A weekly collection of links to interesting things curated by Colin Wright.
The Food That Makes You Gay
“You know my rule about men eating soup in public,” right-wing pundit Jesse Watters ventured on Fox News. “I don’t think it’s manly.” He mimed sipping broth from a spoon, lips pouted in a delicate O, before declaring the same rule exists for ice cream. “A grown man,” and here he is referring to president Joe Biden, “should not be licking ice cream in public.” His co-hosts laughed along. They understood the joke.
The Mullet Is Alive and Well in AFL
Benjamin B. Bolger has been to Harvard and Stanford and Yale. He has been to Columbia and Dartmouth and Oxford, and Cambridge, Brandeis and Brown. Over all, Bolger has 14 advanced degrees, plus an associate’s and a bachelor’s. Some of Bolger’s degrees took many years to complete, such as a doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Others have required rather less commitment: low-residency M.F.A.s from Ashland University and the University of Tampa, for example.
The Rise and Fall of Koo, India’s Once-Thriving Twitter Alternative
When Mukul joined Indian microblogging startup Koo in early 2023, he was eager to work with the roughly 300-member team building India’s answer to X (previously Twitter). He was hired to work on different features on the app, including revamping parts of the homepage. Mukul hoped his career would skyrocket along with the company’s growth.
Just a month after he joined, the company began laying off workers. By April, Koo told local media that it had laid off 30% of its staff. Mukul wasn’t spared: In June, he was asked to leave, just six months after joining the company.
The Art of Translation
If someone asked me to describe my relationship to literary translation, my full-time occupation for the last decade, I might call it an ungrudging obsession. It’s often difficult, occasionally all-consuming, but not without its pleasures — some of which are akin to those of the daily crossword.
Much like a crossword, a translation isn’t finished until all the answers are present and correct, with each conditioning the others. But when it comes to literature, there is rarely ever just one solution, and my job is to test as many as possible. A word can be a perfect fit until something I try in the next clause introduces a clumsy repetition or infelicitous echo. Meaning, connotation and subtext all matter, but so does style.
Who Took the Cocaine Out of Coca-Cola?
But, Cohen writes, within just a decade, public attitudes regarding cocaine changed dramatically. This had everything to do with the drug’s adoption by the southern Black working class. Around the time Candler assumed control of Coca-Cola, Black laborers in the New Orleans area began using cocaine to help them get through long, hard days of physical work. Cocaine use spread to workers at plantations and in urban areas around the South. It also became a popular recreational drug in Black and mixed-race neighborhoods.
While the medical profession had seen nothing wrong with tonics such as Coca-Cola advertising themselves to white, middle-class consumers for their aphrodisiac qualities, it became an entirely different matter when Black people used cocaine. Medical journals warned of the “Negro cocaine menace.” Newspapers claimed that the drug caused Black men to commit crimes—most notably, raping white women.
Why Dining Rooms Are Disappearing From American Homes
The dining room is the closest thing the American home has to an appendix—a dispensable feature that served some more important function at an earlier stage of architectural evolution. Many of them sit gathering dust, patiently awaiting the next “dinner holiday” on Easter or Thanksgiving.
That’s why the classic, walled-off dining room is getting harder to find in new single-family houses. It won’t be missed by many. Americans now tend to eat in spaces that double as kitchens or living rooms—a small price to pay for making the most of their square footage.
Why Are We So Obsessed With Morning Routines?
The idea that sleeping late is sinful has deep roots in Western culture. Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius spends much of The Meditations — the notes he wrote to himself across his second-century reign, newly popular among tech bro enthusiasts — chastising himself for his flaws. Those include having trouble getting out of bed in the morning. “In the morning when you rise unwillingly, let this thought be present — I am rising to the work of a human being,” he instructs himself. While it’s true that lying in bed “is more pleasant,” after all, “Do you exist then to take your pleasure, and not at all for action and exertion?”