Etcetera #10: Pizza, Muons, Stop-Motion

If you live in Britain, you will be familiar with multiple food outlets with names like ‘Utah Fried Chicken’, ‘Tasty Kebab’ and ‘Ocean Catch’ all operating out of the same premises and staffed by the same people (or person). America, as is often the case, sees promise in this but, well, it’s not quite enough is it? By focusing their enormous weapon labelled ‘late capitalism’ upon it they produce the scenario described in this article. It’s a logical extension of the combination of white labelling, virtual businesses, gig economy, startup culture and brandjacking. And it completely sucks.

The verb ‘to cancel’ is one of those horrid words and phrases that we all end up having to use in particular ways because of right wingers’ insistence on Beetlejuicing a concept to life by saying it over and over again. In reality the word has a more interesting past, coined by Chic’s Nile Rogers in 1981. It joins myriad other words (woke, bae, cool, lit) which have not just been appropriated from black culture by white people, but actively weaponised against black people.

Data from experiments on subatomic particles called muons suggest the existence of forms of matter and energy that are completely unknown to science and inconsistent with the standard model of particle physics. This is a great piece—it combines the format of news journalism, to help lay readers understand why this of interest now, with context and backstory, allowing interested people to better understand the broader field of work.

I’m not sure why this has never crossed my path before. It is essentially an index of cookbooks’ indexes. Search the site for a book or a recipe and you’ll find all the ingredients, just not the method. The idea is that you can search your own recipe books without having to get them all off the shelf—useful if you have a surplus of a single ingredient and you aren’t sure how to use it, or if you just can’t remember which book had that really great recipe your family loved. There are some Goodreads-esque features insomuch as you can view different editions of books, add them to your collection, and leave reviews and comments.

The 1971 Concert For Bangladesh was a watershed moment in terms of using talent and celebrity to raise awareness of issues away from the western world’s typical focus. Such events are never easy to bring to life, and this was no exception—a chaotic tale of ego, Eric Clapton’s monumental heroin addiction, the tediousness of music industry administration, logistics, greed and taxation.

20 years is a good period for nostalgia: long ago that the work of art comes from a different time, but close enough that familiarity remains. It’s a short hop of a generation away. Little kids then are adults now; teens/20-somethings are entering the prime of their careers; older people might not be around any more. A man of my advancing years is able to celebrate the 20-year anniversaries of his favourite teenage/young adult albums and films on a seemingly weekly basis. Here is SM’s eponymous solo debut.

For a while there, Ryley Walker was in danger of being better known for his Twitter presence than his music, which would have been a great shame. His albums to date have been inconsistently brilliant, but this is the best so far: an unlikely marriage of Genesis-esque prog, British pastoral folk and Chicago indie.

I really wanted to like this game. Late ‘90s JRPG-style graphics, a focus on the narrative, a story that (I’m told) changes based on the decisions the player makes… but it just didn’t work out for me. It crashed a few times. A game that’s so focused on storytelling really shouldn’t have this many typos, and I don’t think that the writing reaches the levels its creators hoped for. The team claim an 8-10 hour playtime but the ~3 hours it took me to reach the end surely can’t just be because I can read quite quickly. A bit of a disappointment, all told.