Jeremy Cherfas

"Scotland is a colossus in native breeds."

That's all you really need to know, but if you want to read about the "six big asks" (yuck) it is all here https://www.thescottishfarmer.co.uk/news/19213969.vote-native-breeds/

TIL that dumdum bullets were made originally in Dumdum. By design?

I have an hour or so to myself, so, Moom or Johnny.Decimal, that is the question.

Let joy be unconfined: farm share of food dollar up from 14.2 cents in 2018 to 14.3 cents in 2019. Farmers get an even lower share of eating out dollars, and eating out dollars plunged during the pandemic.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery/chart-detail/?chartId=100802

I've always wanted to try a sensory deprivation tank, though deprivation seems like entirely the wrong word. Floating in the Dead Sea is all well and good, but those salts sting. I would expect a proper tank to be much nicer.

"Decellularized spinach serves as an edible platform for laboratory-grown meat"

A less mouth-watering headline, you're unlikely to read.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-03/bc-dss033021.php

I agree that people should learn to protect themselves against pseudoscience, especially medical quackery. But before you ask "How is this supposed to work?" it might be even more worthwhile to ask "Does this even work?"

Without evidence of an effect, a mechanism is worthless.

Of course I am going to resurrect my podcast episode about Celebrating Passover and Easter. Maybe a bit late for tonight's seder, but plenty of time for a little didactic baking next week.

https://www.eatthispodcast.com/passover/

I really enjoy using #loopback from @RogueAmoeba for more complex things, but I cannot seem to fathom the simplest thing. If I'm on a straightforward Zoom call using an outboard mic though a USB mixer, how can I get my mic into my headphones with zero latency?

As noted in the latest Eat This Newsletter, the new Plant Humanities Lab website is absolutely terrific, and would be even better with some sort of feed of new items. How about it, @DumbartonOaks ?

https://lab.plant-humanities.org/

I'm not mad keen on subscription services myself, though I do pay for a few because they keep on delivering. Another twist to the story, though: when an app I am happy to pay offers a discount on a new version that my OS won't be able to handle until I get a new machine.

Fine episode of Gravy from @southfoodways, all about horchata. A little disappointed that @rachellaudan didn't bring English barley water into the story. Or if she did, that they cut it.

https://www.southernfoodways.org/gravy/horchata-podcast/

Currently reading: The Anarchy by William Dalrymple

#History
#India

That was a couple of hours well spent, fixing up the PESOS from Instagram to here, via Bibliogram. Of course, it shouldn't have taken nearly that long, but I had to go slowly. And I haven't tested it from the cron job yet, only locally.

Today was a very appropriate day to learn about Grace Murray Hopper in my ongoing attempt to become a better dilettante programmer.

This deserves mention. An industry-funded study that doesn't entirely find what the industry would like. Whole grain oat flakes reduce blood glucose and insulin responses, but thin or instant oats do not. Funded by PepsiCo, owner of Quaker Oats.

https://www.foodpolitics.com/2021/02/industry-funded-study-of-the-week-a-rare-exception-to-the-rule/

TIL “people believed an ice cream named “Frosh” was creamier than an ice cream called “Frish”. Makes me wonder whether whiff might be a better name than Cornish Sole.

More in Eat This Newsletter later today. Sign up now at https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas

Peter Rukavina asks: "What category of Judaism would you self-identify with?"

And I can think only of Jonathan Miller's "Jew ... ish", which appears to be a line from the original Beyond the Fringe.

"[T]he University of Plymouth has found that managing the density of crab and lobster pots ... increases the quality of catch, benefits the marine environment and makes the industry more sustainable in the long term." Great. Now, how to export the catch.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-02/uop-mca021221.php

It has been both salutary and disappointing to go back to original material from the late sixties, early seventies and 1994 and realise that we have basically squandered the gift of the Green Revolution. Not that tomorrow's episode is pessimistic or anything.

Thanks for the link to the video. I've done a few workflows and, like Ton, had some difficulty really understanding how they work, so I am going to find time for this. I don't think Automators.fm has ever done an episode on Alfred; I wish they would.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Clarke's Third Law.

This morning, sitting outside a cafe that was actually closed because of the lockdown here, Syncthing made a believer of me.

I enjoyed, if that's the right word, giving blood and then plasma regularly in the UK. Since moving to Italy, I have tried a couple of times to donate, but they won't have me, on the grounds that I lived in the UK during BSE. I know I shouldn't, but I take it personally.

I rant often about podcast web pages that hide their audio behind layers of obfuscation. It makes trialling an episode in huffduffer.com impossible. But ones I subscribe to, like @5x15stories, that can't even supply a decent feed are beyond my understanding.

Tidiness certainly can be over-rated, although less so in the physical space than in digital space where searching is so much fast. Or, as I used to say of one long-term partner:

"A place for everything, and everything in a place."

Absolutely fascinating, and just a teeny bit disquieting. I love the idea of a fish-filled moat to keep them in. I'll probably stick this in the next newsletter.

Noted.

Please Sir,

What does hypeisis mean?

The internet does not know and keeps thinking I mean hypnosis, which I do not.

Thanks

Jeremy

Is there no way to stop the idiocy of having to prove I am a human when I try to use my phone to access a site “protected” by @cloudflare?

I went to your site at https://simulacrum.party/, as advertised in your profile, to see what your interests might be, with a view to making a sensible suggestion. It returned a 404. So, you know, maybe tech is hard?

I have Chrome installed for one reason only: to chat with a good friend who won't use anything else. I used to use Adium, but it won't do it any more. What are my alternatives to interact with Google Hangouts?

#IndieWeb

I too have been ignoring Spotify's apparently magical Discover Weekly these past several weeks, not because I was feeling algorithmicly manipulated, but because I've just had more of a hankering to listen to whole albums. Unfortunately, unlike Phil Gyford, even when I was doing Discover Weekly regularly, it didn't seem to surface anyone in particular for me. Maybe I should try again.

Watched The Right Stuff, which I had never seen, for the obvious reason, and was very pleased to have done so. 🎥

I was tempted by a fully electric car earlier this summer, but the cruel fact is that in a city or apartments, in which we have no access to a garage (or "box" as they are known here) there just wouldn't be any way to re-fuel. So I got a hybrid. Then, over the past few weeks, the city has been hard at work installing two charging stations on the corner. Currently they are not yet functional, and occupied by gas-guzzling SUVs.

When they are functional, I wonder how the city plans to keep other cars from occupying the spaces. I suspect they won't.

I have not yet been bitten by this particular version of helpfulness gone awry, but I am aware it could happen, and I agree with Peter that there really ought to be a simple way to indicate that someone is no longer available to be shared with.

The past month of micro posts served to reinforce my belief in my need for extrinsic motivation.
#mbnov

Crossing pedestrian off my list.
#mbnov

I absolutely refuse to be bullied by a “random” word generator into using a word like mask. #mbnov is a hoax.

Dilemma is one of those words that never looks correctly spelled to me. I dither between dilemma and dilemna for reasons that escape me.
#mbnov

It seems I’ve done nothing but adjust for the past nine months.
#mbnov

Call me the breeze?
#mbnov

A university press department that can't be messaged on Twitter? That's a new one for me.

I’m a good listener. I can say things like “provision another instance,” and have no idea what I’m talking about.
#mbnov

I confess, I’ve never really liked the idea of “nice capture” applied to a photograph, even a stunning wildlife image. It smacks of snapping the soul, and the hunting side of it doesn’t appeal either.
#mbnov

Not sure when I will next cross a physical border to another country, but independent cyberspace remains open, for which I am thankful.
#mbnov

Fade to black.

Not the end
#mbnov

No, anything is not possible.
#mbnov

I need to train myself to dig deeper before trying tricky computer stuff, but it is actually quite hard to find the tutorials that give understanding before they give instruction.
#mbnov

My memory is that my first USB stick had 128Mb of memory and cost and arm and a leg, in 2001, I think.
#mbnov