Conversation Piece, April 2, 2017
A weekly series.
Enjoy our Sunday series, Conversation Piece, a NUVO–curated digest of things on the Internet we think you’ll want to talk about.
Recovering from the Hawaiian cure. Have you ever felt, upon reading a travel story, that the writer has misunderstood the essence of the place they sought to capture? The Atlantic’s Adrienne LaFrance did upon reading The New York Times writer Wells Tower’s story, “The Hawaiian Cure”, published this March. Her response feature is not only a riotous display of inter-publication qualm-taking (always fun) but deftly conveys the history of exploitation and colonial complicity that give oblivious tourism its icky undercurrent. Read it yourself, here.
Cook and clean. From buying pre-chopped produce to simply ordering in, it seems modern households are up for anything that shaves a few minutes off of meal-prep time. Tel Aviv-based industrial design student Iftach Gazit has taken the efficiency dream to a new level with his creation of food packages with contents (like steak, and salmon teriyaki) that need only a spin in the laundry machine to cook. Since public laundromats are often open 24/7 and cheap to use, Gazit sees potential in his product for helping feed the homeless in addition to being a fun novelty. See for yourself, here.
Eight legged freaks. Ah, spiders. At best, they’re pesky home invaders trapped beneath a cup and tossed outside; at worst, they’re phobia fuel, the subject of horror movies and nightmares. If you’re arachnophobic, you may want to stop reading now. According to a recent article in The Science of Nature journal, spiders annually consume about 400 million tons of meat and fish—that’s more flesh than that of the entire mass of the human population. In other words, spiders could consume every single person on Earth in one year and still have room for dessert. Not so itsy bitsy, after all. Get the creepy details from The Washington Post, here.
Cosmic flavours. American ice cream company Jeni’s Spendid Ice Cream released a new flavour this week that’s, well, out of this world. Called “Supermoon”, the ice cream is a yellow-purple swirl of marshmallow and candied violet flavours, and looks a bit like Moon Mist (the banana-grape-bubble-gum blend popular in Canada’s Maritimes, see: Fig.21). And yet, still no ice cream company has released a flavour profile based on ethyl formate—a chemical compound scientist believe makes the galaxy smell like raspberries and rum. We’d line up for a scoop of that. Learn more, here.
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