Courage doesn’t always roar.
Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, (whispering), “I will try again tomorrow.”
—Mary Anne Radmacher
—from a 1985 poem
sapid /SA-pid/. adjective. Having a pleasant, decided/distinct taste (of food). Engaging and stimulating (of writing). The opposite of insipid. From Latin sapidus, from sapere (to taste). See also: saporous, ambrosial, delectable, scrumptious and gustie.
“Precious culinary overtones were interspersed between the crude treble and bass of sour and sweet, of sapid and vapid, and the still barbaric medieval gustatory nerves speedily found it impossible to dispense with these exotic flavourings.” (Stefan Zweig)
“I suppose that when the sapid and slippery morsel [the oyster]—which is gone like a flash of gustatory summer lightning—glides along the palate, few people imagine that they are swallowing a piece of machinery (and going machinery too) greatly more complicated than a watch.” (Thomas Huxley)
“He makes two leaves of fat to grow where but one grew before, lessens the sum of gastric pangs and dorsal chills. All this is something, certainly, but it generates no warm and elevated sentiments and does nothing in mitigation of the poor’s animosity to the rich. Organized charity is a sapid and savorless thing; its place among moral agencies is no higher than that of root beer.” (Ambrose Bierce)
Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night—nor the Black Hand or the Society of the Banana—could stop a postal work from bringing the Mafia to justice.
I find it hard to read without a pen in hand and am fascinated by marginalia of all kinds. What a treat to see Oliver Sacks’ conversations with his books. See also, the New York Times article on the subject.
There are quite a few of these 25 Scariest Fast Food Dishes of All Time that I would totally eat.
Great segment on Twitch, the “unedited, real, reality TV.” More—and more interesting than—“just those crazy kids”. || Pairs with Ice Poseidon’s Lucrative, Stressful Life as a Live Streamer
I can (barely, arguably) command one language…hyperpolyglots, who speak eleven or more are practically alien, though hopefully some of the lessons can penetrate even my thick skull. (Sorry for another potentially paywalled New Yorker link…try a private/incognito window in your browser).
Regardless of different opinions about what the solutions might be, this Vox piece on mass shootings in America is extremely well presented…and terrifying.
Conserve the Sound is an “online museum for vanishing and endangered sounds. The sound of a dial telephone, a walkman, a analog typewriter, a pay phone, a 56k modem, a nuclear power plant or even a cell phone keypad are partially already gone or are about to disappear from our daily life. ¶ Accompanying the archive people are interviewed and give an insight in to the world of disappearing sounds.” || Pairs with Phantom Islands, a “sonic atlas” that “charts the sounds of a number of historical phantom islands.”
The phrase “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” is obviously nonsense…so where did it come from and why is it still used?
Today in 1914, folk singer and composer Tom Glazer is born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Glazer would write songs later performed by Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Frank Sinatra and many others, but he is best remembered for his popularizing (authorship of the lyrics is unclear) of the children’s song “► On Top of Spaghetti,” sung to the tune of the Appalachian folk song “On Top of Old Smoky.”
Young Adults—three Russian musicians in a kitchen, outfitted with a trombone, a ukulele and a smooth voice—► cover “Can’t Stop” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and make me so happy. The trio has other great covers as well, such as ► Of Monster and Men’s “Little Talks” and the once-omnipresent ► “Pumped Up Kicks.” I might be developing an obsession with the trombone player. || Related find while burrowing into the rabbit hole of surprisingly good cover songs: ► Daniela Andrade covers the Gorillaz “Feel Good Inc.,” teaching listeners that a) even Damon Albarn songs like this have ravishing melodies, and b) we’ll never hear lyrics with the words “ass crack” in them sung more beautifully.
“► The Crayon,” by eight-year-old playwright Hana Morshedi, performed by Stephanie Beatriz, Jack Black, Max Greenfield, Judy Greer, Keegan-Michael Key, Tom Lennon, Leslie Mann, Jason Mantzoukas, & Jason and Randy Sklar.
Reader K.: “re: WORD, spolia are building materials taken from existing structures by residents or pillagers and used to build new structures elsewhere. It’s why we’ll sometimes find an inscription in a language thousands of miles from home carved into in some ancient cornerstone.” – Awesome! The Wikipedia article has some great pictures and links (plus any article with a “See also: palimpsests” has to be good).
Reader M.: “Turns out I’m following a trail of disillusionment with Steven Pinker’s work. This thread dismantling part of Better Angels is just one of many reasons why.” — Ouch. I am beginning to wonder if any of Pinker’s work is even fractionally as good as I thought it was.
Reader B.: "Ah, another lovely shipment from the Katexic mines. ¶ Indexes: JG Ballard wrote a short story as an index, which is a lot of fun. Just called “The Index,” and it’s the index of a biography of a man who’s the 20th century’s great hero – who then vanishes…
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