 2021 on micro.blog

@jeremycherfas Mostly I remember the weekly and/or daily ones, though. Those were fun. Tried to start a few myself. They never really went anywhere.

ladyhope, Aug 08 2021 on micro.blog

@arush Lol those posts are fun hah.

ladyhope, Aug 08 2021 on micro.blog

@jeremycherfas That would be fun!! I'll have to find some other participants. I'm not sure if I know any still blogging lol.

ladyhope, Aug 08 2021 on micro.blog

Also on: @EatPodcast

Huge credit to @theMaggieAyre for a wonderful edition of BBC Soul Music on The Parting Glass. Moving stories and beautifully mixed. A real treat.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000y6n2

No favourites from Marion Nestle: Unethical food marketing ad of the week: infant formula, organic no less.

https://www.foodpolitics.com/2021/08/most-egregious-food-ad-of-the-week-infant-formula/

Replied to a post on www.zylstra.org :

Funny. I read Peter's post today and was so taken with it that I immediately started the process myself, before reading this post and seeing that Ton had inspired Peter.

Like the year, what goes around, comes around.

#IndieWeb

Getting a teeny bit peeved with apps that require OSX 10.14 and later. Not all of us can afford (or want) to upgrade our machines that often.

Argh! @help I accidentally downloaded the latest micro.blog for OSX but cannot use it because I am stuck on 10.13 and I can't find the old version in the Trash. Is there any way to download a previous version compatible with 10.13?

Jeremy Cherfaspublished this 15 July 2021

0 stars 6 comments

@jeremycherfas probably this: s3.amazonaws.com/micro.blo... 2.0 onwards are too new for us

cn, Jul 15 2021 on micro.blog

@jeremycherfas Tagging @help. Not sure why, but your tag didn't link.

jean, Jul 15 2021 on micro.blog

@cn Life saver. Thanks.

jeremycherfas, Jul 15 2021 on micro.blog

@jean @help All good now, thanks to @cn

jeremycherfas, Jul 15 2021 on micro.blog

@jeremycherfas Thanks @cn for sharing the download link! I've updated the help page to include a link to that version too so it's easier to find in the future.

help, Jul 15 2021 on micro.blog

@help Good move.

jeremycherfas, Jul 16 2021 on micro.blog

Wouldn't it be nice if Twitter et al. somehow indicated that a link shared by some well-meaning influencer was behind a paywall. It would save me a lot of clicks.

Jeremy Cherfaspublished this 13 July 2021

1 star 2 comments

Jonathan Morris liked this post

Jul 14 2021 on twitter.com

@jeremycherfas That would indeed be good. Not easy to do, though. I think some sites (e.g. Medium) will present the same page to some readers as free-to-read and to others as subscriber-only.

artkavanagh, Jul 13 2021 on micro.blog

@artkavanagh I could live with less than 100% accuracy.

jeremycherfas, Jul 13 2021 on micro.blog

Also on: @EatPodcast

Eat This Newsletter 157 is now online with stories from @SejalSukhadwala @SarahTaber_bww @IrishSeedSavers @UniofExeter and others.

Read it at https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas/archive/eat-this-newsletter-157-almost-global/ and while you're there, consider subscribing.

Latest Eat This Newsletter is at https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas/archive/eat-this-newsletter-155-counterfactual/ with links to good stuff from @serbiaireland, @JaysonLusk, @colin_tudge, @NatureFoodJnl and, most horrifying, https://twitter.com/CeriseFlegal/status/1405939411330629634

As I said in the newsletter: read it and weep.

Replied to a post on werd.io :

Every time I read pieces about banking from people who have experienced banking systems outside the US, I marvel that they put up with it at all. I'm constantly amazed at just how easy things are with the online banks I use in Europe. No wonder I'm not tempted by crypto,

Australian journo swaps one set of fibs for another.

"British forests were first subjected to clearing with the Roman conquest of AD 43." Really?

https://www.smh.com.au/environment/sustainability/like-comparing-apples-with-dried-oranges-will-aust...

A pox on both their houses.

Jeremy Cherfaspublished this 16 June 2021

0 stars 4 comments

@jeremycherfas smh

artkavanagh, Jun 16 2021 on micro.blog

@artkavanagh Is that a Murdoch rag?

jeremycherfas, Jun 16 2021 on micro.blog

@jeremycherfas I don’t believe so. My impression was that it’s considered reputable and authoritative but that’s just an impression — I’m not sure where I got it from. I was just trying to make a point about the ambiguity of the abbreviation “smh” which, as well as referring to the Sydney Morning Herald, has also been used for “so much hate” and “shaking my head”. Sometimes it’s not easy to tell from the context which sense was intended.

artkavanagh, Jun 16 2021 on micro.blog

@artkavanagh Ah. I wasn’t aware of that TLA.

jeremycherfas, Jun 17 2021 on micro.blog

Also on: @EatPodcast

Excellent Conversations with Tyler episode talking to David Deutsch (apart from the whole multiverse thing about which I am not competent to judge, and nor do I care).

Jeremy Cherfaspublished this 08 June 2021

0 stars 5 comments

@jeremycherfas Thanks, perfectly timed coincidence that you mentioned this. Two days ago I wouldn't have known who David Deutsch was but yesterday I finished Neal Stephensons' "Fall; or Dodge in Hell" and one of the main influences he cites for the book is "The Fabric of Reality" by Deutsch.

MrHenko, Jun 08 2021 on micro.blog

@MrHenko David and I were at school and college together (but mostly separately).

jeremycherfas, Jun 08 2021 on micro.blog

@jeremycherfas Wow, you been to more impressive schools than I have. :)
Have you read David's book?

MrHenko, Jun 08 2021 on micro.blog

@MrHenko I have not. I really do find the multiverse ideas just do not interest me. I might be tempted by some of his other books.

jeremycherfas, Jun 08 2021 on micro.blog

@jeremycherfas I'm not familiar enough with those ideas to have an opinion, but I did enjoy "Fall" and if Stephenson says it owes some ideas to Deutsch than it's probably worth at least checking out the podcast episode.

MrHenko, Jun 10 2021 on micro.blog

Made a start on the annual tweakage of the automatic watering system for the terrace, but the main enemy remains lack of pressure. It fluctuates through the day so need to try and find the maximum.

Jeremy Cherfaspublished this 07 June 2021

0 stars 2 comments

@jeremycherfas would a header tank help or hinder?

cn, Jun 07 2021 on micro.blog

@cn I’ve thought about that. But it would need a tank and a pump. And that gets difficult. In my mind, some kind of inline pump is what I imagined, but then I don’t see how the physics would work. It’s small bore stuff, so needs pressure not to dribble.

jeremycherfas, Jun 07 2021 on micro.blog

Replied to a post on ruk.ca :

Never having had to deal with prescriptions and refilling them in the same way, I thought I had it bad, needing to send a fax to cancel my account with my internet service provider! This reminds me of a movie where the entire plot hinges on a fax that fell behind the machine and so was never seen. Not that I can remember the movie.

There surely has to be a better way.

Currently reading: The Screaming Sky by Charles Foster

#Non-fiction

Currently reading: The Arrest by Jonathan Lethem, ISBN: 9780062938787

Will the real Monday 17 May, 2021, please stand up

1 min read

* [Monday 17 May, 2021 | Memex 1.1](https://memex.naughtons.org/monday-17-may-2021-2/33778/)

* [Monday 17 May, 2021 | Memex 1.1](https://memex.naughtons.org/monday-17-may-2021/33767/)

2021-05-18

Higher blood levels of omega-3 fatty acids from prescription fish oil showed no effect on CV events

1 min read

Bummer! Or maybe not. Hard to say.

Higher blood levels of omega-3 fatty acids from prescription fish oil showed no effect on CV events

"Fish oils increase the risk of atrial fibrillation substantially, and there is no solid evidence that they help the heart in any way ... It's a sad story for cardiology."

Jeremy Cherfaspublished this 18 May 2021

0 stars 2 comments

@jeremycherfas That story is very confusing as at first they say there’s no harm, but then they turn around and indicate it increases a-fib? And I take a EPA/DHA supplement every day, so like you I’m not sure what to make of this. 🤷🏻‍♂️

pimoore, May 18 2021 on micro.blog

Absolutely. Hence my Hard to say. I take 1 g of supposed omega-3 a day, but my motivation was neurofunction, not cardiac, so I'm going to just carry on. It's not that expensive an indulgence and -- who knows? -- there might even be something to it.

Jeremy Cherfas, May 18 2021 on stream.jeremycherfas.net

2021-05-15

Pockets!

1 min read

I made some trousers with unusual pockets, and I think they’re good.

On Trouser Pockets

I came to this via John Naughton's website (he doesn't say how he got there), and I have no idea who Sam Bleckley is, but in re-thinking the trouser pocket he has done something rather wonderful, maybe even genius.

I'd buy a pair in a flash.

Jeremy Cherfaspublished this 15 May 2021

0 stars 1 comment

@jeremycherfas I just read a long article on pockets and was interested the whole time. Thanks. When my son was a teen he claimed to be the only person who used the pockets in his cargo pants. Doing that probably works as well as the author's more elegant design, if you're willing to be uncool.

JMaxB, May 15 2021 on micro.blog

Fun to see @racheleats photo of Bonci Pizza illustrating this article, although that seems to me as far from ordinary pizza al taglio as that is from Mr Go’s pizza vendining machine.

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2021/may/07/dough-to-go-romes-first-pizza-vending-machine-gets-mixe...

If I were a winemaker in Salento, I think I'd support change to ensure that I wasn't cutting myself off from customers.

Jeremy Parzen with some rival etymologies for Negroamaro grapes and why, whichever one is "true" it might be wise to rethink.

https://dobianchi.com/2021/05/05/negroamaro-racial-slur-racist/

Terrific article on dates in SoCal.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-05-03/muslim-tradition-break-ramadan-fast-with-dates

USDA says there were about 2,019,000 farms in the US in 2020. But how many were actually farms in the usual sense of the word, growing food for sale as their primary business. I'm sure @rosenblawg said something about this recently, but I can't now find it. Help, please.

Jeremy Cherfaspublished this 12 April 2021

1 star 1 comment

Angela liked this post

Apr 14 2021 on twitter.com

Bryce Stucki and I should have a paper or two that touches on this in the next year or so. Tentatively, I'd estimate that there are about 1 million farms (give or take 200K) in the country that are actively seeking to turn a profit (outside of tax benefits).

Nathan Rosenberg, Apr 14 2021 on twitter.com

Also on: @EatPodcast