Frank Figliuzzi - "Long Haul"

Long haul truckers being serial killers. 

The tone it's written in, is not great. Very heavy and portentious.

It's the will and the thrill to load faster, stop less, keep driving with a taped hose, push the envelope of remaining fuel in hopes of the reward that comes with the next load. There's a truck phrase that embodies the spirit: "Risk it for the biscuit"

Hunts Points is home to one of the largest food-distribution facilities in the world, with hundreds of acres making up the Hunts Points Cooperative Market.

There was more to reefer trucking than simply steering a rolling refrigerator. That's because the driver became a part of the ripening process. Dale received daily instructions to carefully adjust the temperature so his tomatoes - or whatever fruits or veggies he hauled - would appropriately ripen as they rambled across the country.

"The things that they were communicating wasn't through actual words," she said. "It was through different emojis and they meant different things. So if we take our child's phone and we're trying to look through it, do we always know what that fully means?"

Lauren Collins - "The Hottest Restaurant in France Is an All-You-Can-Eat Buffet"

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/04/08/les-grands-buffets-and-the-art-of-all-you-can-eat  

The writer André Borel d’Hauterive once attempted a taxonomy of eaters: the gastronome (appreciates good food and wine and partakes reasonably), the gourmand (prefers quantity to quality), the friand (has a sweet tooth), the goinfre (eats enthusiastically to excess), the ventru (“makes a God of his stomach”), the glouton (dessert comes and he has no idea what he’s eaten), the goulu (dessert comes and he has no idea how much he’s eaten).

Christian Donlan - "The beauty and drama of video games and their clouds"

https://www.eurogamer.net/the-beauty-and-drama-of-video-games-and-their-clouds

Secret Knowledge, a book about looking twice and noticing what nobody else has spotted,

Andrew Chapman - "Insatiable: A Life Without Eating"

https://longreads.com/2024/04/18/crohns-life-without-eating/

During digestion, physiological responses are triggered in the brain by the vagus nerve, contributing to the feeling of fullness. Hormonal signals also act on the brain: leptin, a hormone produced by fat cells, sends signals to the hypothalamus to inhibit hunger. In patients on TPN or enteral nutrition, leptin does increase after infusions, but it doesn’t appear to be well correlated with decreased hunger.

While the hormones and neural signals are crucial to satiation, so is the sensory experience that takes place during the first phase of digestion—the cephalic phase—which begins at the sight of food. The pleasure that we take during this phase appears to be important to feeling satisfied. Monkeys on TPN continued to eat real food even when their caloric needs were met. Studies in healthy humans found that people on TPN reported being as hungry as those injected with only lactated Ringer’s, a solution designed to replenish electrolytes and fluid rather than calories. I asked an on-call gastroenterologist once what I could do for the hunger.

Chewing food, even without swallowing, helps to activate the cephalic phase, triggering a partial sense of satiation.

The 36 participants were underfed until they lost 25% of their body weight. As the experiment progressed, Ancel Keys, the nutritionist running the study, noticed odd psychological effects. The participants became increasingly focused on food, collecting recipes, and taking down pin-ups of women to hang pictures of food. One even decided he would change careers and become a chef. After the study, most participants gorged themselves long after their weight returned to normal.

Angélica Gorodischer - "Kalpa Imperial" (translated by Ursula K. Le Guin)

story-teller style of a kingdom, a city, of centuries, of what happened. Sometimes zooming out, less interesting, sometimes zooming in.

And then the woman who had been empress died and was buried in the Garden of the Dead, and the emperor shut himself up in her apartments, where he was more comfortable, having at least a decent bed to sleep in, and where he was alone. Fewer and fewer functionaries came to see him. They were afraid of him. It got so they sent one man with messages from all the others, and finally not even that: they left notices about this and that in front of the door. A few hours later, they'd find the emperor's decrees and orders in the same place. Fear is contagious. Soon the whole Empire trembled just at the title, not even the name, of the man locked in the innermost room of the palace, at whose feet blood flowed as easily as water in a river.

He just stood there because he didn't know what else to say to them. To escape from the Protocol was thrilling, and he'd had a wonderful time the day before, but today our young prince realized that it might be dangerous, too. Yes, dangerous: think a little, if you're capable of thought, and you'll see that it's safer to obey a law however stupid it may be than to act freely; because to act freely, unless you're as wicked as certain emperors, is to seek a just law; and if you make a mistake, you've taken the first step towards power, which is what destroys men.

Indian music suggestions

Dil Se Re - Title Track 

https://youtu.be/U3hZW62-KGA?si=5vN75REiN-Rtp8KX

Ranbir Kapoor - Sadda Haq 

https://youtu.be/p9DQINKZxWE?si=_QKmGrCmVlxd7ISB

A. R. Rahman - Dil Se Re (Berklee Indian Ensemble Cover)

https://youtu.be/qH002u7BRx0?si=H_EvUXyVI5DFuwlJ

Bodkin

Fun enough show about three people making a true crime podcast in Ireland.

Not bad soundtrack, particularly

* The Scratch - "Another round" – great drinking song

* The Murder Capital - "Don't Cling To Life"

Boy Swallows Universe

Series about a boy and his initially silent brother slowly getting pulled into the drugs world of their step dad.

Good soundtrack too, particularly

* Mattiel - "Count your blessings"

the Holdovers

Amazing film, director from Sideway

Current 93

amazing show. 

Don't think I've ever seen david tibet this close

Martyr Made (Darryl Cooper) - "#22 Whose America? ep 1 : Rough Extraction" and "#23 Whose America? ep 2"

Amazing story about the miners in West Virginia.

Part two is quite different, about the racial tension and fights in New York, LA, and others from 1950 on.

Six hours, ending with Godspeed You! Black Emperor

Philip K. Dick - "Do Androids Dream Of Electronic Sheep?"

Forgot how really different it was compared with Blade Runner...

    He finished undressing her. Expose her pale, cold loins. 
    "Is is a loss?" Rachel repeated. "I don't really know, I have no way to tell. how does it feel to have a child? How does it feel to be born, for that matter? We're not born, we don't grow up; instead of dying from illness or old age we wear out like ants. Ants again; that's what we are. Not alive." She twisted her head to one side, said loudly, "I'm not alive! You're not going to bed with a woman. Don't be disappointed; okay? Have you ever made love to an android before?"

    "Mercerism isn't finished," Isidore said. Something ailed the three androids, something terrible. The spider, the thought. Maybe it had been the last spider on Earth, as Roy Baty said. And the spider is gone; Mercer is gone; he saw the dust and the ruin of the apartment as it lay spreading out everywhere–he heard the kipple coming, the final disorder of all forms, the absence which would win out. It grew around him as he stood holding the empty ceramic cup; the cupboards of the kitchen creaked and split and he felt the floor beneath his feet give. 

    Mercer smiled. "It was true. They did a good job and from their standpoint Buster Friendly's disclosure was convincing. They will have trouble understanding why nothing has changed. Because you're still here and I'm still here." Mercer indicated with a sweep of his hand the barren, rising hillside, the familiar place. "I lifted you from the tomb world just now and I will continue to lift you until you lose interest and want to quit. But you will have to stop searching for me because I will never stop searching for you."
    "I didn't like that about the whiskey," Isidore said. "That's lowering."
    "That's because you/re a highly moral person. I'm not, I don't judge, not even myself."

    "It didn't get sick. Someone–"Iran cleared her throat and went on huskily–"someone came here, got the goat out of its cage, and dragged it to the edge of the roof."
    "And pushed it off?" he siad.
    "Yes." She nodded.
    "Did you see who did it?"
    "I saw her very clearly," Iran said. "Barbour was still up here fooling around; he came own to get me and we called the police, but by then the animal was dead and she had left. A small young-looking girl with dark hair and large black eyes, very thin. Wearing a long fish-scale coat. She had a mail-pouch purse. And she made no effort to keep us from seeing her. As if she didn't care."
    "No, she didn't care," he said. "Rachel wouldn't give a damn if you saw her; she probably wanted you to, so I'd know who had done it." He kissed her. "You've been waiting up here all this time?"
    "Only for half an hour. That's when it happened, half an hour ago.." Iran, gently, kissed him back. "It's so awful. So needless."

VaatiVidya - "The Entire Story of Armored Core 6"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n9eakXNsIQ&pp=ygUMYXJtb3JlZCBsb3Jl

T. Kingfisher - "Nettle and Bones"

Enjoyable fairy tale of a Queen's daughter who is trying to save her sister from her malicious prince.

Dog made of bones.

Not as exciting as Katherine Arden, but a fun read.

Marra caressed the hollow orbits, delicately winged in wire. Everyone said that the heart was where the soul lived, but she no longer believed it. She was building from the skull downward. She had discarded several bones already because they did not seem to fit the skull.

People were remarkably willing to dismiss their own sight. Marra thought perhaps that the world was so strange and vision so flauwed that you soon realized that anything and everything could be a trick of the light.

The middle sister, Kania, was only two years older than Marra. They shared a mother but no goodwill.
    "I hate you," said twelve-year-old Kania, though gritted teeth, to ten-year-old Marra. "I hate you and I hope you die."
    Marra carried the knowledge that her sister hated her snugged up under her ribs. It did not touch her heart, but it seemed to fill her lungs, and sometimes when she tried to take a deep breath, it caught on her sister's words and left her breathless.

Daisy Johnson - "Sisters"

Gothic novel of two sisters who are really close.

Not bad, and the "secret" is alright".

This the house we have come to. This the house we have left to find. Beached up on the side of the North York Moors, only just out of the sea. Our lips puckered and wrinkled from licking crisp salt, limbs heavy, wrought with growing pains. The boiling-hot steering wheel, the glare off the road. It had been hours since we left, buried in the back seat. Mum said, getting into the car, Let's make it before night. And then nothing else for a long time. We imagine what she might say: This is your fault, or, We would never have had to leave if you hadn't done what you did. And what she means, of course, is if we hadn't been born. If we hadn't been born at all.

Times loses its line and jiggles out of place. Everyone is living and dying at the same moment. The house has been standing for nearly fifty years, the foundations have only just been laid, the land is bare and barely good even for farming. There are whales on the beach

We keep drinking. I check often to see that September is there and she smiles at me and touches my face and hair, holds my hands and moves them towards bottles of beer, bottles of sugary cider. The conversations run around us like a river with us catching only occasionally on loose, unstuck phrases or questions directed not at us but in our general direction. I find myself talking or look and see that September is talking for the both of us. She is, at times, sharp and mean the way I know her to be when around anyone but me - and occasionally Mum - but at other moments she seems to soften towards them, those strangers, and I hear her talking about what our mum does and the things we are interested in. And, looking across the fire, I see how they lean close to her to hear and nod or laugh in agreement and ask her more questions or say something to try and draw her approval. I am drunk. Yes. I think then, as I have so many times, she is the person I have always wanted to be. I am a shape cut out of the universe, tinged with every-dying stars - and she is the creature to fill the gap I leave in the world. 

And then I feel, like a chilly exhalation, September arriving into me. She does not come gently or with peaceful intentions. My sister is a black hole my sister is a bricked-up window my sister is a house on fire my sister is a car crash my sister is a long night my sister is a battle my sister is here. September is holding my lips shut. I understand, for the first time, the promise that I made her and exactly what it means: If there could be only one of us it would be you. My arms are yours, my legs are yours, my heart and lungs and stomach and fingers and eyes are yours. She is familiar as a song, my hands lifting without my say-so, my legs clicking to attention.  A moment where I think no (nononononononono) but it is too late. There is someone else inside me, using my mouth to speak, holding me still.

Marieke Hendriksen - "Het grote dropboek (alles wat je ooit over drop wilde weten)"

Tragacanthgom is een middel met een enorme bindkracht: het bindt twee keer zo sterk als Arabische gom. het wordt tegenwoordig nog steeds in de voedselindustrie gebruikt, ook wel onder de naam E413. Zowel Arabische gom als tragacanthgom kunnen gebruikt worden als emulgator (een stof die helpt bij het mengen van twee stoffen die anders niet of moeilijk te mengen zijn, bijvoorbeeld vet en water).

Ten tijde van de Bataafse Republiek (1795-1806) wordt gestreefd naar het gelijktrekken van de plaatselijke famacopees en wordt een nationale commissie van geleerden ingesteld die een farmacopee voor het hele land moet vaststellen op basis van de meest recente wetenschappelijke inzichten. Pas op dat moment verdwijnen ingrediënten waarvan in de loop van de achttiende eeuw al was aangetoond dat ze geen geneeskracxhtige werking hadden uit de famacopee. De vermeende geneeskrachtige werking van onder meer parels, koraal, edelstenen en bolusaarde wordt daarmee naar het rijk der fabelen verwezen, al suggereren sommige mensen vandaag de dag nog steeds iets anders.

Het woord salmiak is een verbastering van sal ammoniac oftewel ammoniakzout, een relatief zeldzaam natuurlijk mineraal dat onder meer voorkomt rondom vulkaankraters. Het heeft als groot voordeel dat het zout smaakt, maar in tegenstelling tot gewoon zout niet bloeddrukverhogend werkt. Drop verhoogt weliswaar de bloeddruk, maar dat komt door het van nature in zoethout aanwezige glycyrrhizinezuur, neit door andere ingrediënten. Zoete drop is dus in principe even bloeddrukverhogend als zoute salmiakdrop.

Met de oprichting in 1876 van Klene en in 1878 van Van Voornveld, de voorloper van Venco, verschijnen dan toch de eerste 'moderne' Nederlandse dropmerken op de markt. In het laatste kwart van de negentiende eeuw neemt het aantal dropsoorten gestaag toe, al zouden we sommige van die varianten nu niet meer als drop herkennen. Griotten, jujubes, witte drop, salmiak- en katjesdrop veroveren de harten van Nederlandse consumenten, groot en klein.

Het Franse zoethout verdwijnt voornamelijk in lokale dropproducten van de firma's ZAN en Cachou Lajaunie (zie ook hoofdstuk 2), en na het verbod op absint in 1915, in gemacereerde steranijs-zoethout-likeuren (pastis) zoals Ricard. Die moeten anno nu volgens Europese regelgeving nog steeds verplicht tussen de 0.05 en 0,5 gram glycyrrhizinezuur uit zoethout per liter bevatten. Ook is er een groeiende vraag naar droppoeder vanuit de tabaksindustrie, want door de toevoeging van smaakstoffen wordt de tabak minder scherp en dus populairder. Bovendien neemt de vraag naar sigaretten begin twintigste eeuw alleen maar verder toe - en dus ook de vraag naar zoethout.

De biochemie van planten bood veel nieuwe mogelijkheden. In de jaren dertig werd bijvoorbeeld door biochemici verkennend onderzoek gedaan naar glycosiden en flavonoïden. Glycosiden zijn suikers in planten die aan een niet-suiker gebonden zijn en vaak een fysiologische of farmacologische werking hebben. Denk bijvoorbeeld aan glucose, ook wel bekend als druivensuiker, dat de belangrijkste brandstof is voor dieren (en dus voor mensen). Flavonoïden zijn stikstofvrije organische verbindingen, die veel in planten voorkomen en vaak gebonden zijn aan een glycoside. Ze kunnen een antioxidante, ontstekingsremmende of antivirale werking hebben, en zijn dus heel interessant voor de geneeskunde.

Naar verluidt ontstond Engelse drop (in Engeland 'liquorice allsorts' genoemd) in 1899 toen een verkoper van de zoetwarenfabrikant Basset & Co. struikelde met een presenteerblad met daarop drop en fruit-, kokos- en anijsgums. Volgens de niet te verifiëren overlevering was de aanwezig inkoper zo gecharmeerd van deze mix dat Bassett & Co. laagjes drop met het andere sneop in één snoepje begon te combineren en in een bontgekleurde mix op de markt bracht.

[Zoethout is al intens zoet, toevoeging van suiker maakt drop niet zoeter, maar minder intens]

Na de oorlog moet Nederland letterlijk en figuurlijk weer opgebouwd worden. De gebombardeerde steden en infrastructuur moeten worden gerepareerd, net als het verwoeste zelfbeeld van de Nederlandse bevolking. De snelgroeiende bevolking moet gehuisvest en gevoed worden, en tegelijkertijd is het hard nodig om het gevoel van een gemeenschappelijke, nationale identiteit te versterken. Het is dus niet verrassend dat juist in deze periode, de wederopbouw, dropproducenten in Nederland voor het eerst hun waren expliciet aan nationale identiteit beginnen te koppelen.

Zo zien we in reclamemateriaal uit de vermoedelijk de vroege jaren '50 dat Atlas menthol droppastilles worden aangeprezen met de woorden 'tegen normale prijs en van vooroorlogse kwaliteit!' en 'gelijkwaardig aan het beste buitenlandse product!' Het benadrukken van kwaliteit in combinatie met de Nederlandse oorsprong en 'bevrijdende' aard van de producten in het reclamemateriaal is een slimme zet in een land dat amper bekomen is van het geweld en de tekorten van de oorlog.

Wat Nieman doet wordt door cultureel antropologen en historici ook wel 'vererfgoedisering' genoemd. Vererfgoedisering is een concept dat gebruikt wordt om het fenomeen te beschrijven waarbij bepaalde objecten, gewoonten of voedingsproducten worden aangewezen als typisch voor een land of regio, vaak door een commerciële partij die meer producten wil verkopen, terwijl er geen feitelijke historische bewijzen zijn voor die claim. Het is, kortom, de constructie van een verhaal dat strategisch gebruikt kan wroden voor politieke, economische of ideologische doeleinden.

Dat de naam [kokindjes] was ontstaan nadat een medewerker met de naam Ko wat 'mislukte' dropjes mee naar huis nam voor zijn kinderen, die er zeer enthousiast over waren: de kokindjes waren geboren.

Opvallend is dat kokindjes met hun zachte binnenkant en stevige buitenkant, relatief hoge zoethoutpercentage (8.7%) en toevoeging van smaakextracten van kamille, gentiaan en salie qua receptuur en textuur van alle tegenwoordig in de supermarkt verkrijgbare drop het dichtst in de buurt komen van de drop naar achttiende-eeuws recept [...] Interessant is ook dat het woord "kokinje" al in 1710 in het Nederlands voorkomt, in de betekenis van gesmolten suiker als lekkernij.

Een ander bekend voorbeeld uit die periode is televisiereclame waarin een jongetje een gaatje in een dijk ontdekt. Hij overweegt even om één van zijn dropjes in het gat te stoppen, maar besluit dan dat hij beter zijn ene hand kan gebruiken om het gat dicht te houden en de andere om zijn dropjes op te eten. Het is overduidelijk een referentie aan het verhaal van Hansje Brinker, het jongetje dat een dijkdoorbraak voorkwam door zijn vinger in een gat in de dijk te stoppen. Ironisch genoeg is de oorsprong van dat verhaal Amerikaans en is het jongetje in de originele versie niet Hans Brinker zelf, maar een naamloze sluiswachterszoon: het werd in 1886 bedacht door de Amerikaanse schrijver Mary Mapes Dodge voor haar folkloristische jeugdboek Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates. Mapes Dodge is nooit in Nederland geweest. Ze liet zich inspireren door verhalen van haar buren, Nederlandse immigraten, en voor dit specifieke verhaal door een verhaal van de Franse kinderboekschrijver Eugénie Foa (1796-1852) uit 1848. Een sterk staaltje vererfgoedisering dus.

Baby Reindeer

Impactful series about a wannabe stand-up comedian and his female stalker. Based on an Edinburgh Fringe festival hit, based on a real life situation.

Dag Hammarskjöld - "Markings"

(introduction by Jimmy Carter, foreword by W. H. Auden, also providing footnotes)

Never test the ground before taking your next step: only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find his right road.

Life yields only to the conqueror. Never accept what can be gained by giving in. You will be living off stolen goods, and your muscles will atrophy.

Never measure the height of a mountain, until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was.

Praise nauseates you–but woe betides him who does not recognize your worth.

You are your own god–and are surprised when you find the wolf pack is hunting you across the desolate ice pack.

For it is always the stronger one who is to blame. We lack life's patience. Instinctively, we try to eliminate a person from our sphere of responsibility as soon as this particular experiment appears, in our eyes, to be a failure. But Life pursues her experiments far beyond the limitations of our judgement. This is also the reason why, at times, it seems so much more difficult to live than to die.

He is one of those who has had the wilderness for a pillow, and called a star his brother. Alone, but loneliness can be a communion.

Benjamin Labatut - "The MANIAC"

fictional story about the history of John von Neumann, seen/heard from different people, his various wives, friends, colleagues.

Intriguing, both for its historical content as well as the various tones.

The direction in which theoretical physics was heading went completely against [Paul Ehrenfest's] grain: real, physical intuition was being replaced with brute-force artillery, and mathematical formulae were set in place of matter, atoms, and energy. Paul detested the likes of John van Neumann, that Hungarian wunderkind, with his "terrifying mathematical guns and unreadably complicated formula apparatus," as much as he despised the indigestion that the "infinite Heisenberg-Born-Dirac-Schrödinger sausage-machine factory" caused him.

It may well be that nature is utterly chaotic, with no law able to subsume the apparent, heterogeneity, no concept capable of whittling down its ever-increasing complexity. What if nature cannot be cognized as a whole?

I never loved him for his brains. That was that mad-woman's Klari mistake. I married Johnny because, idiot that he was, he made me laugh, and we remained in lust during our entire lives, even if that drove our spouses crazy. But I could not have stayed married to that man. Ay, yes, the great von Neumann. What a mensch! God of science and technology! King of consultants! Father of computers! Makes me laugh. If they only knew him like I did. That man could not tie his shoes. Useless. Worse than a baby. I swear that if I had left him home by himself for a couple of days he would have starved in front of the stove.

Both Plato and Aristotle abhorred the notion of infinity, and that was pretty much the state of things among mathematicians until Cantor came along at the end of the nineteenth century and showed us that there was not just one type of infinity, but a great variety of them. Cantor's thesis threw the whole of mathematics into pandemonium, as his enormously expanded theoretical landscape-where each new infinity seemed to be vaster than anything we had known before-was teeming with dangerous, self-contradictory notions, and logical absurdities that appeared to have sprung from some mad god's deranged imagination. By using his new ideas, Cantor could apparently demonstrate that there were as many points in a one-inch line as there were in all of space. He had taken a giant leap into the unknown and found something unique, something that nobody had ever considered before him.

In 1901, Bertrand Russell, one of Europe's foremost logicians, discovered a fatal paradox in set theory, and it became a veritable obsession for him. It would not let him rest, even when he was sound asleep, because he would dream of it, again and again.

[Gábor Szegó] I did not teach him what the "pure" in "pure mathematics" really means. It is not what people think. It is not knowledge for its own sake. it is not a search for patterns, nor is it a series of abstract, intellectual games completely unconnected from the real world and its many troubles. It is sometimes quite other. Mathematics is the closest we can come to the mind of Hashem. And so, it should be practiced with reverence, because it has true power, a power that can be easily used for evil, as it is born from a faculty that only we possess, and that the Lord, blessed be He, gave us instead of teeth, claws, or talons, but that is equally dangerous and lethal. Of this, I taught him nothing. Whatever judgment awaits me, I cannot deny that I saw it before anyone else. What he could do. It was so rare and beautiful that to watch him was to weep. Yes, I saw that, but I also saw something else. I sinister, machinelike intelligence that lacked the restraints that bind the rest of us. Why did I remain silent, then? Because he was so superior. To me, to all of us. I felt slightly ashamed in his presence. Belittled and debased.

Yes, it was terrible, but no major battles were fought inside our country. Hungary was the breadbasket for Austria-Hungary, and wartime shortages boosted wheat prices so much that the rich actually became richer. So many of us acted as if nothing was happening. This might seem shocking, I know, but it taught me a simple human truth that I learned very early on, which is that you can dance even with the devil knocking at your door.

Lauren Slater - "Opening Skinner's Box"

 The book has many interesting anecdotes about some of the most infamous psychological tests, but its tone, attempting an almost poetic one, was not to my liking.

[B. F. Skinner's] vision was to build a worldwide community where the government would consist of behavioral psychologists who could condition, or train, its citizens into phalanxes of benevolent robots. Of all the twentieth century's psychologists, his experiments and the conclusions he drew about the mechanistic nature of men and women may be the the most reviled, yet continuously relevant to our increasingly technological age.

Skinner found that irregularly rewarded behaviour was the hardest to eradicate. [...] Why your best friend hangs on the phone, waiting for that mean boyfriend with an occasional streak of kindness to call, just call. Oh please call! Why perfectly normal people empty their coffers in smoky casinos and wind up in terrible trouble. [...] It was all about this thing called intermittent reinforcement and he could show it, its mechanisms, the contingencies of compusion.