ArtieShaw

Oh no. I feel that. Back when ipods were a thing, I liked to call it my husband’s “tiny radio.” Particularly on planes, with lots of captive listeners.

But I was mainly torturing him.

It’s OK - he does similar shit to me. 30 years and counting…

I didn’t really expect anyone to know that, which was sort of the joke. He was very famous in his time, but by now it’s a bit of a deep cut.

Artie Shaw was a clarinetist who ran a jazz band. In addition to that, he was also quite the weirdo. Womanizer, liked math a lot (like more than is natural), was an expert marksman who was nationally ranked in that sort of thing, and really into fly fishing. Also, currently, very dead. And that’s good because otherwise he’d be 114.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artie_Shaw

here’s a sample of his work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_v3GY3ZqdM

Shock: I’m not really Artie Shaw.

The actor cat who played Lucky was pretty chill, but ALF was pretty insistent upon telling the family that he wanted to indulge in some tasty cat recipes. It didn’t feel violent or real. Just silly. I haven’t seen the show since 1989, but that screenshot seems dead on balls accurate.

I collect ancient coins and this explanation doesn’t fly for me. There’s a certain amount of “artisanal-ness” in the production of ancient coins - which were all handmade. Like, I’m looking at a tray of coins right now and there’s no way a simple go/no-go tool would be helpful. Also, for this purpose a simple handheld counterweight balance would be more accurate and portable. The existence of these simple balances, along with reference weights for various denominations, is well documented.

Moreover - if you’re an ancient merchant, what is more important? The weight of the silver or the ability for it to pass for a denarius issued by Rome? Particularly for international trade, it seems to have been the former. Bankers’ cuts and countermarks are commonly seen on coins, and seem to have been an early form of foreign exchange. (eg - I’m travelling from Athens to Ephesus with a stock of my local currency. If I pass it to a local banker in Ephesus, they can evaluate it, determine the local exchange in terms of silver, and give it a locally recognized countermark to assure their own merchants that they’re getting the equivalent local value).

That being now off my chest, I’ve got no great answers for the dodecahedrons. I strongly suspect that it was a nifty thing that metal workers made as a master’s thesis.

This was 1981, so no. I think he’s just the “ice cream man.” Weird play on words.

Casefile. It’s not that content is boring or uninteresting. It just knocks me out.

My brother ate a Snausage for the low low price of one US dollar. There was a whole negotiation process beforehand (Snausage, milk bone, kennel ration biscuit and dog chow were all on the table). He had regrets. I’ll admit that I drove a hard bargain, but he was old enough to know better.

For myself? No. Some of my cats’ shredded chicken in “gravy” looks and smells OK. Still no.

The veterinary sales rep I used to work with said, “their taste buds are very different from ours.” I’ll trust him

To add on. Some of the trust fund babies I knew in college shoplifted Wet ‘n’ Wild cosmetics. For context, these were lipsticks and nail polishes that cost $1 each. It wasn’t so much the financial aspect of it as it was the allure of petty illegality. I guess?

Oh - and if RFK was whining about “crystals growing” inside that straw, he was smoking that cocaine.

I like the mnemonics of c (copy), v (get in there), x (snip-snip), and z (bad idea) as much as I like the similar ones for bold and italics.

text you’ve already typed and change the format. Control (shift) + F3 used to do that in MS word. Highlight your text and Toggle Through The POSSIBILITIES.

I’m not sure this is true. Current US federal food and drug law has been in effect since the 1970s (for specifics, I’m thinking 21 CFR 211, which was codified 1979-ish) and it hasn’t really been repealed so much as it was never very explicit and rarely enforced, in part because of the difficulty of enforcing something so vague.

Example: The law clearly says, “you must have a written procedure in place to prevent contamination,” But it leaves it up to the manufacturer to determine what that procedure should be. In contrast, some of the EU legislation (EUDRALEX) is much more prescriptive: “you must do X, Y, and Z to prevent contamination in a multi-purpose facility.”

What little legislation was in place as US law before 21 CFR 211 was worse.

It’s also worth noting that much of the US’s regulation via agencies like the FDA is actually released as “guidance for industry.” Or to paraphrase, “don’t be a freaking idiot about things, but we can’t legally prosecute you for it if you don’t.” That’s a big loophole.

Consider the legal fiasco that was the trial of the owners and “quality manager” of that peanut company that caused multiple salmonella deaths about 10-15 years ago. Their QA manager’s legal defense was literally: I’m not qualified to do my job and should never been hired. 21 CFR says that “employees should be qualified to perform their jobs.” What does that mean? Should she have a degree in biology or chemistry? A degree in early childhood learning and k-12 education? On the job training on the day to day of the peanut factory and what to do if you have in infestation of birds? Beyond that, who is in charge of making sure she’s qualified? The regulations are unclear, and in the system that’s been in place for 40 years, all of those questions will be hammered out in the randomness of court and in the worst way possible. Like so.

https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2020/02/ill-fated-quality-control-officer-for-peanut-corp-of-america-freed-from-federal-custody/#google_vignette

I’m sorry - I could write a whole freaking book about this.

That looks amazing.

I thought there was a tangential reference to that recent question about whether there’s a critical mass of water to corpses that people find objectionable.

The example: There are plenty of corpses in the ocean, but people will swim in it. If there were one corpse in a pool, most people would decline the invite that particular pool party.

Mixed with that very recognizable graphic of Saddam in his hiding hole. And balls, for reasons that escape me.

edit: my friend is also a little confused.

Internment was a bit complicated, but my understanding is that the US army wouldn’t turn away young Japanese-American men who were willing to fight in Europe.

There was also a secret program where second generation men served as translators for US naval intelligence in the Pacific. They translated intercepted messages and assisted with prisoner interrogations. They were also in very real danger of being mistaken by the enemy by US or allied troops. The existence of this program was only revealed in the 1980s. If anyone is interested, google “Nisei linguists” or check out these references

https://www.nps.gov/goga/blogs/nisei-linguists-in-world-war-ii.htm

https://history.army.mil/html/books/nisei_linguists/CMH_70-99-1.pdf

I’d like to see it in real life. It’s what my art history lecturer called an entire ancient genre of art: “boobs on a stick.”

Not entirely accurately in this case, but I can see the connection.

Environmental, Social, and Governance programs are a trendy topic with investors. For example, if Walmart’s shareholders force it to adopt an ES&G program, that that same pressure gets applied by Walmart to their vendors.

That’s how it’s supposed to work. Devil is in the details, of course. And plenty of “yes buts” to go along with them.

There’s an entire industry devoted to auditing and rating companies on their overall score. Ecovadis is one that I can think of off the top of my head. They’ll audit you, give you a score, and give you areas where you need to improve.

I haven’t decided exactly how cynical I am about the whole thing, but I’m way past letting the perfect strangle the good.

I missed out on those! We were there for less than a week and never saw them on a menu.

They were on my list, though.

I’d say that both White Castle and McDonalds are a separate food entity. In form, they’re both burgers. That much is true, but the overall thing that you eat is consistently something else.

This is may be more obvious for WC because in spite of being the oldest fast food hamburger, they also depart more radically from the norms of cooking and presentation. Whatever McD’s is doing is a little more arcane. It presents itself as a burger, but doesn’t really taste like a burger.

And if you’re adding regional chains, Culver’s deserves a mention.

I noticed that they had a presence in London. We didn’t stop to compare them to the US version, though. I had weirder things to try.

That’s kinda brutal, but I’m going to back you up on the thing with hamburgers in Canada. Maybe it’s just limited to Ontario, but when we moved there we were consistently shocked by the weirdness of the burgers. For the first year or so we shopped around trying to find a good burger and eventually just gave up. Our local pub served some that were OK.

And before anyone chimes in with the thing about all Ontario burgers being prepared well-done by law, it’s not that. I’m pretty sure our time there pre-dated that law. I think they may have been “spicing” them with onion powder, but who knows.

The burgers at Burgermeister in Berlin were quite decent. Those were the only ones we tried, though.