Friday, March 04, 2016

Batch of links

- I found this nice discussion on the food shown in both Star Wars and Star Trek. I definitely noticed the food in the latest Star Wars, including the weird green bread (which, as it turns out, is actually edible). The original Star Wars series also influenced food writers. As for the produce in the latest movie, it actually reminded me of the flowers on Star Trek, in that all were “exotic” produce/flowers here on Earth and the prop masters were perhaps betting on most people not recognizing them (but I’m a food lover and ex-assistant-florist).

- Six gourmet chocolates with amazing designs. Too bad some of them are in the U.K. – shipping would kill me.

- I forgot to post this link last week, about Soylent and other protein drinks. It contains a video in which a sommelier, a gastroenterologist, a personal trainer and a dining reporter do a taste test on Soylent to see if it could replace food for them. This is a previous version of Soylent; the Engineer reports it is now less gritty (and personally, I preferred a version even anterior to that, which was flavored with vanilla).

- When you eat your evening meal, are you having dinner or supper? It should be noted that English is not my first language, but I’ve always used “dinner” to mean the evening meal and “supper” to refer to the fourth meal, like in the Hobbit meal schedule in the movies and Bram Stoker’s Dracula book (“You will I trust, excuse me that I do not join you, but I have dined already, and I do not sup.") I do have Anglophone friends, however, who use “supper” to mean the evening meal, and I had just chalked it up to regional differences. But according to this interesting article, while both terms are often used interchangeably, “supper” is actually a light, informal meal whereas “dinner” tends to be heartier and/or fancier. The more you know.

- Now that I eat in restaurants with the Little Prince every once in a while, I’ve become aware of how many crayons are wasted at each establishment. Because when your child is given crayons and a paper menu to keep busy until the food arrives, unless you take the crayons home with you, they end up being tossed away after your meal. Multiply that by how many children eat there, and that’s a whole lot of waste of barely used crayons! Luckily, a dad came up with a great way to recycle them, melting them into new crayons for children at hospitals. His project is called the Crayon Initiative, and I’ll bring it up at restaurants from now on.

- I’m falling behind on my TV viewing, which is why I really hope Google completes its system to save us from spoilers on social media.

- With the elections coming up, I thought it would be interesting to use Greenhouse, a plugin created by a then-16-year-old (now 18-year-old) that shows where politicians get their funding. You can find out more in this article or directly at the website.

- I don’t know if you’re a fan of Yid-Life Crisis, but even if you’re not, you should check out their latest video, starring Mayim Bialik.

- A really interesting article the downsides of mindfulness. I’d only heard of mild, rare negative side effects before reading this, but it turns out this is way more widespread than people believe.

- Scientists say “resting bitch face” is real. I sometimes think I suffer from that.

- And finally, this video made me unbelievably optimistic: someone has what he believes is an achievable solution for climate change, AND it can help fight world hunger at the same time.

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