internet explorers club | if you're reading this it's friday
Great article on the idea that food snobbery was what took spices out of European cooking:
Serving richly spiced stews was no longer a status symbol for Europe's wealthiest families — even the middle classes could afford to spice up their grub. "So the elite recoiled from the increasing popularity of spices," Ray says. "They moved on to an aesthetic theory of taste. Rather than infusing food with spice, they said things should taste like themselves. Meat should taste like meat, and anything you add only serves to intensify the existing flavors.
Vogue on “bespoke hot dogs.” I can’t. Palate cleansers: the Brooklyn Bar Menu Generator, which is my new favorite thing. Red Wedding commemorative plates exist (please purchase them for me, thanks).
Someone is kickstarting (is this officially a verb now?) a campaign to re-create the 1970s NASA graphic design standards. This is a cool endeavor (though definitely playing into the hagiography of 1960s design), but it’s also based on the idea that the NASA “meatball” logo is terrible and outdated, and this is an INCORRECT statement, and they should feel bad.
Allow me to recommend the semiotic standards of Alien, as well as this insanely detailed discussion of period type in films.
Hipster Barbie is the greatest new Instagram.
The New York Times is defending the fanny pack for some unknown reason and doesn’t see the hilarity in arguing that “cultural baggage” has prevented us from embracing it.
Language News Daily: the actually murky origins of y’all (I definitely lean towards the African-American vernacular origins camp) and text-speak in the age of the telegraph, including their version of LOL, which was HI HI, as it was composed entirely of dots, so fairly quick and easy to type. Avocado emoji (and bacon) is coming, but it’s with Unicode 9, so don’t hold your breath because we’ve barely implemented 7.
Great parking space decoration or greatest parking spot decoration?
Etcetera: Drone finds man sunbathing atop wind turbine (as you do). Gravy wrestlers battle it out for world title (!).
—Emily
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