smoking in the living room

[newyorker]

Spice Advice

Properly flavoring a dish is considered, by most of us, to be a vexing affair. Lior Lev Sercarz is a professional spice adviser, and he’s trusted by one of New York’s biggest chefs. See the full video on newyorker.com.

[kforcoffee]

[addiction-mb]

Roy DeCarava - Sun and Shade, 1952

[anthonybourdain]

BACK TO BEIRUT

I briefly considered naming my daughter “Beirut”. She was, after all, conceived within two hours of returning from my first visit there. In 2006, along with my crew, and a number of other foreign nationals, I had been taken off the beach by the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit and transported by LCU to the USS Nashville, and from there to Cyprus and home. The experience left me with a deep love and appreciation for the US Navy and Marines, the now decommissioned Nashville (once referred to affectionately, I’m told, as the “Trashville”), and, of course, Beirut. That experience changed everything for me. One day I was making television about eating and drinking, the next, I was watching the airport I’d just landed in a few days earlier, being blown up across the water from my hotel window. I came away from the experience deeply embittered, confused—and determined to make television differently than I’d done before. I didn’t know how I was going to do it—or whether my then network was going to allow me—but the days of “happy horseshit”, the uplifting sum-up at the end of every show, the reflex inclusion of a food scene in every act, that ended right there. The world was bigger than that. The stories more confusing, more complex, less satisfying in their resolutions. As I noted in my utterly depressing last lines of Voice Over in the eventual show we put together: in the real world, good people and bad alike are often crushed under the same terrible wheel. I didn’t feel an urge to turn into Dan Rather. Our Beirut experience did not give me delusions of being a journalist. I just saw that there were realities beyond what was on my plate—and those realities almost inevitably informed what was—or was not—for dinner. To ignore them now seemed monstrous. And yet, I’d already fallen in love with Beirut. We all had. Everyone on my crew. As soon as we’d landed, headed into town, there was a reaction I can only describe as pheromonic: the place just smelled good. Like a place we were going to love.

You learn to trust these kinds of feelings after years on the road. We soon met lovely people from every kind of background. We found fantastic food everywhere. A city with a proud, almost frenetic party and nightclub culture. A place where bikinis and hijabs appeared to coexist seamlessly—where all the evils, all the problems of the world could be easily found—right next to—and among all the best things about being human and being alive. This was a city where nothing made any damn sense at all—in the best possible way. A country with no president for over a year—ruled by a power sharing coalition of oligarchs and Hezbollah, neighbor problems as serious as anyone could have, history so awful and tragic that one would assume the various factions would be at each others throats for the next century—yet you can go to a seaside fish restaurant and see people happily eating with their families and smoking shisha, who, in any other place would be shooting at each other. It’s a beautiful city, with layers of scars the locals have ceased to even notice. It’s a place with tremendous heart. It’s a place I’ve described as the Rumsfeldian Dream of what, best case scenario, the neo-con masterminds who thought up Iraq, imagined for the post-Saddam Middle East: a place Americans could wander safely, order KFC, shop at the Gap. Where dollars are accepted everywhere and nearly everybody speaks English. That is an egregious oversimplification. But it’s also my way of telling you should go there. It defies logic. It defies expectations. It is amazing. EVERYONE should visit.

[kforcoffee]

Dr. Naman Ahuja delivered a brilliant lecture/presentation about his recent exhibition The Body In Indian Art and Thought at the Seattle Asian Arts Museum that included this rarely scene depiction of the Hindu deity Chamundi

[uowlf]

11:50 December 2014

[transparentoctopus]

Kazumasa Nagai

[christopherschreck]

[cinoh-deactivated20180826]

Chris Marker’s working notebook for La Jetee

[davidcordina]

Arun Kolatkar - graphisme - Clearing House

[brainfoodblog-blog]

Winter is coming. While cooking to support our long-term brain health, let’s also protect ourselves against common winter-related ailments, from the cold to the flu. This recipe combines a...

[slavin]

The bad news is I got the flu, and the good news is this fixed it.

[bigboynerd]

This is Jean Michael Basquiat’s resume, this recently sold for an asking price of 50,000.

[sympathyfortheartgallery]

good references

[kforcoffee]

[kforcoffee]

#fall

[kforcoffee]

[kforcoffee]

I once was the best of the day before I get a follow back on my way home and I have a great way for a few days and I'm still not sure what the actual number one in a statement issued by the end of the year and I have a great way for a while to load the first half and half the people of all time low key is the most important thing is I don't have a good time with the first half.

Collaborative fiction authored by Apple QuickType & me, starting with me entering "I once" and then repeatedly selecting the second option suggested by QuickType.

[kforcoffee]

within the four edges of a page a word finds itself within the four walls of a cage i once saw a crab certain to die certain the word holds its meaning tight no room for escape that night at home I wrote death black word on a sheet of white within the four edges of that page death finds itself

[iheartblr]

Are you a breakfast person? You’ve come to the right place, because once you go through this list, Bangalore mornings will never be the same again. 1. Monkey Bar - for their ‘breakfirsts’. From the pancakes & sliders to the fresh bagels, sausages and eggs, there isn’t an item they don’t do...