PicoBlog

Ryan McManus (RMM) is a product designer at Ford and a longstanding friend of WITI. He has previously written about the end of spare parts, the simple elegance of SecuriCode, and how to start your own town. He has never owned a gray car. Well, one—but he was young. Ryan here. If you were running a body shop in the mid-1990s, there was one car that might have given you pause if it showed up on the back of a truck for a respray: The 1996 Ford Mustang SVT Cobra, in a color called Mystic.

By Hillary Keeney Gertrude Morgan was a mystic, a soul in direct communication with God. In that, she resembled St. Catherine of Siena and William Blake, poetic minds charged by visions of intimacy with the Lord. No other figure in New Orleans history approaches her in this regard. - Jason Berry New Orleans is famous for its unconventional characters and iconoclasts. It was here on the sidewalks of the French Quarter around 1960 that Larry Borenstein, local art dealer and owner of what soon became Preservation Hall, came across a woman dressed as the Bride of Jesus.

Is science “white”? It’s not surprising that some (or even many) white scientists born in the early part of the twentieth century would believe that black people are inherently incapable of understanding the most complex developments in modern physics. Such attitudes were mistaken, but they were commonplace. The presence of African-descended people at all levels of every STEM field ought to have put this idea to rest. And indeed, most people recognize that a person’s race has nothing to do with their ability to reason.

We closed out October with an exploration of how African people have expressed their relationship with the natural world in words. I figured for November, we should stay on theme by revisiting the Myth of the Bagre of the Dagaaba (Burkina Faso, Ghana, Ivory Coast). Ghanian poet, Dannabang Kuwabong, describes the Myth of the Bagre as a performance through which the Dagaaba articulate their search for spiritual, cultural, and ritual meanings to their human existence in a harsh, semi-arid natural environment that nourishes them but also baffles them in its unpredictability.

You’re listening to Burnt Toast! This is the podcast about diet culture, fatphobia, parenting, and body liberation. I’m Virginia Sole-Smith, and I also write the Burnt Toast newsletter. And, as I may have mentioned, I’m the author of FAT TALK: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture, which comes out in just five days. WHAT. So we have a very special episode of Burnt Toast for you today. You are all going to be the very, very first people to hear me read Chapter 1.

Most days my rather voracious inbox receives at least one email extolling the ‘Judeo-Christian tradition’. The email will invariably have come from the USA, generally though not exclusively from an evangelical Christian website or the politically conservative Christian right. (Why I choose to receive these emails is another story). Like most people, I imagine, I never gave the phrase ‘Judeo-Christian tradition’ much thought.  But recently it seems to have become more widely used, and it often surfaces in the ethical and civic quarrels that are currently tearing American society apart.

I worked on this idea for months before I decided it was a mistake. The second time I heard someone mention it, I thought, “That's strange, these two groups had the same idea. Maybe I should tell them it didn’t work for us.” The third and fourth time I rolled my eyes and ignored it. The fifth time I heard about a group struggling with this mistake I decided it was worth a blog post all on its own.

A big storm raced through Nashville last night just as I was whipping up a new article for your entertainment. The power was knocked out and didn’t return until after midnight, meaning what I was working on—a piece with the clickbaity title, “Eat Sour Milk and Live to Be 180 Years Old”—will have to wait until next week. In the meantime, I’ve put together a brief something to entertain you: my Nashville hot chicken rankings.

This project is pretty simple. As a complement to each race weekend, I’ll be cooking the national dish of that race’s host country and sharing information about the process and that dish’s history along the way in an effort to grow more deeply immersed in the local culture from my own home. When you think of British food, you're probably thinking of stereotypes like mushy peas or bangers and mash. However, the folks across the pond overwhelmingly voted chicken tikka masala as England's national dish.