When you can't live without bananas

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Thursday, April 11, 2024

Links - 11th April 2024 (2)

Introducing 'Food Grammar,' the Unspoken Rules of Every Cuisine - "Serve spaghetti and meatballs to an Italian, and they may question why pasta and meat are being served together. Order a samosa as an appetizer, and an Indian friend might point out, as writer Sejal Sukhadwala has, that this is similar to a British restaurant offering sandwiches as a first course. Offer an American a hamburger patty coated in thick demi-glace, and they’ll likely raise an eyebrow at this common Japanese staple dubbed hambagoo.  Each of these meals or dishes feels somehow odd or out of place, at least to one party, as though an unspoken rule has been broken. Except these rules have indeed been discussed, written about extensively, and given a name: food grammar... Many American diners imagine dinner as a plate with a protein, a vegetable, and a starch, followed by a sweet dessert. But for Cantonese diners, writes linguist Dan Jurafsky, author of The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu, a meal is a combination of a starch, such as rice or noodles, and another element, usually meat, vegetables, or a combo.  “Describing this in English requires the awkward word ‘non-starch,’” writes Jurafksy. The Cantonese word for this, sung, 餸, is so pervasive that “the word for ‘grocery shopping’ in Cantonese is mai [sung], or ‘buying sung,’ since the starch is a staple that would already be in the house.”   Grammars can even impose what is considered a food and what isn’t: Horse and rabbit are food for the French but much less so for the English; insects are food in Mexico but not in Spain. Moreover, just as “Hey, man!” is a friendly greeting for a buddy but maybe not for your boss, foods may not be suitable in all grammatical contexts. “A Frenchman would think it odd to drink white coffee with dinner and an Italian probably would resent being served spaghetti for breakfast,” writes Claude Fischler in “Food, Self and Identity.” By the same token, rice is appropriate for breakfast in Korea but not in Ireland... trying your home food abroad can prove disorienting: Parisian restaurants may serve a hamburger with a fork and knife; a Japanese restaurant serving yoshoku, or “Western food,” might place croquettes and cabbage rolls in a bento-like box along with tiny portions of pickled vegetables and miso soup. In China, explains Jennifer 8. Lee, author of The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, rice is served after the main and before the soup, making the American-Chinese tradition of serving white rice alongside the main seem as odd to Chinese diners as an English-speaker hearing a foreigner say “old silly fool” instead of “silly old fool.”   Such pairing woes are pervasive in the mistranslation of culinary grammars. In Italy, pasta and rice dishes are served before meat rather than alongside it; in Italian-American restaurants, however, fish is often perched on risotto, and meatballs take their starring place atop spaghetti in the eponymous classic.   The mistranslation “really upsets people,” says Albala. “They just don’t know what to do with it.” (To wit: there’s a whole genre of YouTube video devoted to it.) Such “mistranslations” are perhaps nowhere more evident than in chain restaurants offering an idealized vision of a foreign land. In his semiotic analysis of the Italian-American restaurant chain Fazoli’s, Davide Girardelli, a communications researcher and faculty member at the University of Gothenburg (Sweden), identifies color codes (red, white, and green) and other stereotypes of “the basic structure of the myth of Italian food in the United States” as strategies to make the restaurant seem more Italian to American diners. But much like someone speaking English with a fake Italian accent, something about the Fazoli’s experience just doesn’t ring true.   Restaurants like Fazoli’s at once denature Italian food and lock it in time. In these spaces, much like on Ocracoke Island, where locals still speak a version of Elizabethan English, cuisines become divorced from the natural progression back home. At Fazoli’s, writes Girardelli, “Italy is depicted as a place inhabited by huge and fertile families, a country that is ‘frozen’ in a rural preindustrial reality, where the produce is still handpicked and delivered to the closest market.” Such devotion to a now-defunct tradition, says Albala, can have strange repercussions on a cuisine taken out of its homeland. “Sometimes it becomes ossified,” he says. “It stays the same, because people think, ‘Oh, this is the way the recipe is made, it has to be done this correct way.’ Whereas back in the home country, it’s evolved and changed already.”  But bringing a culinary grammar into a new setting can also result in the creation of interesting, new dishes. And just as some languages, like English, are super elastic, welcoming neologisms easily, while others, like French, are less manipulable, some cuisines are more welcoming of culinary novelty than others.  “Japanese people will take anything and make it theirs,” says Albala, citing shokupan, a Japanese white bread that’s even sweeter and softer than American Wonder Bread. Other examples include the aforementioned hambagoo, a bunless burger served with a thick demi-glace, or Napolitan, which sees Italian spaghetti stir-fried with vegetables and ketchup.   Many such adaptations arise in response to grammatical needs, such as the Western expectation of dessert, which led to the adoption of fortune cookies, originally Japanese, in American-Chinese restaurants. The same holds for the 18th-century invention of Indian mulligatawny to satisfy the British desire for soup, or the crunchy fried noodles served as a pre-meal snack at some Chinese restaurants in place of bread. Today, in the West, diners craving “authenticity” may shy away from these adapted foods, but in the past, such adaptation was expected and even encouraged. Much like the denigration of regional languages such as Breton or Basque, commonplace in the early half of the 1900s, many “exotic” cuisines were once transposed on the local grammar in order to make them more palatable... Today, overzealous diners rebuffing these attempts can risk erroneous over-correction. Despite Thai people eating with a fork, for example, “Americans expect chopsticks in Asian restaurants,” says Lee, “so restaurants in America use chopsticks.”... when someone who is, in essence, culinarily bilingual attempts these adaptations, exciting discoveries abound."
"Authenticity" is overrated
Related: Why Is Vietnamese Food in America Frozen in the 1970s?

Grimes Reveals Y, Her New Baby Daughter With Elon Musk, in Cover Interview - "Grimes saw herself in Jessica, and she saw X in Jessica’s son, Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet). Paul is more than a duke’s son. He’s a chosen one, tasked with becoming a great leader. “When I see X,” she says, “like, I just know X is going to have to go through all this really fucked-up shit that sort of mirrors Paul-type stuff.” Watching it wrecked her. “I was just crying my eyes out the whole movie.”"

Meme - *C3-P0 reading Playbot, with Zendaya dressed as a robot from Dune 2 premiere*

Dying man watched ‘Dune 2’ on Denis Villeneuve’s laptop before premier - The Washington Post - "With the curtains drawn in a room inside the facility in Quebec, the man, who was in his 50s, and one of his friends watched the film on the screen of Villeneuve’s laptop — which the director’s assistant had flown in that day. Secrecy was paramount — those involved signed nondisclosure agreements and put away their phones to avoid leaks. Getting the film to the man was a “race against the clock,” Josée Gagnon, whose charity made the moment happen, told The Washington Post... Gagnon, in a Facebook post on Friday, said that Villeneuve and his wife, Tanya Lapointe, an executive producer of “Dune: Part Two,” were “extremely touched by this man’s last wish” when they spoke.  “They told me, ‘It’s precisely for him that we make films,’” she recounted. So they got to work. Villeneuve and his wife initially wanted to fly the man to Montreal or Los Angeles so he could watch the film, Gagnon said in her post and in an interview with Radio-Canada. But, she said in her post, it was “impossible” because he was “too weak.”  “Time was passing. The dying man was dying,” she wrote... The man didn’t speak English and had to watch the film with French subtitles, Gagnon told The Post. He “was so weak that we thought he might die while watching the film”... The man ultimately was not able to watch the full 2 hours and 46 minutes of the film. He was in pain and saw only about half of it before he had to stop, Gagnon told The Post. He died a few days later."

Meme - "Dune: Into the Barbie-verse. Paula Muad'Dib"

Meme - Nightcrawler to Wolverine: "What the @#$& are you talking about, Logan? The Spice Girls have nothing to with Dune."

Meme - "People also ask
Who does Anya Taylor-Joy play in Dune 2?
coy
Yes, Anya Taylor-Joy is in Dune 2. However, she played coy when asked about her presence at the premiere and who she was playing saying that viewers had to see the film to find out."

Meme - Ariel: "its all yours, daddy"
*dolphin pussy*
"yep, dolphin poontang. The clitoris of the female is located at the top of the genital slit, and is a prominent lump when erect. You can rub this with your finger tips, or lick and suck it, but with the oral aspect, you might end up with a bruised nose as they thrust up into you. You can slide your hand gently into their genital opening, and feel around inside, rubbing gently. They feel warm and muscular inside, their labia like tough, squishy sponge when they are excited. Don't be surprised if they start to play with your hand inside them. They have very manipulative muscles, and can use them to carry and manipulate objects, including your hand. (They can do things that would make a regular human woman turn green with envy.) Their climax is coupled with stiffening, shuddering, sometimes a lot of thrusting, clinching of the vaginal muscles, and sometimes vocalisation."
"Why in Gods green earth do you have this knowledge? and I don't think I want to know how you've obtained it."
"I used to swim near a cove that had dolphins and they got comfortable with me and once this younger dolphin (I would say 4-5 years old) decided to grab my foot with her genital slit. Dolphins have very muscular vaginal orifices, and can use these muscles to manipulate objects and carry them. I stayed still to see if she was just playing, she continued to masturbate against my foot, and in the light of the torch I sometimes carry, could see that her slit had become very pink and had swelled as well. She was aroused!"
"bro. What. The. Actual."
"EXCUSE ME WHAT THE FUCK"
"it's not that crazy of a thing, we're still mammals, same animal kingdom. I ended up loving her. I would pull her into the shallows until she was lying on her side, her belly facing towards me, half submerged in the water. I nestled myself belly to belly against her, and inserted my ham candle against her tight labials. Immediately, she arched her body against mine, and took me inside her hot poontang, with a quick series of muscular contractions seizing my rock hard shaft. I wrapped my arms around her body, held her close while she bobbed up and down until I spurted barely a minute later. Her body shuddered against mine, and we spent the next 5 or so minutes just lying together in the shallows, holding each other, enjoying our company and revelling in the fact that we had shared something special together, something very few people can claim to have done."

Meme - "GIMME THE PASSWORD OR THE BOY DIES"
"I'VE IMPLANTED & CHIP IN BRAIN THRT ALTERS HIS PERCEPTION OF TIME. SO, IF A PROJECTILE BREAKS HIS SKIN AT A KINETIC ENERGY THAT IS LIKELY To CAUSE DEATH, THE CHIP ACTIVATES AND MENTALLY SIMULATES AN ENTIRE LIFETIME OF HAPPINESS FOR HIM!"
"BUT IT'S NOT A REAL LIFETIME!"
"TRUE, BUT BECAUSE IT'S UNREAL, IT WILL BE A LIFETIME WITHOUT WOE OR HARDSHIP. WITHOUT THE NEED TO KILL TO LIVE OR DISSECT To DISCOVER. A LIFE WHERE TRUTH AND BEAUTY ARE PERFECTED AND MANIFEST EVERYWHERE."
"WELL... WHAT IF I KiLL YOU?! GIMME THE PASSWORD OR I'LL KILL YOu!"
"I'M ALSO CHIPPED."
"COULD I GET ONE OF THOSE?"
*Kills hostage-taker*
"YOU SAVED ME! You'Re THE BEST MOMMY EVER!"
"I LOve You, SON. I LOVE You SO MUCH." "THAT'S ODD. HE WAS RIGHT NEXT TO YOU WHEN I SHOT HIM. WHY ARENT YOU COVERED IN BLOOD? WHY AREN'T YOU CRYING?"
"BECAUSE I'M THE HAPPIEST BOY EVER AND YOU'RE THE BEST MOMMY, AND NOTHINGS WRONG AT ALL"
*horror*

Kween Hudyaka:The Viral Comeback 2022 | Ft. Telma and Rowell Divina | Ormoc City | Aeron Alzaga AeTV - YouTube
This is the source of the fat "woman" in the pink leotard with "her" legs open where you can see the dark skin on the inner thighs that people keep claiming is Lizzo. It's Jen Capoyan from Kween Hudyaka 2022 (a Filipino show)
Keywords: fake Lizzo

Meme -Chess Openings: "Crab. King's Indian. Ruy Lopez. Pire"
Chess Openings & Citation Styles: Oxford
Chess Openings & Pizza Styles: Sicilian
Citation Styles: APA. MLA. AP
Pizza Styles: Wood Fired. Stuffed Crust. Detroit
Citation Styles, Pizza Styles, Broadway Musicals: Chicago
Pizza Styles, Things that are too expensive: New York
Citation Styles, Shocked Exclamations: IEEE
Things that are too expensive: Vegetables, Adobe software, Healthcare
Things that are too expensive, Broadway Musicals: Rent
Broadway Musicals: Wicked. Cabaret. Moulin Rouge
Broadway Musicals, Shocked Exclamations: Mamma Mia!
Shocked Exclamations: What the fuck! ZOINKS. Oh my god! OH NO. AAAAAH"

Meme *Self Checkout*: "OUT OF ORDER. REMOVING THIS SIGN WILL NOT MAKE IT WORK"

Meme - "Negros com problemas paternos / / Brancos com problemas paternos
*Topless, wearing shorts and flip flops and shooting rifle with baseball cap, with pistol in shorts*
*Femboy*

Meme - "老婆叫我有时间就带儿子出去玩,我就真的带他去玩。请问各位群友都带小孩去哪玩?"

Meme - Note from Ariel: "I'm the one who rescued you"
Eric: "Huh. Neat."
Simba: "HE KILLED MUFASA!"
"Oh yeah, makes sense."
"Totally believe it"
""He was singing a song to like a thousand hyenas yesterday."
Aladdin: "ONE... I WISH FOR JASMINE To LUST AFTER ME. NO "LOVE" NECESSARY. TWO, I wisH FOR ALL MY LOvED ONES TO BE MADE RETROACTIVELY IMMORTAL, SO THAT THEY NEVER DIED IN THE FIRST PLACE. THREE, I WISH FOR, LIKE, 100 MORE GENIES. "
Genie: "OH FUCK YOU, AL."
Cinderella: "HEY, THIS STUFF IS GONNA WEAR OFF IN A BIT... NAME'S CINDERELLA, LIVE WITH My STEPMOM. REMEMBER MY FACE... DON'T TRY TO FIND ME BASED ON MY FEET."
Snow White: "YEAH... BRIBED ALL YOUR GUARDS WITH THE THOUSANDS OF DIAMONDS MY NEW ROOMIES MINE DAILY. ENJOY ROTTING IN A JAIL CELL FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE, MS. FORMER FAIREST OF THEM ALL. "
Mulan: "I'M ACTUALLY... A WOMAN!"
"AH. WHATEVER"
"IS THAT A REAL DRAGON?"
"WHO GIVES A SHIT ABOUT YOUR GENITALS YOU HAVE A FUCKING DRAGON."

Meme - *Women in Metro [the Tube?]*
*Sleeping woman with pizza that's fallen out of box*
*Black Goth lady with raven/crow*
*Woman in white wedding dress crying*

Meme - "Hey so Um. We've been talking for a while and I'm really nervous to ask this but at lunch time... can I give you a kiss on the cheek ??"
"aww haha that's so sweet - of course ! ;)"
"so when you said a kiss on the cheek i thought you meant my face not my ass? don't talk to me"

Police were able to test blood from dead mosquito found in stolen car to identify suspect - "Back in 2008, officers were inspecting a dumped stolen car in Lapua, Finland, when they noticed the insect.  I mean, that alone is impressive as mosquitos are the kings (and queens) of stealth.  Upon noticing the bug, police thought it was full-looking and wondered if it had bitten the person responsible for stealing the vehicle.  The mosquito was sent to a lab for testing and was found to contain DNA that was on the police database.  But the suspect whose blood it was insisted that it wasn't them who stole the car when he was brought in for questioning. They claimed that they'd hitchhiked a ride from a male driver."

Jill Biden's press secretary Michael LaRosa was 'forced out' of White House after he 'tried to take gay dates' to his room on secure floor of hotel where president was staying during NATO summit in Madrid - "The First Lady's press secretary Michael LaRosa tried to take a date he'd just met up to his room on a secure floor while overseas in a hotel where the president was staying... Sources say LaRosa, 40, did it twice during the same trip while accompanying Jill Biden to the NATO Summit in Madrid, Spain, in June 2022, and that this was part of a pattern of behavior that led to his forced resignation the following month... 'There was a long line of chaotic behavior, outbursts, unreliability, unpredictability, and lack of judgment that went into his last six months before his departure,' one official said.  Colleagues bit their tongues for over a year, until LaRosa recently started criticizing the White House on cable news programs and social media... a half dozen former colleagues in the White House and the campaign said LaRosa was increasingly unreliable.   They claim he'd inexplicably disappear from work for hours, missing calls and meetings. Sources say he'd also leak information to the media, from minor tidbits about Willow, the Biden cat, to more serious disclosures such as the Covid diagnosis of the president's daughter Ashley in May 2022. They also described a dangerous breach in protocol that same month when LaRosa was traveling with Jill Biden on her surprise trip to war-torn Ukraine."

Genghis Khan Had a Soft Side - "it was actually his lesser-known, more redeeming qualities that enabled his rise to the top  — and kept him there for over two decades.   According to historian Morris Rossabi, he’s best known for filling all of his positions of power based on merit rather than simply offering jobs to those within the Mongol aristocracy. Because he recruited from China, Manchuria and Central Asia, you didn’t even have to be a Mongol to enjoy success within his administration. “He tried to place only the most competent people in military and civilian posts, and this was a huge contributing factor to this success,” Rossabi says.  He was also quick to share the wealth of the conquered with his people, adds Rossabi, an associate adjunct professor of Asian History at Columbia University. “He was never greedy and as a result he garnered the loyalty of his people.” Historians contend that his soldiers weren’t allowed to steal personal loot from the conquered because he abhorred rapacity. Genghis Khan advanced his empire by understanding that you can’t be good at everything. Therefore, the strength of his leadership came from his ability to find the best people to take on the roles he couldn’t fill himself, Rossabi explains. And the same was true of trade: He argued a strong society resulted from importing what you couldn’t produce and elevating the economy by selling what you could... The same was not true of the leaders of the Jin Dynasty in China, who largely viewed trade merchants with disdain. This likely gave Genghis Khan a leg up in the eventual defeat of the neighboring dynasty.   What’s more, it was this cultural understanding that likely led him to commission the first written language for the Mongols. And while they didn’t write a huge amount, they did order scribes to record the history of the empire. Most importantly, Genghis Khan was amenable to linking the Mongol civilization to others without inflicting oppression. “While he was a conquerer, he was much more than that,” Rossabi notes.  He was accordingly keen on establishing political alliances that helped launch his rise to power... the warlord allocated women a certain extent of power.  For example, Genghis Khan’s mother, Hoelun, served as the primary caregiver throughout his life. He had warm regard for her, Alberts says. In some cases, she and other women held positions of authority within the empire. This was especially true when the men traveled for conquest and left them behind. But this shouldn’t be perceived within the modern conception of feminism, considering that when women had trouble conceiving they were usually relegated to lower positions — their power was still based primarily on the heirs they produced... Above all, Alberts says, his reign and that of his sons and grandsons was marked by tolerance over oppression. Their rule fostered an exchange of knowledge in the areas of science, religion, culture and language with the other established civilizations of the 13th and 14th centuries. In fact, the Mongols were patrons of several religions including Islam, Buddhism, Taoism and Christianity.   Beyond Genghis Khan, the Mongols people as a whole have been largely underestimated throughout history, says Alberts. They weren’t simply a collection of brutal warlords that thrived on the blood and spoils of their conquests. “The evidence just doesn’t back up the popular misconception of Mongols destroying everything in their path,” Alberts says.    The Mongols and Genghis Khan should be remembered, he says, for running a successful empire based on laws, language, trade and an understanding that a society’s strength comes from good governance."

Meme - "DON'T THROW ME TO THE WOLVES. I'LL COME BACK PREGNANT"

Meme - "Me when I'm asked to kneel and apologize for being white *body in shape of swastika*"

Meme - Bolverk15: "Bioshock Infinite was one of the most hyped games of its time but its only lasting legacy was that the porn of its main character was responsible for several breakthroughs in animation... All of the overwatch porn you see is based of tech that was specifically developed to make nsfw stuff for this very specific character. Blender animation went through so many inovations because people wanted smut of her its comparable to when film developed colour"

What are the Enhanced Games? Billionaire Peter Thiel backs new competition labelled 'doping-legal Olympics' - "Initially proposed in early 2023, the concept of the Enhanced Games came from an Australian named Aron D’Souza, a venture capitalist and current president of the private company behind the Games.  Proposed by D'Souza, the Games will permit not just the use of PEDs, but also currently panned performance technology such as currently-banned running shoes, and the infamous swimming 'super suits'.   Since its inception last year, the Enhanced Games has collected an impressive array of investors, but it may have landed its white whale, with billionaire co-founder of PayPal Peter Thiel announcing in late January that he would also be investing.   Thiel joins former CTO of Coinbase Balaji Srinivasan, and a biotech investor Christian Angermayer in the investors circle of the Enhanced Games, providing a clear path for the first edition of the games to be held."

Meme - Miles JC @lezjc: "The Olsen twins look like one of them knows how you die and the other knows when you die."

Meme - "AISLE OF DEATH
Bug Killer. Weed Killer.
AISLE OF LIFE
Fertilizers. Potting Soil. Garden Supplies."

Meme - "Adopt a street
Lynch 4th graders"

Meme - "*Reaction Guys*
Yuri from Japan
Yuri from Korea
Yuri from Russia (Red Alert 2)"

Polygyny and the rate of population growth - "The roots, motives and feasibility of practising polygyny in societies with a balanced sex structure and the effect of polygyny on the rate of population growth are considered. High demand for labour combined with limited supply over the last several centuries, had been conducive to the evolution of a polygynous nuptiality pattern. The unprecedentedly high rates of population growth during the last several decades combined with progressive economic development have led to a change in the role of the labour factor and consequently diminished its impact upon polygyny. Polygyny is feasible because of a sex-age differential at first marriage, which enables younger cohorts of women to enter the marriage market, and thus results in a very early age at first marriage and universal incidence of marriage among women. A very young pattern of nuptiality inevitably evolves under polygyny, which tends to raise the rate of population growth. No significant variation in fertility between polygynous and monogamous women was found but substantial gaps in standards of living, child mortality, and educational attainment were noted for polygynous households. The findings imply that during the transition from polygyny to monogamy family size will tend to diminish, although initially fertility may not decline concurrently with changing socio-economic status. The most important effects on the rate of population growth thus result from the increase in age at first marriage and declining proportions of ever married women."
When Lee Kuan Yew got it wrong

Meme - "This bird landed on the page about itself
The bird: *Leonardo diCaprio pointing*"

Meme - "When her delivery is on April 1st but the baby comes out dead
God: April Fools"

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