2) This cat is way into Hitchcock. Video.
4) “I’m a judge and I think criminal court is horrifying.”
5) The “Spiciest Tortilla Chip in the World” is Sold One Chip Per Package.
6) The Woman who is Allergic to Water.
7) Teen Creates App So Bullied Kids Don’t Have to Eat Alone.
I should have written this post last week I guess, but I returned from vacation and landed with both feet on the run. I’m working hard on One Man again, and making good progress. Homeschooling is on again. My wife has a computer station I need to set up. My niece, who has been housesitting for us so kindly while we’ve been taking trips, is having a birthday.
So I haven’t really had time to write an in-depth report on the 30-day train vacation I just took. Here’s the short version: It was great to see family. It was great to see friends. I was lucky enough to eat a bunch of regional foods: jambalaya in New Orleans, pepper steaks in Philly, Italian beef sandwiches in Chicago. Splashing around in the ocean in Miami was fantastic, and so was seeing the monuments on the National Mall in Washington DC.
And then there were the long, quiet moments with my family on the train. Sometimes we played games, or read, or talked with other passengers. Sometimes we just stared out the window.
Sleeping was a bigger challenge than I’d expected and those east coast trains carry more people than this Seattleite is used to, but it was a beautiful trip with a lot of family time, and that’s what I wanted.
We also stopped in at every bookstore we could find, but none of my books were on the shelves. It’s just been too long, and I need to finish this one asap.
Speaking of which, the German edition of The Way into Chaos has come out, and I like the cover. Check it out.
1) Skimp or Spend, an Illustrated Mens’ Style Buying Guide
2) Seven Things I Learned Reading ISIS’s Magazine.
3) She can write like a man, they said, by which they meant, She can write.
4) Piecaken
5) I dressed like Cookie (from EMPIRE) for a week to get over my Impostor Syndrome.
6) Purple Rain, remade in a language without a word for “purple”.
7) That history of the Mork and Mindy show you didn’t know you wanted.
My wife loves this recipe. I make it every year as part of our Turkey Day celebration, and every year it wins the award for Least Likely To Become Leftovers. It’s also the only part of my dinner that’s sweet. We don’t do the yams with marshmallow thing, and the pies we eat for dessert always come hours later.
While in Portugal, I made this for my sister-in-law when she organized a Thanksgiving dinner for an American friend who’d been living in Italy for many years. I promised to give her the recipe, but I forgot. Here it is, converted to European measurements.
.5 kg small boiling onions
75 grams butter
40 grams honey
salt
Bring a big pot of water to a boil, add the onions, and boil for 5 minutes if they’re really small, 8-10 if they’re big.
Drain and cool, then peel them. The easiest way to peel them is to cut the root base almost all the way through, then pull off a strip of the outer layer, then peel off the outer skin. (I do this part the day before, usually).
On the day of, melt the butter in a skillet large enough to hold the onions in a single layer. Medium heat. When the butter stops fizzing, add the onions and then the honey. Stir until everything is well combined.
The original recipe said they were done when slightly browned, but I cook them way past that point. I cook them until the glaze is dark, dark brown and incredibly thick, and the onions are basically falling apart.
3) Ice-T will has some startling information for you in these (fake) SVU screencaps.
4) Most Heinous Stories of Role-Playing Games Gone Wrong.
5) Picture Yourself as a Stereotypical Man. “Stereotype threat” and academic achievement, or how to erase any statistical difference between whites and blacks / men and women.
1) Wheel of Misfortune. Love this comic. Love. It.
2) Every JRPG ever: Video. Reader, I laughed at them.
3) Exotic polyhedra dice, made of marble, gator jawbones, carbon fiber, and more.
5) 15 Delicious Regional Sandwiches. A chow mein sandwich? I don’t think so.
6) Texts from HP Lovecraft. This made me laugh.
7) Ten tabletop games that you can play as couples. Video.
1. How many of the “world’s strangest delicacies” would you eat? I consider myself an adventurous eater, but: five-ish, depending on the moment.
2. Video series compares the changes made to the Star Wars movies.
3. The Ten Best Tales of Online Drama from Ten Years of Fandom_Wank.
4) Academics unlock Agatha Christie’s “whodunnit” code.
6) The amazing high technology behind the NYC subway system.
7) A skateboard sidecar for toddlers: Video.
1) One-bedroom home for sale in Minneapolis: $150K. Every picture is weirder than the one before it.
2) Eight of the best D&D modules of all time. Warning: gallery.
3) I have 227 browser tabs open, and my computer runs fine. Here’s my secret.
4) Things to never order at a fast food restaurant.
5) Beautiful hand-carved skateboards from Mumbai.
6) Like movies and reading screenplays? Simon Barrett’s shooting scripts for the films THE GUEST and YOU’RE NEXT are online.
7) The worst fucking shoes on the planet: Cowboy sandal boots.
1) Grippy not Sticky: Stanford engineers develop a material that sticks without getting stuck.
2) Modern superhero comics done in a Golden Age style.
3) KITE FIGHT, a five minute documentary about the sport of soltar pipas, popular in the favelas in Rio. Video.
4) Segmented Glass Sculptures, via Marc Laidlaw
5) Boy Wonders. ::sniffle::
6) A plea for culinary modernism. Being honest about the way people *used* to eat.
7) Taylor Swifties.