Jeremy Cherfas

I can write Eat This Newsletter while on holiday. Promoting it, however, is another story entirely. BLTN, the latest offers food-borne illness, conspicuous fruit consumption, and plant-based meat ... for pets.

https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas/archive/etn-245-fruity/

One of the questions not raised by the latest Eat This Newsletter, which drops tomorrow, is why people who clearly want to subscribe, and are real people, don't activate their accounts? Am I justified in doing it for them? Do people really not check their spam?

In the latest Eat This Newsletter, the surprisingly rapid recovery of Pacific Bluefin Tuna, more than 10 years ahead of schedule. Naturally Japan now wants to increase the quotas that enabled that recovery.

https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas/archive/etn-244-tuna/

My first thought was “false flag”. That’s what these times have done to me.

#rabbit_quest #geohashing 20240709-W-B0O8O3

Described in more detail at https://jeremycherfas.net/blog/rabbit-quest-20240709wb0o8o3/

* On foot
* 42.759728, 12.353907
* Tuesday 9 july 2024
* 421.44 ppm CO2
* OpenStreetMap https://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=42.759728&mlon=12.353907#map=14/42.7597/12.3539

Interesting article on whether LLMs are writing PubMed articles, that seems to conclude that on balance they aren’t. Yet. Perhaps unsurprisingly for a linguistic analysis, says nothing about the quality of the articles, no matter who might be writing them.

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=64877

I wouldn’t be sad if all the mosquitoes in the world went extinct. Does that make me a bad person?

Is this the most interesting newsletter ever?

No, of course not. But it does give me the opportunity to pour scorn on sub-editors who question everything.

Say Yes to ETN 242: Ontological uncertainty.

https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas/archive/ETN-242-ontological-uncertainty/

A nice article extolling the virtues of do-less gardening, both in the garden and on the planet, which I definitely appreciate. I will just say that all this is much more difficult with pots on a terrace, circumstances even less natural than a garden.

First time in my puttering I think I have a need to normalise my CSS. Any hints as to the best of the many options out there gratefully received.

Tragically, Emeritus Professor Robert Eric Frykenberg has still not seen fit to correct the egregious howler he perpetrated in 2008, to which I drew attention back then. Talk about being a non-influencer.

https://www.jeremycherfas.net/blog/a-snaffle-bridle-on-a-17th-century-pit-pony

Latest episode: Palatable is not Potable

Whatever you think about bottled waters, the story of supplying clean, safe water that people actually want to drink is a fascinating one. Christy Spackman talked to me about her new book, The Taste of Water.

https://eatthispodcast.com/water

Roman roads visualised as a tube map. I cannot see any possible use for this in my own life, but I am thrilled beyond words that someone saw fit to make it.

https://sashamaps.net/docs/maps/roman-roads-original/

Back in 2008, I asked why organisations don't get rid of people at random when they have to downsize. "Management would not be required to make difficult decisions that are almost certainly wrong in at least some cases". Has any one tried, and if not, why not?

https://www.jeremycherfas.net/blog/let-go-at-random

Latest episode: Women Butchers.

Cheap supermarket meat has made life hard for butchers. At the same time, a few younger people are taking an interest in butchery. I shouldn’t have been surprised that many of them are women, some of whom agreed to tell me their stories. https://eatthispodcast.com/butchery

Illuminating talk by Banu Özden about the contribution of minority cultures - Rums, Armenians from Anatolia, and Sephardic Jews - to the food of Istanbul, an amalgamation of so many cuisines, she said, “the name of the city defines the cuisine”.

TIL you and shops ought to keep tinned anchovies in the fridge, even before opening. Who knew? Marcela Garcés knew, in her talk partially about how the anchovy is “misunderstood, underestimated or, worse, discounted entirely” in the US.

Excellent keynote at Dublin Gastronomy Symposium from Brendan Dunford of the Burren Trust about the long history of farming in the Burren and how the landscape is “a book written in stone”. Farming there is now being reimagined to deliver “ nature-based opportunities”.

Binged Rebus on the iPlayer because I had to. Brilliant.

🛫 on my way, eventually, to Dublin and DGS2024. Looking forward to all the talks and friends old and new.

Eat This Newsletter 238 is out, with some pre-history for Rome's decline and fall and a bunch of stuff on nutrition, good, bad and ultra-processed.

https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas/archive/etn-238-history-nutrition/

Very much enjoyed reading Paul Robert Lloyd’s reworking of the IndieWeb principles, and in my view they are a definite improvement.

Only one question: is the emoji for item 6. a bento box? My old eyes can’t be sure, but it would be appropriate.

I finally wrote about my trip to the Brompton World Championships in Venice. Still have to do the photos.

https://www.jeremycherfas.net/blog/brompton-world-championships-2024

TIL: a well-known and well-regarded weekly podcast that puts out 40 episodes a year is made by four people each working a full-time eight-hour day. That's a lot of time.

Eat This Newsletter 237: Shredded

Which is more, 45 gallons or 720 cups? Trick question, obvs; they're equal. Either way, Americans have never drunk as much milk as they did in 1945, and bird flu is just a blip in the decline.

https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas/archive/etn-237-shredded/

Making art of any kind will always attract the curious, and children can be especially helpful until they suddenly lose interest.

Getting errors from the web mention service I use and need to work out why, so trying from here to see whether anything will be be received at https://www.jeremycherfas.net/blog/make-it-simpler

New episode: What is Chametz?

The Hebrew Bible singles out five grains for special treatment. Two are easy: wheat and barley. Modern science may help identify the other three, but will that change centuries of custom and tradition.

https://eatthispodcast.com/chametz

Latest newsletter revisits Passover and asks a fifth question: if you are an observant Jewish sourdough baker, what do you do with your starter over Passover?

Questions too for sustainable fish, citrus salads and livestock emissions.

https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas/archive/ETN-236-leavened/

Cream crackered after spending an hour and a half trying to separate a well overgrown and neglected canna lily from its concrete trough. Very hard going, but now that I have replanted a few offsets, I am taking a well earned break.

TIL about using the Python calendar module from Terminal. What magic is this?

https://docs.python.org/3/library/calendar.html#calendar-cli

The cinematography on the new Ripley is drop dead gorgeous. That is all.

TIL Midnight Diner on Netflix is adapted from a manga series.

https://imaginair.es/@Sammael99/112276428841845445#.

For utterly mysterious reasons my Apple Watch SE lost power from 100% 39 minutes into a three hour hike this morning. Seems fine after a full recharge, but the numbers lie.

Wait, what? You’re in Rome?

Posted my monthly update. I realise that this is a good antidote to me thinking that I have frittered my time away. I haven't, but I need to consider the things I've done to provide myself with a more accurate picture.

https://www.jeremycherfas.net/blog/monthly-report-2024-03

I know this is a really unfashionable point of view, but I like daylight savings time. The day’s work is done and there another couple of hours of light to enjoy. I honestly don’t get why some people get so aerated about it.

No. idea what you are talking about. The h1 element is right there, wrapping the words “Why does the Labarum theme not have a header”.

It gave me no pleasure to read Brad DeLong's recent Dealing with Global Warming Over the Next Fifty Years, in which he eviscerates several climate deniers https://braddelong.substack.com/p/dealing-with-global-warming-over

No, wait. It gave me a great deal of pleasure. Do yourself a favour.

Grammarphobia says it has no clue about the origins of "chumbalone"meaning an idiot, or stupid. https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2024/03/chumbolone.html

Maybe I'm an idiot, but I reckon it derives from the Italian ciambellone, like a big pound cake with a hole in the middle. Can anyone confirm?

Or could it be from coglione?

Another test of syndication.

Found another person who syndicated from WithKnown to Mastodon, and wondering what technology they used. Probably the Mastodon plugin that is not working for me.

Testing POSSE to Mastodon using the KnownMastodon plugin. I like the fact that (if it works) syndication is optional for each post.

Trying to use IFTTT to POSSE from here to @etp@indieweb.social and discovering, alas, that use of a webhook requires payment. Not that I'm against paying, just that this particular use cannot justify the cost. Next stop, the ActivityPub plugin.