In February of 1824, Charles Dickens watched in anguish as his father was arrested for debt and sent to the Marshalsea prison, just south of the Thames, in London. “I really believed at the time,” Dickens told his friend and biographer, John Forster, “that they had broken my heart.” Soon, Dickens’s mother and his younger siblings joined the father at Marshalsea, while a resentful Dickens earned money at a blacking factory, labelling pots of polish for shoes and boots. Although his father would be released within months, Dickens would never fully outrun the memory of his family’s incarceration.
Researchers announced the discovery of phosphine on Venus as possible evidence of alien life, with the caveat that phosphine might be made in the Venusian environment in the absence of life, though the researchers had endeavored to eliminate the possibility. However, critics quickly pointed out that the evidence for phosphine detection was itself weak, and the consensus by now is that the detection was likely a false alarm. But even if a positive detection of phosphine could be confirmed, the deeper debate of whether or not life produced it will ensue. This debate—or the one in the next iteration of the hype cycle—is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon, because the way we currently search for life is insufficient.
“Spam is the ultimate loner food,” said the chef Esther Choi, who lives in a one-bedroom by herself in New York City. Working late hours to keep the lights on at all of her restaurants, Ms. Yoo and two Mŏkbar locations (with one more on the way), Choi doesn’t get to cook meals at home for herself very often. But when she does, she turns to the simple things: fried Spam, eggs, and Hetbahn, a single serving of Korean microwavable rice. “Even though I’m a chef and I can make anything in the world,” she said, “when I’m by myself, those are the things I want to eat.”
This is a common fugue for many Asian Americans: Spam, eggs, and rice. The nostalgic valances that stem from that salty, pink block of luncheon meat go way back for some of us, not least because it represents a very specific experience: what it was like growing up in America with immigrant parents.
A Maori word for the carved image of a god or ancestor, tiki became synonymous in the United States and elsewhere for gimmicky souvenirs and décor. Now a new generation of beverage-industry professionals are shining a light on the genre’s history of racial inequity and cultural appropriation, which has long been ignored because it clashes with the carefree aesthetic. Let’s peel back the pineapple leaves to examine the choices that created a marketing mainstay.
For the last few years, Lersch has attempted to solve a problem that often bedevils cookie bakers. “You want to make best possible use of the dough without having to collect all the in-betweens and knead it together and roll out again,” says Lersch. “It’s really about saving time.”