New and Old #139
Friday roundup and commentary
No More Fakelore: Revealing The Real Pennsylvania Dutch Cuisine, NPR, Nancy Shute, May 6, 2013
This is a brief piece about a book seeking the real, historical Pennsylvania Dutch cuisine:
News flash: Whoopie pies are not indigenous Pennsylvania Dutch food, no matter what the tourist traps say. Nor are the seafood bisque, chili, roast beef and other dishes crowding the steam tables at tourist restaurants in Lancaster County, Pa.
Instead, how about some gumbis, a casserole of shredded cabbage, meat, dried fruit and onions? Or some gribble, bits of toasted pasta akin to couscous? Or some schnitz-un-gnepp: stewed dried apples, ham hocks and dumplings?
The fact that a lot of supposedly “authentic,” “iconic,” “classic” dishes basically date to the middle of the 20th century is true of a lot of cuisines, and probably a lot of things. A lot of Italian “classics” were invented in living memory, for example. Actually, those real Pennsylvania Dutch dishes sound quite nice, and I’d like to try them!
Slack Is Basically Facebook Now, The Atlantic, Ian Bogost, September 14, 2023
Yeah, I don’t like the new Slack either. Writes Bogost:
All change is bad when you don’t think you need it. But this change felt distinctive because it laid bare a difficult fact: Office work is now more like social media than like office work.
I guess this is sort of in the same category as “gamification,” that is, trying to make serious things “fun” and frequently both diluting their seriousness and not making them fun.
As the smartphone matured, Twitter and Facebook, as well as Instagram and LinkedIn, buried boredom behind an infinite scroll of content. Email and then blogging had begun that process, but social media massively increased the quantity of posts and posters. To finish drinking from the fire hose was impossible, but dipping into it offered instant gratification—something to love or hate, two emotions that seemed to fuse in life online.
And that’s increasingly what work feels like. Probably not great.
But Slack embraces both the light and dark sides of social-media life. A work-chat self now feels distinct from a work self, let alone a whole self. As on social media, the urge to weigh in, react, inveigh—in short, to post—has taken over, whether or not actual work is being facilitated in the process. As on social media, extreme positions proliferate on Slack, with workplace posts reading more like takes than like office talk. Even my Atlantic colleagues’ reactions to Slack’s rebrand seem profoundly overstated, shared because the software and the moment conspired to make them share-worthy.
What does it all amount to? “Slack, a supposed productivity tool meant to help knowledge workers recover from their email, demands more fixation than email ever did.”
Metro Magic: How Public Transit Sparked Ballston’s Revival, Ghosts of DC, November 1, 2023
Ballston is one of the popular neighborhoods along the urban corridor in Arlington County, Virginia following the Metro line.
The Ballston area was struggling in the years before Metro arrived. But Arlington County intentionally planned to use the new subway station to spur investment and revive the struggling strip. As the 1979 Post article stated, “County planners are betting that Metro will turn things around for the sagging commercial strip.” The county zoned the area around the future station for new mixed-use development, hoping to attract young professionals and new business activity.
It very much worked. It’s remarkable how quickly and completely many of the streets along that whole corridor went from run-down suburban strips to places that really feel quite close to a “real” city. You’d not guess it’s all basically post-1980.
This Google Maps Street View snapshot gives you an idea of what this landscape used to look like:
Virtual fencing is gaining traction in American agriculture because it can save farmers time and money. But it could also enable them to more easily adopt practices—and entire systems—that promote environmental benefits. When farmers are able to control how, where, and when their animals move between pastures, they can more easily accomplish ecological goals that might include increasing soil carbon, reducing water pollution, or incorporating trees. The technology also has the potential to rid the West of barbed wire that negatively impacts wildlife migration and adapt grazing to an age of increased wildfires by making it easy to keep cattle out of burned areas.
An interesting story on how technology could reduce the environmental impacts of livestock grazing. Check it out.
Related Reading:
Thank you for reading! Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription to help support this newsletter. You’ll get a weekly subscribers-only piece, plus full access to the archive: over 800 pieces and growing. And you’ll help ensure more like this!
I guess I'm old. I didn't even know what Slack was, or is, or whatever. I've never see it.
Regarding Ballston: I arrived in the DC area on New Year's Eve, December 31, 1979. I have a cousin who was living in Ballston at the time. She raved about the brand new Metro station, that was within walking distance. Her commute time to her office across the street from Union Station, was now a breeze. I stayed at her place for a couple of weeks, until I got settled into the DC area.
There was a little mom and pop Mexican restaurant called Speedy Gonzales, that had great food and was right in front of you as you came up the escalator at the Ballston Metro station. I doubt I would recognize Ballston now if I went there. There was some development around the station, but as you walked away from it, you saw basically a bunch of 2 story garden apartment buildings.