After reading the minutes of the meeting, Mr. Spiegelman said he got the impression that the board members were asking, “Why can’t they teach a nicer Holocaust?”
The post-nineties generation that uses sites like Xiachufang is not one that usually cooks. Their lives are defined by an arduous work culture and precarious careers. They rely on cheap and convenient food-delivery apps for most meals, making only occasional trips to the kitchen. Yet eating with friends and family is central to their idea of a “good life”. When restrictions in response to the COVID-19 outbreak take that away, quarantine cooking is the response, rebuilding that lost social connection with what’s at hand and what’s possible. […]
Sharing its preparation online is as important as the food itself. They are transmissions sent from isolation, like radio diaries from a stranded spacecraft. It’s about re-creating the conviviality of sharing a meal. It’s a response to boredom and a salve for the constant anxiety of following updates on the outbreak. […]
The act of looking for a recipe and reading others’ quarantine diaries has become like a trip to the supermarket. We tend to think of the Chinese internet as just a battleground—activists and censors locked in an endless conflict. But, to many, it is also homey and comforting, parts of it as familiar as a cozy kitchen.
The link seems broken currently, but here’s another, and here’s a screenshot that Joanne McNeil shared in her recent newsletter, when she noticed that Krish had mentioned her work in relation to this.
Meanwhile.
How Facebook turned into a coronavirus conspiracy hellhole – Wired UK The posts, which are filling innocuous Facebook groups normally dedicated to political discussions and flight deals, are a strange evolution of conspiracy theories that have been knocking around the internet for years. One much-mooted theory, for example, is that the coronavirus has been caused by radiation from 5G masts. […] These posts incorporate political conspiracies – for instance, one post on the “We Support Jeremy Corbyn Facebook” group, states that “people have bugs like this all the time, the media are basically covering up the economic global crash which is coming and also the Brexit shit show.”
‘It isn’t Mad Max’: women charged after fight over toilet paper in Sydney – The Guardian A video of the incident was shared on social media and showed a small group of women pushing, yelling and fighting over a shopping cart filled with toilet paper. “We just ask that people don’t panic like this when they go out shopping,” the New South Wales police acting inspector Andrew New said. “There is no need for it. It isn’t the Thunderdome, it isn’t Mad Max, we don’t need to do that.
What is going on?
Coronavirus: why people are panic buying loo roll and how to stop it – The Conversation In research I conducted with marketing professors Charlene Chen and Leonard Lee, we found that consumers compensate for a perceived loss of control by buying products designed to fill a basic need, solve a problem or accomplish a task. This is what we’re seeing as people rush to buy rice, cleaning products and paper goods in illogically large proportions.
Well here’s one possible solution.
Coronavirus: Australian newspaper prints extra pages to help out in toilet paper shortage – The Guardian On Thursday the NT News, the Darwin-based newspaper with a national reputation for its headlines and antics, printed a special eight-page insert that can be cut into toilet paper. Its editor, Matt Williams, told Guardian Australia the paper was selling well and was “certainly not a crappy edition”. “We are a newspaper known around the world who understands the needs of our readers,” he said. “Territorians … are in great need of toilet paper right now so we had to deliver what they needed.”
I’ve been a fan of the web comic xkcd for a while, so it was sad to read of their recent security troubles.
Hackers breach forum of popular webcomic ‘XKCD’
“The xkcd forums are currently offline. We’ve been alerted that portions of the PHPBB user table from our forums showed up in a leaked data collection. The data includes usernames, email addresses, salted, hashed passwords, and in some cases an IP address from the time of registration,” the forum administrators wrote.
It does give us the opportunity to share one of their comic strips again, though.
I almost forgot — today is 22/7, Pi Approximation Day, “a holiday for people who are GOOD ENOUGH, just not transcendental! They do their best! They get by alright in most situations – just don’t try to build a bridge with them, you know?”
Via FlowingData, here’s a witty visualisation of how we spend our days, on average. It’s just a stacked bar chart, but turning it into a comic “can allow the audience to identify with the story, sparking self-reflection: “Is this how I live my life? How am I different?””
A day in the life of Americans: a data comic
There are three settings in this comic (a bedroom, an office, and a bar), each serving as a metonym for an activity (sleep, work, and leisure). I have also included colors and positions as redundant, but clarifying, codes of classification. Such scenes allow for a novel method of highlighting data; a setting inside a panel is “lit up” by a light source if the activity for which it stands occupied those two hours of Americans the most.
In style, very different from Edward Gorey, but perhaps not in tone.
Woshibai’s hilariously clever comics explore themes of mundanity and reverie
Born and raised in Shanghai, where he currently resides, artist Woshibai illustrates amusing scenes that, though clearly imaginary and surreal, are often relatable in their tone. Featuring a host of simply drawn figures, his characters frequently find themselves in frustrating, confusing or ridiculous situations that play on notions of mundanity and reverie.
Technologies just change, rather than advance, I think. For all their supposed progression, the level of accompanying frustration seems pretty constant.
An article from the Atlantic on a possible contributor to the educational gender gap in schools across the world.
Boys don’t read enough In two of the largest studies ever conducted into the reading habits of children in the United Kingdom, Keith Topping—a professor of educational and social research at Scotland’s University of Dundee—found that boys dedicate less time than girls to processing words, that they’re more prone to skipping passages or entire sections, and that they frequently choose books that are beneath their reading levels.
But there’s nothing to say this can’t be turned around, though.
David Reilly, a psychologist and Ph.D. candidate at Australia’s Griffith University who co-authored a recent analysis on gender disparities in reading in the U.S., echoed these arguments, pointing to the stereotype that liking and excelling at reading is a feminine trait. He suggested that psychological factors—like girls’ tendency to develop self-awareness and relationship skills earlier in life than boys—could play a role in the disparity, too, while also explaining why boys often struggle to cultivate a love of reading. “Give boys the right literature, that appeals to their tastes and interests, and you can quickly see changes in reading attitudes,” he says, citing comic books as an example.
Topping suggests that schools ought to make a more concerted effort to equip their libraries with the kinds of books—like nonfiction and comic books—that boys say they’re drawn to. “The ability to read a variety of kinds of text for a variety of purposes is important for life after school,” he says.
I’d never heard of this comic before, but I can certainly relate a little to it.
Finnish nightmares
Meet Matti, a stereotypical Finn who appreciates peace, quiet and personal space. Matti tries his best to do unto others as he wishes to be done unto him: to give space, be polite and not bother with unnecessary chit chat. As you might’ve guessed, it can’t always go that way.
Perhaps I’m slightly Finnish?
Are you socially awkward, or just “spiritually Finnish?”
If you find it awkward to make small talk, you may be “jingfen” (精芬) or “spiritually Finnish.” That’s the newly coined Chinese buzzword for a burgeoning identity taking hold among millennials.
Or a little Chinese?
Why do millions of Chinese people want to be ‘spiritually Finnish’?
Matti’s fear of crowds and small talk and his tendency to be easily embarrassed has struck a chord with many Chinese readers, who seem relieved that their longing for privacy has finally been voiced – via the medium of a stick figure from a faraway country. But it’s Finnish culture itself – of which privacy and personal space have long been part – that has also struck a chord.
I knew it was old, but didn’t realise the Beano started in 1938, with an ostrich having a pop at Hitler. The story lines and characters have changed over the years, obviously, but so too have the values and attitudes behind them. Thankfully.
Groo! Yeuch! The Beano at eighty
And for the most part, these stereotypes did not poke fun at the people themselves, they just added to the parade of characters. The most uncomfortable situations were probably those with Dennis and his archnemesis Walter; sometimes Dennis’s menacing could look like homophobic bullying, since all “Walter the Softy” seemed to do was skip around with his pals singing “tra-la-la” and sniffing flowers, which earned him undying contempt. But the Beano got wise to this after a while and Walter was given more agency, and more cunning, which made things more interesting and less unjust.
Speaking of which.
Jacob Rees-Mogg accused of ‘copying’ Walter the Softy
In the letter, addressed to the North East Somerset MP at the House of Commons, Mike Stirling, head of Beano Studios Scotland, said Mr Rees-Mogg had been “infringing the intellectual property rights of one of our cartoon characters”. He said it was “evident there are numerous instances whereby you have adopted trademarked imagery and brand essences of the character to the benefit of enhancing your career and popularity”.
Star Wars 80s high school – Behance
Denis Medri illustrates scenes from Star Wars as if Luke, Leia, Han, and the rest of the gang were teenagers in an 80s movie like Back to the Future, Karate Kid, or Breakfast Club.
Miscellaneous Details 