Etcetera #47: Opening Lines, Superbad, Huitlacoche
Etcetera #47: Opening Lines, Superbad, Huitlacoche
Hello. No need for any headings today—just an old-fashioned list of links, like we used to have.
See you next time.
What Makes a Great Opening Line? — lithub.com
Allegra Hyde looks at notable first lines from novels past and present. Very interesting to see how many of them reference both death and time.
Language, Please: Style Guide & Resources for journalists and storytellers — languageplease.org
A style guide focused on inclusive language. Lots of straightforward, sensible advice here.
Los Angeles Street Names — lastreetnames.com
An ongoing project that lists the origins, histories and meanings of street names in Los Angeles.
McLovin It: An Oral History of ‘Superbad’ — www.vanityfair.com
I haven't watched Superbad in a very long time; I doubt it holds up as well as the cast and crew believe, but this was an entertaining look behind the scenes of how it was made.
Hollywoodle — www.hollywoodle.ml
Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon meets Wordle. Make your way from one actor to another using as few steps as possible.
Innovation and the incinerated tongue: Notes on hot chicken, race, and culinary crossover — thecounter.org
Another piece along the lines of those that have been included here before about food, authenticity, race and appropriation. This one considers Nashville hot chicken.
This is a lovely piece of writing, nominally about a single recipe made many times over, but really about everything else in life.
Why there's no 'Dijon' in Dijon mustard — www.bbc.com France is facing a widespread dearth of Dijon mustard, which news outlets wasted no time in attributing to the war in Ukraine. But the story is a whole lot spicier than that.
The Huitlacoche Farmer — foragerchef.com
Huitlacoche is an edible fungus that grows on corn species. Foraging for it is a curious business, with harvests booked by chefs a year in advance. Here's the full story.
An Eater Critic’s Night Out With a TikTok Food Influencer — ny.eater.com
We're all familiar with the effect of Instagram on food photography; this article explores how TikTok is changing the restaurant experience.
Hour-long YouTube video essays are thriving in the TikTok era — www.vox.com
Video content is simultaneously getting longer and shorter. Here's the YouTube side of things, looking at longer-form video essays.
Dinosaur roars: What scientists say they actually sounded like — www.vox.com
The first of two articles on the recreation of sound. This one looks at dinosaurs. The parts of a body that produce sound are generally softer tissues and don't fossilise; here's how scientists make their best guesses at what a Tyrannosaur's roar sounded like.
The Spookiest Sound in Astronomy — www.theatlantic.com
The second article is about the transformation of space phenomena into something we can listen to:
The noise sounds like a ghostly wail, or the horror-movie music just before a jump scare, or, as several people have pointed out, the cries of countless souls trapped in eternal darkness. Just nothing good; less awe-ful, and more awful. Does space really sound this scary?
The Great Video Game Mergers-and-Acquisitions Spree — www.theringer.com
What is means when many of the large video game companies decide to buy each other.
It's been a while since I included a link about the Metroid franchise, so here's a comprehensive history:
