Interessant relaas van iemand zonder kantoor:

The way to look at remote work is that it’s a series of tradeoffs. You enjoy benefits in exchange for disadvantages. The uptake of remote work over the next decade will depend most on the minimization of those disadvantages rather than the maximization of the benefits. Reason being, the benefits are already substantial while many of the disadvantages will be lessened over time with technology and process improvements.

Ik zou echt niet meer zonder minstens 1 thuiswerkdag per week kunnen.

Arthur C. Brooks in de Washington Post:

People who consume news media “most of the time” are almost three times as inaccurate in their understanding of others’ views as those who consume news “only now and then,” the study found. This is almost certainly a function of partisans’ compulsive consumption of media sources that support their existing biases. Your political IQ is probably higher after watching reruns of “Full House” than hour after hour of political TV shows.

Wendell Steavenson in The Guardian:

I remember having an argument with my French boyfriend because I suggested marinating the chicken for dinner in yoghurt and cumin. Boyfriend threw up his arms in alarm. “But isn’t the point to taste the chicken?” Furious and foreign, I replied: “No! It’s just the opposite! Cooking is about messing with the chicken! Cooking is about adding flavour!” Here was the rub between French culinary conservatism and the way we in Britain and America have magpied ingredients from all over the world and made national favourites out of hybrid curries and Tex-Mex.

Het klopt heel hard ook in hoe ik de laatste tien jaar gekookt hebt. Eerst de “Belgisch-Franse keuken” met vlees, groenten en aardappelen met hier en daar wel een kruid, maar vooral de zachte smaak van wat er op het bord ligt. En hoe ik nu echt vrijgevig ben met kruiden, vers en gedroogd, of met marinades.

Een weetje dat ik nog niet wist, trouwens:

The word “restaurant” originally referred to a restorative, a pick-me-up, a fortifier. In the 18th century, as Paris grew, butchers began to sell bouillons, nourishing broths made from offcuts of meat, to workers and tradesmen. These early soup stalls became known as restaurants; a 1786 decree allowed “caterers and restaurateurs [those who make fortifying soups]” to serve the public on site. You could now sit down at a table to partake of your soup instead of having to take it away.

The Guardian:

The US military is conducting wide-area surveillance tests across six midwest states using experimental high-altitude balloons.

Wat een enge wereld is het aan ’t worden…

Ronald Aronson in de Boston Review:

An African American man becomes elected, and the battle cry becomes “Take America back!” Hispanic immigrants become more visible, and the battle cry becomes “Build the wall!” A Muslim-American congresswoman criticizes the president, and the battle cry becomes “Send her back!” As Mutz explains, “It is not racism of the kind suggesting that whites view minorities as morally or intellectually inferior, but rather, one that regards minorities as sufficiently powerful to be a threat to the status quo.”

Exact het sentiment waarmee N-VA – en recent ook het “nieuwe” Vlaams Belang – bij ons scoorde: geen racisme an sich, maar vooral het gevoel dat “wij” – en iedereen vult dat anders in – erop achteruit gaan.

Rowan Jacobsen in Outside:

Most offerings made with Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are about a buck a burger more expensive. But it’s inherently cheaper to make a burger directly out of plants than it is to feed those plants to an animal first. Beef is currently cheaper because of scale. Big food companies can negotiate tremendously reduced prices for feed, and gigantic factories and supply chains are much more efficient to run.

Ethisch en ecologisch is vlees eten niet (meer) te verantwoorden en toch blijven we – ik ook – dat doen. Ik vraag me vaak af wat mijn kleinkinderen gaan veroordelen van wat wij nu doen, zoals voor ons dat bijvoorbeeld roken op restaurant is, of alles wat in Congo gebeurde. Het economisch model van de veeteelt staat zwaar op de helling en dan kan het plots heel snel gaan.

Christopher Bagley:

The boisterous Basque restaurant of your dreams isn’t a restaurant at all, but one of San Sebastián’s fabled sociedades gastronómicas, members-only social clubs whose existence revolves entirely around food. In a town where cooking and eating seem to be the raisons d’être for just about everything, from the three-star restaurants to the napkins-on-the-floor pintxo joints, these culinary clubs, which have been around for about 150 years, still harbor some of the most interesting kitchens of all.

Wauw, van zoiets zou ik onmiddellijk lid willen worden. Één van de redenen waarom ik ooit nog wel hotelavondschool zou willen doen, voor die culinaire vriendschappen.

Wanneer de kardinalen van Washington Cathedral een natie een geweten moeten proberen schoppen…

Make no mistake about it, words matter. And, Mr. Trump’s words are dangerous.

These words are more than a “dog-whistle.” When such violent dehumanizing words come from the President of the United States, they are a clarion call, and give cover, to white supremacists who consider people of color a sub-human “infestation” in America. They serve as a call to action from those people to keep America great by ridding it of such infestation. Violent words lead to violent actions.

When does silence become complicity? What will it take for us all to say, with one voice, that we have had enough? The question is less about the president’s sense of decency, but of ours.