Cooking With Caustic Soda

Guardian of the Unconscious High Priestess of The Church of the Metaphorical Saint. "A special kind of edgy" Sometimes I think I'm funny. It's hard to tell.

[rederiswrites]

There really really ought to be a book about how the staple crops of different civilizations shape and influence those civilizations, and I really want to read it.

[alexseanchai]

Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky and A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage (three are alcohol, three have caffeine) are not quite that, but may still be of interest?

[rederiswrites]

I read Salt back in the day and it's so so good, second the rec. I have heard of 6 Glasses and not read it but I am sure I would probably love it. Gotta see if the library has it. Thank you!

[pandorasquillandquotes]

Gonna throw Empire of Cotton by Sven Beckert in the ring here! You'll never see the modern world the same way again.

[vaspider]

A Short History Of The World According To Sheep by Sally Coulthard blew my mind. So many things are tied to wool and sheep and weaving and so many words and phrases are tied to wool, people have no idea.

Example words which come from textiles/weaving, if not specifically wool (go look them up!): subtle, shoddy, tabby, Brazil, rocket, twit, warped, going batty, on tenterhooks, text...

[foxofninetales]

I'll throw in a rec for Pickled, Potted, and Canned by Sue Shephard - a very interesting look at food preservation and how the availability of different types of food preservation shaped cultures and cuisines.

[electronsprotonscroutons]

Sweetness and Power is this but for the topic of sugar

[magneticdeclination]

The Lost Supper: Searching for the Future of Food in the Flavors of the Past might also be up your alley. It's about "forgotten" foods and staples. They talk about different types of wheat, sauces, veggies, etc and a little about the cultures from whence they come

[doctornerdington]

Also: Much Depends on Dinner by Margaret Visser. One of my favourite books.

[bitchwhoyoukiddin]

DO I HAVE A SERIES FOR YOU. University of California Press has a gift for you and it is a 80+ book series on food studies. There are even some that are open access (legally free), but the rest are in libraries.

I also highly recommend Frostbite by Nicola Twilley. It’s about the impact refrigeration has had/is having on food preservation and culture, globally. It was one of my favorite books of this last year.

[calystarose]

Also, The Rice Theory of Culture https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1172&context=orpc By Thomas Talhelm

[ariaste]

Can't believe no one's mentioned Consider the Fork yet, which is about how environment/resources shape our ways of eating, which shapes both our culture and our concepts of politeness. So interesting, really recommend!

[great-art-and-a-purple-tongue]

Seven Flowers and How They Shaped Our World by Jennifer Potter

It isn't so much about edible plants as it is about decorative ones, but I think it fits the theme of this growing list enough for me to add it.

[kidzbopdeathgrips]

it's really funny how the entire world basically just blew the fuck up six short years ago and nobody wants to admit that that may have had some lasting consequences lmao

[kidzbopdeathgrips]

like so much of Everything today is premised on the idea that the earth-shattering catastrophe which happened within living memory of everyone older than a third grader has had no meaningful material or psychological effects on the general public and i don't think that's good, lol.

"(some of) the top-line economic indicators (sorta) recovered (in most places) so everything is fine and we don't need to talk about it" is not a sustainable framework for interfacing with reality

[kidzbopdeathgrips]

"why is everyone so angry and paranoid now?" "why is politics so dysfunctional now?" "why is [x] [y] and [z] now? blah blah blah"

2020:

[polari]

grounding tips for the stressed aspiring tyrant: acknowledge 5 people you can sway to your cause, 4 methods you can use to persuade them (2 violent, 2 nonviolent), 3 people in positions of moderate power you can manipulate and usurp in order to gain access to 2 powerful institutions to destroy, and 1 foundational lie

[polari]

people are starting to character tag so i’d like to state upfront that this is part of a new branch of pop feminism i’m pioneering called despotette and as such is specifically advice for women trying to break into the world of tyranny, so if you must character tag it’s really only appropriate to do so if the character is a woman, thank you

[michaelnordeman]

Eurasian Nuthatch/nötväcka, Western Jackdaw/kaja, Yellowhammer/gulsparv, and Great Tit/talgoxe. Värmland, Sweden (January 11, 2026).

[drunkwhenimadethis]

Maybe you can only truly be a good person (strong, mature, selfless) if you're attuned to your own wellbeing. Otherwise, all valient attempts create a strange force field and you will have enemies anyways. Do you first & foremost. It's like, when you're someone who is trying to manage everybody else's emotional state, what it's reduced to is you manipulating situations so that someone else maintains a very specific emotional state (because if they maintain that emotional state, I feel safer), and you do this via the information you feed to them. This is similar to the strategy of a deciever and a liar. Good decisions based on empty compulsion are typically not well received fundamentally, because we are all energetic beings, and that energy does not feel good. And you never even intended to suck all of the air out of the room. Self-abandonment, overperformance. You only wanted to feel safe. A little kiss thrown back in time to heal all future probabilities

[riverphoenixnose]

“I have had to experience so much stupidity, so many vices, so much error, so much nausea, disillusionment and sorrow, just in order to become a child again and begin anew. I had to experience despair, I had to sink to the greatest mental depths, to thoughts of suicide, in order to experience grace.”

— Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha (via whyallcaps)

[birf]

the People pleaser in me setting exactly one☝️ boundary

[birf]

That was the wrONG GIF

[birf]

Actually no it still works it’s pretty accurate

[motherfucker-somewhat-limited]

tiktoks with vine energy pt. 26

[395nm]

Fuck Meyer-Briggs whatever typology. This INTFP shit is only for redditors up their own asses to substitute for a personality. Use my new typology instead!

Your ideal environment is:

Hot/Cold

Wet/Dry

Bright/Dark

Loud/Quiet

[bedupolker]

HWBL - beach boy

HWBQ - tropical fish

HWDL - dingy club bathroom hookup

HWDQ - the swamp woman

HDBL - CoachellaBurningmanSouthbysouthwestACL attendee

HDBQ - Lizard

HDDL - Vegas babeyyyy

HDDQ - Trapped in a slot canyon

CWBL - Rowdy Lobsterman Crew

CWBQ - penguin living

CWDL - port angeles basement show

CWDQ - bruminating amphibian/hypothermic mammal

CDBL - ski resort

CDBQ - Christmas in Nebraska

CDDL - mcmurdo station rave

CDDQ - corpse

[gilgameshhimself]

(Getting swindled by a genie) it’s like talking to a fucking tumblr user with you

[higglety]

the genie: how dare you say I'm fucking a tumblr user

[solarprominence]

I maintain that the best summation of my feminist beliefs are that men and women are not fundamentally different. There are a few quantifiable differences if you average out every woman and every man, but they are not qualitative. And most of them are socially constructed, and would be fixed if we started treating men and women the same. Neither is inherently smarter, neither is inherently kinder, neither is inherently more stoic or stronger or angrier or softer. Everyone is obsessed with the differences between women and men, with finding them and creating them and distancing themselves from the "other half". It's fucked up

[disc90s]

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

[artsyrean]

I've been cackling at this all day and night, apparently the worst thing I've ever told my brother is he would have liked tumblr

[aspiringwarriorlibrarian]

Digital de-aging is bad not just because it always looks creepy as fuck no matter how much money they pour into it, but because it deprives me of getting to see the fucking black magic of a) the casting director somehow finding someone who looks unnervingly like the original actor despite not being related at all and b) the actors completely convincing me that they are, in fact, the same person at different times in their life.

[matrixdragon]

And occasionally, the amusement of sticking a bad wig and some makeup on the original actor and just demanding we accept they're a teenager now.

[i-like-rocks22]

It's both this:

And also this:

I love them both, your honour.

[mmilhouse]

goodbye $200 helloooo 3 groceries

[themarchingbeetle]

French Flower stamps

Photos by Pilllpat on Flickr

[sugar-petals]

the longer you look the better it gets lmao