Etcetera #11: Empire, Taxonomy, Pocahontas

If we want to understand the origins of our present system for growing and distributing food, we need to look at Britain rather than America, and to the nineteenth rather than the twentieth century. The extraordinary interconnected global systems for growing, standardising, moving, and storing food developed by Britain differ only in degree rather than in kind from the food networks that structure our lives today.

Botanist Carl Linnaeus’ classification system has been adopted around the globe—but have we adequately reckoned with how his ideas about humans laid the groundwork for scientific racism?

Pocahontas may seem like a strange vehicle for discussing gay villains. But Disney gets inventive when they need to circumvent white people’s historical responsibility for genocidal atrocities — and queerness is a useful scapegoat.

How hemp can be part of an affordable housing future.

Many pandemic maps depict the macro-scale forces that produced the “Great Pause.” What’s harder to show is all the something enabling that nothing, the pulsing activity powering the pause.

A film maudit—literally a ‘cursed film’—is one that is widely panned even as it is staunchly defended by a devoted minority. Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales is discussed throughout this article, which traces the history of the term and the critical battles fought over it.

The taste of wine stems from the physical environment in which the grapes are grown—a combination of geology, soil, and weather that the French call ‘terroir’. This concept of place-specific tastes is spurring the revitalisation of some American neighbourhoods and communities.

A discussion of the ‘real book’, aka the ‘fake book’. How do you codify jazz, an inherently improvisational medium? For a period in my twenties I desperately wanted to be a jazz guitarist. Two things stopped me—a lack of a real book and a lack of talent—yet I persist in my mild delusion.

I meant to include a reference to Rovelli in last week’s mention of subatomic particles. He writes very well on the matter. I don’t like the dreadful Brentisms that occur throughout this piece—"when a guy called Isaac – his last name was Newton"—but I can get past it. He clearly has a way of talking that is edited out of him by his publishers.

This is a tale of how missed calls performed a cultural and technological role at a time when nothing else could help—until data became much cheaper, and options opened up. This is a really great story about the intersection of technology, culture and community.

In this column, during the pandemic, restaurant critic Jay Rayner has been remembering old cookbooks. Here’s his take on the printed, photocopied, scribbled and passed-down recipes that exist on the borders of food publishing.

I’m having a lot of fun with this iOS app which treats albums rather than tracks as the fundamental unit of music. It’s very helpful for finding older or ignored albums in your collection. I mean, just last night I listened to the entirety of ‘Slain By Urusei Yatsura’. For you that mightn’t be a recommendation, but I’d had quite a lot of wine.

This came out in the US on Hulu last summer, so it will be old hat to those of you from the states, but it is new to the UK via Amazon Prime. “It’s one of those infinite time loop situations you might have heard about.” Absolutely wonderful. Cristin Milioti is amazing in this.

I was delighted to see this in the recent Nintendo Indie World showcase. Its 2012 release was featured in Indie Game: The Movie and I had been hoping it would come to a Nintendo system. If you’ve not heard of the game, it’s about the relationship between 2D and 3D worlds. The developer is—to be kind—troubled. I am not sure if my purchase benefits him but I bought it straightaway and I adore it so far.