Leftovers #92
This week we're making a hot honey spritz, perfect 10 minute cold noodles and why Koreans think rice is everything.
Do you ever feel a sudden jolt that there is never enough time? Forgive this inane, obvious thought. It only ever happens when I’m doing something like reading because there are infinite things to read. I often return to my computer around 11pm, hopeful to write but instead invariably end up trawling the internet for opinions to hook onto about subjects I know only materially, in hopes that I can absorb and impart some wisdom in my next conversation with a stranger. Right now there are about 20 tabs open on my browser, and at least half of them are pieces I want to read (the rest are related to various strategies and pitches that I will put off until tomorrow). I wish I could pause time and tiredness, just so I could catch up on all the articles I want to read. It’s telling that I never wish I could pause time to catch up on work; I prefer the urgent, looming deadline to spur me to action.
Publications I love reading, since no one asked: Byline, Dirt, The Outline, The Baffler, The Millions, LA Review Of Books, Semafor, The Regular, Another Gaze.
Anyway, Maggie Rogers released a new song yesterday. Weirdly each time she’s done this, it’s been a significant moment of my life - something I didn’t recognise at the time but looking back, they serve as melodic milestones for life’s challenges and joys. So I’m hoping that Don’t Forget Me marks an time which I’ll soon look back on with a golden glow.
Thinking
– About this meticulously researched and harrowing long read on London Review Of Books about Israel’s relentless genocidal war on Gaza.
From the beginning, Operation Iron Swords has been an all-out assault on a captive and overwhelmingly civilian population. Israeli tactics have little in common with standard counterinsurgency doctrine or rules of engagement. The war on Gaza is at its core retributive: an act of collective punishment.
– A word I recently discovered: postprandial, which means “during or relating to the period after dinner or lunch,” and feels like a slightly more formal, uptight version of the Spanish word sobramesa (The Spanish tradition of relaxing at the table after a heavy meal).
– How in Korean, the informal word for food is 밥 (bap) – which is primarily translated as “rice”. Sheer proof that to Koreans, rice really is everything.
Cooking
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